1 Learning Outcomes within professional Contexts in Higher Education Tine S. Prøitz, Anton Havnes, Mary Briggs, Ian Scott Abstract With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for the implementation of LOs is that they bear fundamentally similar, meaning across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast detractors, suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this investigation analyse how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which the use of LOs drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings of the study indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points and therefore on the surface being presented in a standardised form. The study also finds that LOs are framed in varied ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents, this ‘local’ structural usage of LOs disrupts the ‘foundation stone’ role of the LO as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations. Key words: Learning outcomes, professional, higher education, teaching, nursing Introduction The aim of the study is to explore study programme documents in order to analyse how LOs are used to communicate what students are expected to learn and the extent to which the use of LOs drives standardisation. We have chosen to focus on programme areas that are preparing for specific professions (nurses and teachers). These are required by their professional bodies to guarantee that graduates have acquired certain knowledge and skills. Although there has been considerable research related to LOs, little have been written about their place as part of professional education . Unlike previous articles (Entwistle 2005) the importance of this paper is that it focuses exclusively on the professional contexts, which bring different challenges to higher education by being more directly related to a professional field of practice and with the involvement of stakeholders outside academia (Nordengraaf 2011). A premise for the European policy implementation of LOs is that they bear a fundamentally similar, meaning across national, institutional or professional contexts (Kennedy et al. 2007, Allais 2012, Lassnigg 2012). LOs are attributed universal meanings that transcend contexts, which presupposes shared understanding of what they are and what demonstrating a particular LOs implies. Adam (2004, p. 2), states that