Cognitive Dissonance and Teachers’ Adoption of Outcomebased Teaching

This study presents the particular views of a small group of Thai university teachers about their adoption of Outcome-based Education (OBE) by using the theoretical lens of cognitive dissonance. This study was a qualitative research using an in-depth interview and a thematic content analysis. Nine participants were included based on the criteria of implementing constructive alignment at the classroom teaching level over the specified period. The results found teachers had dissonance as they experienced unwanted consequences related to students’ attitude of study-to-the-test and many technical and practical difficulties when using criterionbased scoring or rubrics. Teachers also had counter-attitudinal behavior of forced compliance with grading system based on the traditional time-based curriculum. The results indicated that teachers’ beliefs towards OBE in the transformational approach reinforced the existence of dissonance. Although teachers justified their effort and commitment to change based on their own motivation, they reflected high expectation of the institutional level to sustain the OBE implementation. In such attempt, the institution needs to create a consonant state between teachers’ conceptions and practices that fully addressed the key principles of OBE at the level of curriculum and policy-driven environment.