How to devise educational objectives

WARNING. Before we start on ‘How to devise learning objectives’ let us make at least two points clear: For whatever they are worth, learning objectives are not an end but a means. Objectives of poor quality are most likely more dangerous than no objectives at all. (Some objectives may even be dangerous for our health!) The writer is unlikely to be suspected of opposition to the so-called ‘learning by objectives’ approach. The reader will therefore understand that his intention is to provide information and not to proselitize. Although the language of education is more like the dry one of mathematics and lacks the poetic symbolism of religions, converts to the educational objectives concept have often been accused and sometimes found guilty of more fanaticism than reason. Then, as Miller (1978) said, ‘The means become the ends, losing both meaning and value. Objectives are important, but only if they help to clarify or make more understandable what we are trying to do. An objective which has been phrased in technically impeccable language but which addresses a goal of no importance might as well have gone unwritten or been written in gibberish‘. It seems, however, that it is not so much the concept of objectives which merits emphasis but its application. ‘This approach to curriculum construc-