The Zoo Trip: Objecting to Objectives

Abstract

I'VE TAUGHT many graduate- and undergraduate-level courses in education for novice and veteran teachers over the years. Curriculum understanding and development are typically central aspects of these courses. (1) I've often used Elliot Eisner's classic curriculum text, The Educational Imagination, (2) to frame what I regard as a problem for the field and the practice of teaching in public schools: curricularists and teachers often believe that meaningful in school have to be scripted, planned to the nth degree and assigned learning objectives and goals ahead of time, or they have no educational worth. Some behaviorists claim that no learning occurs if students' performance, as measured by the teacher, doesn't meet the exact specifications of the objective to be taught in the lesson. (3) Many present-day reformers say that everything in the curriculum should be tied explicitly to standards, objectives, or goals. It's just not enough for them and for those exercising surveillance over teachers and our classrooms if students find an experience meaningful and valuable in myriad ways or if an activity teaches without being tied to some set of learning outcomes or objectives. It's the classic question of whether ends have to come before means, or if means can precede undetermined ends in a meaningful way. Or maybe the bigger question is whether educational means are sometimes adequate educational ends in and of themselves. Perhaps some of our most educational experiences occur when we purposefully engage in them and then figure out after the fact just what it was that we gleaned from them. The gleaning can be done implicitly or explicitly with the teacher, on the student's own, or in a group. The point is that something was learned, and the learning may have been ineffable, deep, or profound--as when you hear your first beautiful aria at the opera or see a majestic home run hit out of a big-league stadium. Eisner calls these types of in our lives and in schools activities or outcomes. They are things we do on purpose because something good and educational will come of doing them. Going to the movies, riding a bike, taking a walk, or making a field trip to the zoo are things human beings do for fun, for culture, for meaning, or for learning. There is an implicit understanding that, whatever the ends of the activity, they will be worthwhile and that the means experienced will be of value, no matter what. We know something good will happen in the midst of doing the activity; we just don't know ahead of time what it will be. So, Eisner maintains, expressive outcomes are different from behavioral and problem-solving objectives. Behavioral objectives are time-worn educational ends that teachers typically learn how to write in preservice programs and then incorporate into their weekly planning, which they share with their principals every Monday morning. These objectives supposedly describe and predict what content and behaviors will be achieved from the interaction with certain materials, processes, and activities. Problem-solving objectives are more open than behavioral objectives and involve more student agency, but the ends are still tightly wound around particular problems and certain questions about them. The idea, in both behavioral and problem-solving circumstances, is to use the activity (means), whether teacher- or student-directed, to meet the stated, explicit goal (end). Many times my students have been stumped during a discussion of these multiple ways to think about educational ends, especially if they've seen their own curriculum work as being centered on behavioral objectives for the better parts of their careers in teaching. They argue that they often set students to solving problems and allow them to discover how best to go about the work of reaching a stated end. I believe that they do this--and though it's good, it's certainly not nirvana. …