A “Zombie” Reform: Outcome Based Education (OBE) in Medical Education and K-12 Schools
Outcome Based Education (OBE) rolled through U.S. public schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Yes, OBE (a.k.a “mastery learning,” “competency-based education”) is still around (see here). But the drum-beating policy talk and promises of turning around “failing” U.S. schools, well, those claims have evaporated for K-12 schools. Except for university medical education. Thus, a “zombie” reform returns.
On the 100th anniversary of the Flexner Report (1910) which did, indeed, alter medical education a century ago, another gaggle of reforms aimed at transforming current medical education has swept across U.S. medical schools in the past decade. I say “another” because like K-12 U.S. schools, university medical education has had cycles of reform aimed at the original Flexnerian model of medical education–two years of basic sciences (e.g., anatomy, biochemistry, genetics) and two years of clinical practice in hospitals and clerkships in various specialties (e.g., surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics). OBE–sometimes called “Competency-Based Education” (CBE)–has become the “reform du jour” in this cycle of change in medical education. Yet its shortcomings and missing elements applied to medical education have already been documented fully (see 2013_OBE).
OBE in either K-12 or medical schools is all about educators identifying concepts, knowledge, and skills that students must have in the “real world,” teaching both, and then measuring performance to see whether students have acquired the A “Zombie” Reform: Outcome Based Education (OBE) in Medical Education and K-12 Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: