Behavioural objectives — A critical review

Behavioural objectives lay the foundations for a thoroughgoing attempt to improve the effectiveness of educational systems. By specifying what the student should be able to do after the learning experience, the hope is that the outcomes of education can be brought in line with the intentions of the educator. To achieve this goal, it would be minimally necessary to ensure that the objectives were relevant, and that they could be used to prescribe fairly exactly the design of the educational process and the evaluation which would follow. The object of this paper is to assess such claims.The paper starts by placing behavioural objectives in the context of the systematic approach to education, a particular kind of rational planning. A distinction is drawn between two kinds of systematic approach — the feedforward prescriptive mode and the feedback cyclical mode. The feedforward mode is ambitious, placing great stress on objectives, and insisting upon explicit procedures both for deriving objectives and for the subsequent process of design. The cyclical mode is less ambitious, but less vulnerable to attack. It accepts a downgraded role for objectives (they are seen just as part of an interconnected system) and it accepts that success will only be achieved by a process of testing and recycling. The cyclical mode puts less stress on the need to be explicit, and relies more on the intuitive skills of the individual educator.The cases for and against behavioural objectives are then discussed in considerable detail. At the end of this analysis it is clear that the strongest claims made for behavioural objectives cannot stand as they were. For example, it seems certain that objectives do not prescribe the design of the educational system, or the validity of test items. And there are not satisfactory principles for deriving relevant objectives. These, and other criticisms, arise from deep-seated deficiencies inherent in the conceptual framework of the systematic approach. In particular it is claimed that the system is based on a poverty-stricken model of student-teacher interaction, that lists of behaviours can never adequately represent the structure of knowledge, and that the whole schema suffers from the weaknesses of operationalism.These conclusions appear to demolish the stronger feedforward prescriptions, and weaken somewhat the softer cyclical approach. The arguments on which these conclusions are based were tested on one of the standard and best known defences of behavioural objectives, and it seems fair to conclude that this particular defence does not meet the criticisms raised.It is unlikely that the deficiencies of behavioural objectives can ever be fully repaired, no matter how much time or effort is expended. A certain mileage can be expected of any conceptual schema, and the behavioural objective/systematic approach, as practised by the best consultants, seems close to its limits. This paper suggests that radical improvements depend upon constructing a less limited framework which allows progress in directions denied to the systematic approach. No such framework is proposed in the paper, though some hints are given.For the present, behavioural objectives provide a well-worked-out tool for rational planning in education. They have made possible certain improvements in the technique of curriculum design; and should not be discarded in disgust just because they fail to meet more exacting standards. But the application of these objectives should be tempered by a deep understanding of their limitations. This paper attempts to promote this understanding.

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