The author begin to introduce the importance of educational objectives. Some educational programs may not have the purpose of the course very clearly, that happen because the program is lack of objectives, it is lack of a guidance. If teachers have objectives, they would know the direction that they are going to follow and how they are going to get there. In this chapter, we will start to understand why objectives are important and how we can set up them in an educational program. That author mentions that concepts and generalizations are good ways to start an educational objective. The use of objectives will help teachers to have an organized course and to know which direction they need to follow in order to achieve the purpose of the course. Teachers need to predict and think about everything. They need to know the objectives-goals to achieve and path to follow in order to get there. Obviously, after the objectives are set up, the next question will be; how to obtain them? The educational objectives are going to be the goals of the course, it is necessary to understand which objectives are the correct ones to seek in a certain time. In this chapter, Tyler mentions different ways and stances to achieve the goals; such as, Progressive Stance, Educational Philosopher stance, Essentialist Stance, and Socialist Stance. After, you have the objectives prepare, it is necessary to start thinking about how to obtain them, the student’s point of view, their behavior, and needs. It is really important to set up also, the right learning environment in order to teach the subjects to achieve the objectives. Teachers need to take under consideration the environment and the student’s behavior and needs. The learning environment needs to be satisfying for each of the students in the classroom. You as a teacher, you need to know your student in and outside classes, you need to analyze them in order to create the right goals and learning environment for them. To sum up, the main idea of this first chapter is to focus on the importance of setting objectives in a way that follows the students’ point of view. The objectives are made to fill up learners’ interests and needs.
In this chapter, the author mentions that in order to achieve learning objectives, teachers should pay attentions to students’ experiences and behaviors. Basically, the student’s reactions to the learning process will depend on their environment. If they are exposed to the right experience and environment, the objectives proposed by the teacher will be attained. The education is an educational experience for the student and the teacher is the one in charge, the one that needs to make connections and understand student’s environment and experiences in order to have the reaction that he or she wants to get. The author shows a good example that demonstrates us that it does not matter if two students are seeing the same topic or if they are in the same classroom, both of them will have a different experience on how they see the topic. One of them might be really interested in the subject and the other one might be thinking something else. The teacher in charge needs to control and manipulate the external environment in order to create the right stimulus to have the behavior desired in each one of the learners. For teachers, this will be one of the most difficult tasks in their field because we, all as students, we think differently and although, we are exposed to the same conditions, we might react in an opposite way from our partner’s point of view. General principles in selecting learning experiences 1. The learners must be exposed in experiences that allows them to place in practice the objectives given by the teacher. 2. The learners should get satisfactions from the learning experience in order to imply the objectives; for example: if they are exposed to unsatisfying experiences, they will now be able to attain the object. 3. The reactions desired in the learning experience must be in a range of possibility for the learners. Basically, the experiences needs to meet the student’s present. 4. Teachers might use a lot of different experiences to attain the same educational objectives; as long as they meet the main goal.
5. Learning experiences might bring different outcomes. Students might learn more than one subject from the experience and not just the one objective that the teacher had in mind. It is important to have the general principles in mind because that way, you will be able to predict the possible outcomes and also to create the right learning experience for your educational objectives. Also, as we have been seen there is a bunch of possible outcomes of just one learning experience that is why, it is really hard to formulate specific characteristics of learning experiences useful to attain every type of objective. Therefore, we can consider the common types of objectives and their learning experience to attain them; for example: 1. Developing skill in thinking: First of all, teachers will create stimulus in the student’s behavior so, they can use the three types of thinking; inductive thinking, deductive thinking, and logical thinking. Because the objective is “thinking”, students will be exposed to real problems in order to react as it is expected. In order to solve the problem, they might use the normal steps of thinking: Recognize the questions that cannot be answered Identify the problem and analyze it Collect facts Formulate hypothesis Test the hypothesis Draw conclusions It is important that children are exposed to the experience of thinking about the problem and trying to solve it. They need to be involved in the problem because if they are not, they will not attained that objective expected. It is not recommended that they only watch the teacher solving it because they will not experience anything. 2. Acquiring information by learning experiences: This might include objectives to develop understanding or gathering information. In this one, the objective is only important if it is viewed as functional. For example, John Dewy once was visiting a class in The Vicinity of Chicago, which was studying the earth and how was formed. He asked some questions, but neither of the students could
answer. The teacher explained to him that, he asked the wrong question. She asked that same questions as Mr. Dewey, but in a different way and all of the students knew the answer. There some suggestions that we can use to set up learning experience to acquire information; such as, Information can be acquired while students are learning to solve a problem. Select only the important information that the student needs to know. Set up situations in which the information will increase the possibility of remembering it in the future. Use the information as much as you can in different aspects and situations. 3. Social attitudes developed by learning experiences: Those objectives that helps to create social attitudes are the ones related with literature, art, physical education, and extracurricular activities. 4. Learning experiences to create interest: Those objectives created to create interest will make connection between the experiences and objectives. To sum up, if you want children to attain and achieve the objectives provided, you need to create connections between their experiences, environment, and behavior. Mostly, you need to understand their experiences and meet them, it is like a time line. “The teacher must begin where the students is.” - Tyler, R.W. (1969). Basically, teachers will start from the situation that students are located in order to produce an experience that will conclude to achieve a certain objective. We as teacher, we need to predict everything, the possible outcomes and results, the experiences and situations that we need to use, and also how to make them satisfying for the learners.
In the previous chapter, we learned the characteristics to make useful learning experiences in order to attain several types of objectives, but we did not see the way in how we can organized them to make them successful. Teachers need to consider the learning experiences and how to organize them into units, courses, and programs. As well, it is necessary to have clear that the results of a learning experience will not reflected overnight, it might take months and years to be able to watch a major educational objective marked in a concrete way. In order for educational experiences be able to produce the objective expected, it needs to be really organized. Organization might be a trouble factor in curriculum development because it influences the efficiency of instruction and how the education changes are brought to the learners. For the sake of organizing the learning experiences, teachers must create bounds through the time and different areas. These two aspects are known as vertical organization; to make connections within the time; for example, what students saw in fifth-grade geography and what they saw in sixth-grade geography. The other aspect is horizontal organization; to make connections in different areas; for example, what students saw in fifth-grade history and what they saw in fifth-grade geography. Both of them are important to obtain the right effect for the educational experiences. Also, there are three major criteria to build an effectively organized group of learning experiences: Continuity: It refers to the vertical aspect of a major curriculum element. This minds that overtime the skills will be brought continuously through the years. Sequence: It is also related with continuity, but it goes the extra mile. Integration: This one is refers to the horizontal part of the curriculum element.
These three criteria are the basic components to build an effective and organized learning experience. Also, in order to work a plan of organization for curriculum, it is a priority need to identify the elements that might be used as organizing threads. One element that you can use as an organizing element is to try to achieve continuity and sequence. It will help you to create integration in the system. If you are going to create a curriculum, it does not matter the field, you need to identify the most effective threads to use in the organization. The author mentions that a good teaching will always involve a synthesis of several elements. A learning experiences might contribute to these elements. Although, it is not necessary to identify the learning experiences to achieve continuity, sequence, and integration, what you need is to identify the elements in other to organize the experiences. The author mentions some principles to organize the learning experiences: Extend the concepts to show students their selves as being interdependence. Extension of the concept to a wide range of respects in which people are interdependence. To conclude, teachers need to control and understand the environment in which the children are exposed, they need to manage them to get the right results of the learning experience. In order to do that, teachers must try to organize the learning experiences to conclude with the educational objectives. This factor to create the curriculum is one of the most difficult ones, you need to consider the organizing structures so you can made the proper organization. Structural elements may be: Specific subjects; such as, geography, history, literature... Broad fields; such as, social studies, the language arts, mathematics… A core curriculum for general education A completely undifferentiated structure
We have been considering the operations involved in choosing and creating educational objectives and also, the selection and organization of learning experiences. Although, we have learned some really important things to begin with the curriculum, it is necessary that, we start to talk about the evaluation of the objectives. Basically, each learning experience will have a certain criteria to follow so, they can predict the effects desired. Then, the actual teaching procedure involve the variations in individual students, the environmental conditions in which the learning goes on, and the skill of the teacher in setting the situations planned. Those variables make really hard to predict the possible outcomes from a learning experience. The evaluation is the process to find out how far the learning experiences has been developed and organized in order to produce the reaction desired. This evaluating process help us to identify the strengths and weakness of the plan. This process is one of the most important one because it demonstrates if the educational objectives are actually being realized by the curriculum instructed. This concept of evaluation has two aspects: ď ś The evaluation must calculate the student’s behavior because that will be reflected in their education. ď ś The evaluation must involve more than a single calculation because we need to be aware of any changes in the exact moment that it happen. If you do not know where the students are since the beginning, it will be impossible for you as a teacher to identify the changes and when did the changes happen. This is important because in some cases students might present improvement according to the in structural program or in other cases students might be stuck in the very begging of the program. Also, there are some basic notions related with evaluation that might guide you to develop an evaluation design. The process of the evaluating begins with the objectives of the educational program. The purpose is to see how far the objectives are truly realized. Teachers need evidence of the knowledge acquired by the students of the topic studied. That is why the objectives need to be very clear so, it provides the right guidance in selection and planation of the learning
experience, it will be a behavioral objective. Then, after we have the objective clear, the next procedure to evaluate is to identify the situations that will give the students the chance to imply the educational objectives. To conclude, the evaluation part in teaching is one of the most important ones because it will allow you to demonstrate if the situations and experiences given were the right ones to achieve the educational objectives.
This far, we have seen the main issues of planning a program instructed of the students’ point of view. In order to create a curriculum, teacher needs to consider every single aspects to make the best choices to fill up the students’ needs. The author mentions that, the curriculum is like an instrument for the school and everyone including the staff needs to work on it. If a school-wide program of curriculum is undertaken, it is necessary to have a widespread faculty participation. The instructional program operates based in the learning experiences of the students. In order to make the objectives successfully, the teacher needs to understand the kind of learning experiences that can be useful to attain the objectives. Teacher needs to have the ability to guide the projects, activities, and task to the right direction to get the experiences needed. Hence, everyone including the professor and staff need to be part of the curriculum planning, everyone will create the committee to formulate the right philosophy of education, as soon as they have that, they can be able to use the results to select the objectives for the school. Then, after the objectives for the school are clear, it is necessary to start with the objectives for each course taught in the school. Normally, those will be made by those teacher that teach the class, but even in this step, the committee will check them. To conclude with the idea, the author mentions to principles to create an affective domains in the school: Political Principle: Functions to demonstrate the democratic society in the school. Ethical Principle: The right of each student to have privacy and express themselves.
References Tyler, R.W. (1969). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, U.S. University of Chicago Press