Education is most often seen as a technical exercise. Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured.
Fundamental questions: a) What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?, b) How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
1) There are questions around the nature of objectives. This model is hot on measurability. It implies that behaviour can be objectively, mechanistically measured. There are obvious dangers here - there always has to be some uncertainty about what is being measured. We only have to reflect on questions of success in our work. It is often very difficult to judge what the impact of particular experiences has been. Sometimes it is years after the event that we come to appreciate something of what has happened. In order to measure, things have to be broken down into smaller and smaller units. The result, as many of you will have experienced, can be long lists of often trivial skills or competencies. This can lead to a focus in this approach to curriculum theory and practice on the parts rather than the whole; on the trivial, rather than the significant. It can lead to an approach to education and assessment which resembles a shopping list. When all the items are ticked, the person has passed the course or has learnt something. The role of overall judgment is somehow sidelined.
2) There is the problem of unanticipated results. The focus on pre-specified goals may lead both educators and learners to overlook learning that is occurring as a result of their interactions, but which is not listed as an objective.
I believe there is a tendency, recurrent enough to suggest that it may be endemic in the approach, for academics in education to use the objectives model as a stick with which to beat teachers. 'What are your objectives?' is more often asked in a tone of challenge than one of interested and helpful inquiry. The demand for objectives is a demand for justification rather than a description of ends... It is not about curriculum design, but rather an expression of irritation in the problems of accountability in education. (Stenhouse 1974: 77)
Copied from
Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000). Curriculum theory and practice. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved: 11 January 2010. http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm
about the 1)paragraph: it mentions ways for teachers to feel secure in their work, disregarding the feelings of insecurity cncerning students. Teachers often focus on the detail and ignore the totality...
ReplyDeleteexactly demi! with performance approach teachers can rather easily measure some goals, but often these goals are rather trivial. This way they focus on the tree but they miss the forest. However, sometimes this approach is imposed to, rather than applied from, teachers.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't understand exactly what you mean by "disregarding the feelings of insecurity cncerning students". Can you explain it better to me, please?
while teachers prefer choosing measurable tests for evaluating their students' learning prossess, students themselves are, quite often, unable to figure the purpose of items to be learned. They find them useless, meaningless, unconnected with their needs. They study in order to memorize things and lack the ability to use this knowledge. So they do not actually possess it and eventually they feel insecure whether they are correct or not in their answers.
ReplyDeletein principle you are right, but I think that there are some misconceptions, which may need clarification.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with i.e. measurable tests. The problem is not basically on the *tests* (put it simply in the assessment process), rather on the learning process. In other words, the whole learning process is focused on achieving some goals. Those goals may be well far away from students' real needs.
I agree with you. You couldn't 've said it better. As we said before, you are the expert on this!
ReplyDeleteexpert? No way! I would rather say that I am just a little bit more experienced novice!
ReplyDelete