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Part 4 Putting it all together

Aims and objectives

A large insurance firm in New York was having trouble with its 20-storey skyscraper.
The managing director wrote to engineering firms, telling them of the repeated
complaints he had received from his employees. They were complaining about
the length of time they had to wait for the lift, so he was asking for quotes for the
installation of a new lift shaft.
The managing director received a number of quotes for tens of millions of dollars,
along with one from an engineer who said he could solve the problem for $9,000.
This quote was rejected out of hand at first, but the director was intrigued. Finally,
he telephoned and asked, ‘How can you fit a lift shaft for $9,000?’ The engineer
pointed out that the real aim was not to fit a lift shaft, but to reduce employee
frustration. His plan was to create comfortable places for employees to wait for
the lift, with easy chairs, potted plants, mirrors, fish tanks, magazines and piped
music. This solution still works well to this day. Moral: think very carefully about
your aims before starting your plans.

Almost any purposeful human activity can be said to fall into the pattern shown in
the diagram above – everything from arranging your holidays or cooking fish pie
to setting up a business or going shopping.
Teaching falls into the same pattern. Teachers first decide what they hope to achieve
(aims and objectives), then plan the lesson, then teach the lesson – i.e. carry the
plan out. Then they need to evaluate the lesson, asking themselves whether they
did indeed achieve the aims set. Assessing what the students have learned helps
answer this question. This evaluation may lead to a change in the aims for the next
lesson, or for the next time this same lesson is taught, so the process is cyclic.

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What are aims and objectives?

‘Aims’ or ‘educational goals’ are clear and concise statements that describe what
the teacher hopes to achieve. These statements of intent are usually expressed in
a rather broad and generalised way – for example:
• To improve the students’ ability to communicate effectively in formal written
English.
• To develop an understanding and appreciation of the world’s major religions.
• To create opportunities for students to engage in creative self-expression.
• To develop a knowledge and understanding of scientific investigative
procedures.
Some people advocate expressing aims from the point of view of the teacher or the
course, rather than from the students’ point of view. For example:
• The aim of the course is to consider the basic principles of retailing.
• The training package will introduce the basic elements of computer program-
ming.
It is usually impossible to achieve aims absolutely. Students could work on achiev-
ing most of the above aims for a lifetime, and still have plenty to do! Aims are so
general and all-embracing that there can be as few as four or five for a full-time
one-year course.
Aims are like compass directions, indicating the general direction in which the
teacher wishes to travel. As such, they are vital; but they are not specific enough to
help the teacher pick learning activities, or assess whether learning has taken place.
There is no general agreement about how to decide aims and objectives, or precisely
how they should be written. But there is agreement that aims are vitally important.

Where do aims come from?

Aims may be provided by an examination syllabus, by a programme
of study, or by the awarding body for a qualification. Later we will see
that they may in some circumstances be provided by a ‘needs analysis’,
by ‘task analysis’ or by negotiation with the students on the course.
However, teachers decide most of their own aims, even if they are not
written down formally.
What are you are trying to achieve by your teaching? Do you take an
entirely functional view that education provides students with the means
to earn a living and to cope in our society? Or do your aims go beyond
this? Some aims will come from your own values (see Chapter 45).

Learning outcomes
Aims may point you in the right direction, but they don’t tell you how to get there,
or when you have arrived. So intentions must be described in a more detailed
way with what are variously called ‘specific objectives’, ‘behaviourist objectives’,
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 Aims and objectives

‘learning outcomes’. They are testable statements describing what you intend your
students to learn – for example:
• The student should be able to use inverted commas correctly.
• The student should be able to solder electronic components on to a circuit
board.
This is much better than teacher-centred aims such as ‘to describe how to punctu-
ate correctly’ or ‘to show students how to solder’. If you examine the latter care-
fully, you will see that these statements can be satisfactorily met whether or not the
student has learned anything! We must shift the focus from teaching to learning.
Doing so has a number of advantages. It makes clear what students have to practise,
and avoids a lesson dominated by teacher talk, where little real learning takes place.
It makes lesson planning easier by suggesting learning activities (e.g. corrected
practice of soldering or dialogue writing). Moreover, if you know precisely what
students should be able to do, it is much easier to assess whether or not they can
do it. This enables you to evaluate how successful your lessons have been.
The crucial point is that the outcomes precisely describe observable learner perfor-
mance, shifting the focus on to what the students will be able to do as a result of
their learning, and away from what the teacher will do. For example:
The student should be able to:
• State three advantages of the diesel engine over the petrol engine.
• List the main methods of pest management in Indonesia.
• Distinguish between fog, smog, mist and cloud.
Most people have difficulty in writing objectives at first, tending to think in terms of
what the teacher will do rather than what the student will learn. Are these specific
learning outcomes?
• To introduce the idea of percentages.
• The Peasants’ Revolt.
The answer is no – they aren’t. Could you change them so that they were? Have a
try before reading further.

Specific learning outcomes or specific objectives should:

• specify precisely and in concrete terms what the student should be able
to do
• be written in such a way that it is possible to determine whether or not the
objective has been achieved
• usually be short-term
• be drawn up by the teacher to suit the resources, the teacher and the
students
• optionally, define the circumstances under which the objective is to be demon-
strated and/or what constitutes an achievement, e.g. ‘Translate passage 6d
in less than five minutes, making fewer than four minor mistakes’.
Some like the mnemonic SMART, standing for specific, measurable, agreed,
realistic and timebound.
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Here are some legitimate objectives for the topics mentioned above. Notice that
they identify skills or abilities, and so suggest ‘use’, ‘check and correct’ and the
other elements of learning.
Students should be able to:
• express one number as a percentage of another
• calculate a given percentage of a given amount.
Students should be able to:
• state and explain the main events running up to the Peasants’ Revolt
• explain three economic consequences of the Peasants’ Revolt.

Ineffective teachers say they will ‘cover percentages’ or ‘talk about the Peasants’
Revolt’, or ‘do fractions’. But effective teachers always focus on what the student
should be able to do. Writing ‘specific learning outcomes’ or ‘specific objectives’
is an intellectually demanding task, and it requires a great deal of time and effort.
But outcomes are vital; they are the stepping stones which take the learners in the
direction of our aims.

Classification of objectives or outcomes

B. S. Bloom’s ‘Taxonomy of Educational Objectives’ attempts to classify all learning
into three domains, and, within each domain, into skills or abilities of different types
or difficulty. We also met it in Chapter 1. It is written from a learning objectives point
of view, and describes ‘how the learners are expected to be changed by the educative
process’. It was first developed in 1951 and has had an enormous influence.
The three domains and some of their subsections are described briefly below in a
simplified version. Typical verbs used to write objectives are given for each section
of the taxonomy.

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The cognitive domain (intellectual skills and abilities)

Bloom arranged the categories which follow in order of difficulty, with the easiest
first. However, easy, high-order tasks are possible, indeed vital, as we saw in Chapter
1. Without higher-order objectives in your teaching, these skills will not be devel-
oped, and neither will fully functional knowledge or full comprehension.
Knowledge. To be able to:
state; recall; list; recognise; select; reproduce; draw …
e.g. to recall Newton’s Laws of Motion.
Comprehension. To be able to:
explain; describe reasons for; identify causes of; illustrate …
e.g. to give reasons for seat belts by referring to Newton’s Laws of Motion.
Application. To be able to:
use; apply; construct; solve; select …
e.g. to use Newton’s Laws of Motion to solve simple problems.
Analysis. To be able to:
break down; list component parts of; compare and contrast; differentiate between
…
Synthesis (this involves choosing, using and putting together diverse skills, abilities
and knowledge to accomplish a particular new task). To be able to:
summarise; generalise; argue; organise; design; explain the reason for …
Evaluation. To be able to:
judge; evaluate; give arguments for and against; criticise …

The affective domain

This domain concerns itself with attention, interest, awareness, aesthetic appre-
ciation, moral, aesthetic and other attitudes, opinions, feelings or values. For
example:
to listen to … to appreciate the importance of …
to have an awareness of … to respond with personal feelings …
to have an aesthetic appreciation of … to have a commitment towards …
to recognise the moral dilemmas involved in … to believe in your own ability
to …

The psychomotor domain

This includes motor skills or physical skills, including sense perception, hand-and-
eye coordination, etc. For example:
to plane; to draw; to throw; to weld …

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Note that ‘to know …’ or ‘to understand …’ are not acceptable beginnings for
specific objectives, which should describe abilities that are directly observable and
testable. What does it mean to say that a student ‘knows’, say, the story of Lazarus?
Does it mean that the student is able to recognise the story and name it? Or recall
it in outline? Or recall it in detail? Or describe its significance? The objective needs
to state what the student should be able to do in an easily testable form; it could
become, for example:
To recount in outline the story of Lazarus.
Unlike ‘To know the story of Lazarus’, this is clear, it is testable, and it suggests
what the student needs to practise.
Similarly, what does it mean to ‘understand’ osmosis? Does it mean to be able to
describe its significance? To explain how and why it takes place? To be able to use
the idea to explain novel occurrences of the phenomenon? Or some combination of
these abilities? Often what is required is for the student to be able to answer exam-
ination-style questions on the topic; if so, what abilities do such questions demand?
Examining textbook and examination questions in the topic you are teaching can
help you to see what students should be able to do with the material you are teaching.
To say that they should ‘know’ or ‘understand’ the material is too vague.

General objectives
Many teachers describe their intentions partly in a form which is somewhere
between an aim and a specific learning outcome. Such intentions are variously
described as short-term aims, general instructional objectives, or non-behaviourist
objectives. Examples might be:
• To introduce students to some aspects of modern telecommunications.
• To outline modern stock-control methods.
If you choose to describe your intentions in such a way, make sure that you include
in each statement both the content itself and what will be done with such content.
Make your statements clear and simple. For example:
• To develop an appreciation of Handel’s Messiah.
• To recognise the importance of safety checks on building sites.
These general objectives are then used to generate specific learning outcomes. For
example, the safety objective above could be broken down as follows:
General objective:
To recognise the importance of frequent safety inspections.
Specific learning outcomes:
To list the main checks made during a safety inspection.
To state the main dangers to health and safety on a building site.
To recognise and correct the improper use of a ladder.
An aim may encompass many general objectives, and, in turn, each general objec-
tive will generate a number of specific learning outcomes.
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