Scale of Outcome-Based Education: Beyond the Knowledge-Skill Dichotomy

Overview & Synopsis

This article fills a notable gap in existing research on outcome-based education (OBE) in India. It reports findings from a multi-sited field-based investigation of OBE across five relatively highly ranked institutions in India. Building on actor-network theory the article argues that attempting to study OBE opens up a range of concerns such as disciplinary dispositions, teacher training, methodological limitations of OBE, concerns of labour, management and the problem of designating the scalar boundaries of OBE. The article argues that OBE allows problematizing the distinction between skill and knowledge and the hierarchy that exists between them. It argues that OBE need not be construed as a degradation of higher education into trade schools, rather this moment provides us an opportunity to rethink the relationship between vocational, technical, and general education. This assumes significance in the current context as the new clientele of higher education do not have the luxury nor often the aspiration for further education but want to use undergraduate education as a take-off to build meaningful careers outside the academia.