Law teachers' adoption and acceptance of OBE: a case study of Hong Kong

Outcome-based education (OBE) is a pedagogical approach that suggests that educators should organise every component in a curriculum so that learners achieve predetermined learning outcomes upon completion of their learning process. The focus of OBE is on teaching knowledge and skills that students can attain upon the completion of their formal learning process. Because of its pedagogical impact, institutions worldwide are embracing OBE as a measure of quality assurance of legal education. However, having a set of outcomes is only the first step towards implementing OBE. To fully implement OBE, teachers need to understand and adopt the underlying principles of OBE in their teaching. This article aims to explore the implementation of OBE via an empirical research study in Hong Kong. It concludes that the current institutional policy in Hong Kong allows law teachers to adopt a lukewarm attitude towards OBE. Their attitudes towards OBE can be categorised into five groups, ie loyal followers, incidental followers, lukewarm followers, pretenders and deniers.