Week IX Reading - Eisner on Educational Objectives

Chapter 3: Instructional and Expressive Educational Objectives
Their formulation and use in curriculum

Eisner begins chapter three of Reimagining Schools (year) by discussing some of the literature on how and why educational objectives are formulated. Much has been written on the methods and approaches educators and curriculum developers follow in defining and developing educational objectives. Eisner draws from the works of Bloom et. Al (1956), Gagné (1976), Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia (1964), Mager (1962), and Tyler (1950) who have identified a set of criteria necessary for articulating effective statements of objectives:

1.) Educational objectives should describe student behaviour, not teacher behaviour
2.) Behavioural objectives must also be linked to content area, for instance, critical thinking in math
3.) Behavioural objectives need to be clear and specific enough that a teacher will be able to identify when they are being displayed without having to rely on making inferences

According to these writers, once educational objectives are defined in the above terms, educators may then see a clear direction for planning curriculum, choosing content and relevant learning activities. Furthermore, a set of clear objectives provide a starting point for developing evaluation methods that, naturally, must reflect the original educational objectives. In fact, Tyler even states that educational objectives “are the most critical criteria for guiding all the other activities of the curriculum-maker” (1950, p.40). Moreover, seventeen years later, Gagné wrote: “It is the defining of objectives that brings an essential clarity into the area of curriculum design and enables both educational planners and researchers to bring their practical knowledge to bear on the matter” (1967, pp. 21-22).

Despite all the literature on the paramount necessity for the defining and development of educational objectives, Eisner states that “we are, I believe, hard pressed to identify the power they are believed to have by their advocates” (p. 25). Eisner begins to problematize this phenomenon by asking a series of questions:

Why do teachers not use tools that are meant to make their work easier?
Why do those who understand how objectives are to be defined disregard them?
In the formulation of objectives, is there a disconnect between theory and practice?
Are the assumptions that objectives are based upon perhaps oversimplified?
Is it possible that those who theorize and write about educational objectives do not share the same world-view as those implementing and teaching the curriculum?

Eisner goes on to describe the formulation of educational objectives as part of a process that is never neutral, and he explains that the metaphors used to describe objectives are often “alien to the educational values held by many of those who teach” (p. 25). Eisner believes most metaphors on the function of education can fit into one of three dominant views that have developed over the past fifty years: the industrial metaphor, the behaviouristic metaphor and the biological metaphor.

Industrial

“The school was seen as a plant. The super-intendent directed the operation of the plant. The teachers were engaged in a job of engineering, and the pupils were the raw material to be processed in the plant according to the demands of the consumers” (p. 26).

Behavioristic

“The behaviouristic method had its birth with efforts to construct a science of education and psychology” (p. 26).

“If educational objectives are to be meaningful, they must be anchored in sense data and the type of data with which education is concerned is that of human behaviour” (p. 27).

Biological

“Those who viewed (and view) education through the biological metaphor were (and are) much more concerned with the attainment of lofty goals, with helping children realize their unique potential, with the development of a sense of self-respect and intellectual and emotional autonomy which can be used throughout their lives.”

Eisner believes these metaphors linger today and continue to influence ideas on education, and that in part, “differences in the metaphoric conception of education” explain competing opinions and ensuing debates on the formulation of educational objectives. Ultimately, Eisner asserts that differences of opinion over the purpose of education and its consequent objectives are really a matter of value difference.