9 How Do I State Objectives?

Years earlier, Gina had groaned when her school had first required its teachers to write instructional objectives for each unit of each course. Gina had thought, what was the point? Gina and her colleagues had been teaching just fine for years, without unit objectives. They mostly believed that the initiative was just another administrative exercise, the latest fad forced on them by their school’s accreditor. Only one or two of her colleagues disagreed, holding instead that teaching objectives could make a big difference in both the curriculum and instruction. Years later, though, Gina had come over to the other side. The objectives the school had required that she write had not only helped the school map, study, adjust, and improve the curriculum but had also focused and refined her teaching. Gina was glad for the additional effort. 

Objectives

An instructional objective states what a student should be able to do after a unit’s instruction, against what measure and in which contexts. Across a full term of a single course, an instructor may teach a dozen or so topics or units, each with their own instructional objective. A course might thus have a dozen or so instructional objectives for the teacher and students to meet together, to satisfy the course’s overall instructional goals. Instructional objectives serve an important role in helping schools align their courses and instruction to academic standards and benchmarks. Well-written unit objectives also help teachers ensure that their instruction is achieving course and curriculum goals, in developing the full breadth and depth of student capacities. Instructors should be able to articulate to students, their institutions, and the school’s accreditors what they expect their students to know and be able to do after instruction.

Curriculum

As just suggested, instructional objectives can help a school ensure that its curriculum is addressing all aspects of student learning necessary to meet educational program goals. A list of required and elective courses can give a school’s curriculum committee a big-picture view of what the curriculum is accomplishing. But the devil is in the details. A course title alone doesn’t tell curriculum designers much about what knowledge, skills, and ethics students are learning in the course. Even a broad course instructional goal may not tell a curriculum committee much more. One course may be teaching some of the same content, whether knowledge, skills, or ethics, as another course. Or two courses presumed to teach the required knowledge and skills base may, between them, be leaving instructional gaps. Prerequisite courses and the advanced course for which the prerequisite prepares students can be particular problems in leaving gaps or producing overlaps. With instructional objectives for each course, curriculum leaders can analyze the curriculum map for gaps and overlaps in student instruction, to balance the curriculum. See the example instructional objectives and curriculum map in the appendix at the end of this guide. 

Adoption

As the vignette at the beginning of this chapter suggests, teaching objectives have both their proponents and opponents. Because they are one step removed from actual instruction, objectives can seem like an unnecessary administrative overlay. Teachers accustomed to teaching without them will ask, do we really need objectives? Drafting proper objectives (see below) can take some training, practice, revision, effort, and time. That schools may need teachers to write objectives for curriculum mapping and accreditation can make objectives appear more like an administrative burden than a teaching tool. Their use as a teaching and learning guide can also be more subtle than a teacher may immediately appreciate. Unit objectives are the higher-level accountability tool, when teachers and students must work deep in the weeds to ensure learning. Teachers get lost in the weeds, too, just like students. Unit objectives remind teachers and students of what they are trying to accomplish, ensuring that instruction aims in that direction instead of wandering deep into the weeds and down rabbit holes. 

Proof

It may or may not help that the pioneers proving the value and efficacy of instructional objectives came from outside of the educational field, in the very practical field of military training. Those pioneers give several compelling accounts of their work, showing the poor results of traditional educational practices in training soldiers for key activities, like disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling a rifle quickly while in the field, or bandaging a head wound or reloading artillery. Many soldiers died due to inadequate training, frankly due to poor educational practices. Clear instructional objectives were the key step to quickly reforming those practices into useful procedures. The work, its dramatic proof, and its insights brought instructional objectives into educational best practices and accreditation requirements. It also spurred flipped-classroom reforms, substantially increasing student engagement. Students don’t so much learn and then do. They instead learn by doing. See if adopting or honing unit objectives spurs you toward helpful teaching enhancements and reforms. 

Form

Instructional objectives are little use unless written in a proper form. That form includes three components. In simplest terms, well-written instructional objectives describe (1) the context or conditions under which students must perform, (2) the performance students must complete, and (3) the performance measurement or standard students must meet. Traditionally, instruction focuses on only the second of the above three components, the performance component. A history teacher might, for instance, hold that students must know the major events leading to the conclusion of World War II. But notice the absence from the objective of the context and measurement components. Indeed, the objective doesn’t really even describe the performance. How could one tell if the student knew the required knowledge? A proper objective would instead include the conditions, performance, and standard. The performance, for instance, might be to write or recite the major events, as an observable activity. The conditions, for example, might be in a presentation before class or in response to multiple queries in a timed exam. And the measure or standard might be in a dated timeline with 90% accuracy. You can see how properly articulated objectives help clarify the expectations for both teacher and students.

Context

Because much of teaching involves building a knowledge base, instructional objectives in the above form, with not only the performance but also the context and measure, can be counterintuitive. A teacher might legitimately ask, but don’t students just have to know the material? Yet students must do more than hold new information in mind. They must also reflect that information back in some kind of observable behavior, under certain conditions or in some context. Teachers rightly tend to focus on the quality of the student’s knowledge. But the context or conditions in which students must reflect that knowledge can be every bit as important as the knowledge itself. If, for instance, the student must complete an essay with the information, analyze a hypothetical with the information, perform or recite in front of an audience with the information, or solve story problems with the information, then the instruction had better help the student practice under those conditions, or the student may utterly fail, even knowing the information. Better yet, teachers can adjust and define the contexts to approximate the real-life use of the information. Give good thought to how you write the contexts for your objectives.

Measures

A well-written instructional objective also includes the performance measure or standard. Neither teacher nor student will be able to tell whether the student has met an objective if it does not include some measure. Including a measure in your objective also ensures that the performance your objective describes is measurable. In other words, a measure forces you to state an objectively observable and quantifiable behavior in which the student must engage to meet the measure. As already indicated above, teachers must often help students build a knowledge base, and so they tend to require that students know things. But neither teacher nor student can really say whether the student knows something until the student expresses it in some observable form, for instance in writing or recitation. Including a measure in your objective makes you think in advance, and tell the student in advance, what the student’s performance will look like to teacher and student. A measure also helps both teacher and student determine the degree of accuracy and thus the extent of practice. Include a measure in your objectives. 

Examples

Teachers can write objectives not only for knowledge units but also for skills and ethics. For example, an instrumental-music course might have as a skills objective that students would, on a director’s command, be able to play all notes on the major scale on their assigned instrument, in succession in every key, in quarter notes and without error. Similarly, a lab course might have as a skills objective that students would be able to safely catalyze the oxidation of a material the instructor presents, across at least half the material’s surface, within a class period. Likewise, a professionalism course’s ethics objective might require that students be able to identify unauthorized commingling among all presented examples of the handling of a client trust fund account. Whether your units require students to learn new knowledge, acquire new skills, or reflect ethical attributes, you should be able to write a proper unit objective. 

Implementation

Don’t let your instructional objectives become just another file in your obscure work folders. Instead, put them to use in designing and testing your instruction. As you lay out your course, ensure that your course’s instructional objectives include an appropriate mix of knowledge, skills, and ethics objectives to foster well-rounded students. Instruct in all three forms of objectives, not just to build a knowledge base but also to help students hone their skills to display their new knowledge and to do so in an ethical persona. Cycle your units through knowledge, skills, and ethics so that students get to incorporate, embody, and express their new knowledge through their unique personalities, in a morally fitting manner. Use the contexts and conditions in your instructional objectives to vary the contexts and conditions in which you have students practice their new knowledge. And use the measures your instructional objectives state to hold you and students accountable to meeting those measures. Let your instructional objectives freshen, guide, inform, diversify, and improve your instruction. 

Publication

Your course’s instructional objectives should thus be useful to both you, in designing your instruction, and your school’s curriculum committee, in mapping the curriculum and proving its comprehensiveness to accreditors, alumni, employers, and other constituents. Yet students may also benefit from your publishing your instructional objectives to them. Consider including your unit objectives in your course syllabus so that students can see the clarity and precision of your design and take heart from your instructional insight and commitment to their instruction. Display the unit objective in class when commencing and concluding the unit. Explain the real-life contexts in which students will use their new instruction and how your instruction attempts to replicate those real-life contexts for their practice. Doing so can increase their motivation as they see the relevance of their instruction to their real-life opportunities. And remind students of the measures or standards your objectives state, so that they study and practice with the diligence and discipline that will help them meet those standards. 

Assessment

Be sure, too, that your quizzes, tests, exams, papers, projects, and other assessments equate to your unit objectives. Assess students only on the unit objectives that you have published to them. Do not display one objective, teach to another objective, and test to yet another objective. Misaligning objectives, instruction, and assessment is a classic instructional error made by experienced and inexperienced instructors alike. Instead, align your instruction to the objective and your assessment to the instruction. Doing so holds you accountable to students while increasing their likelihood of succeeding on your measures. Use your objectives to keep your instruction and assessment aligned, and you’ll likely see increasing success among students. You’ll also give students the greatest opportunity for their full growth and development.

Reflection

Have you drafted instructional objectives yet? If so, do they meet the proper form articulated above, including the context, performance, and measure? Have you shared your objectives with your department or your school’s curriculum committee? Are you confident that you are teaching to objectives that align well with the objectives of other courses within your school or program curriculum? Do you design your instruction to achieve your objectives? Do you diversify your objectives across knowledge, skills, and ethics to encourage full student development? Do you align your assessment to your instruction and objectives? Are you holding yourself and students accountable to meeting the measures that your objectives state? Do you publish your objectives to students to help them focus on their learning goals? 

Key Points

• Instructional objectives define what students should learn to do.

• Instructional objectives enable a school to design a sound curriculum.

• Instructional objectives can face uneven adoption and use.

• Use of objectives in critical training programs has proven their utility.

• Objectives should state the context, performance, and standards.

• Stating context ensures that students learn relevant behaviors.

• Stating standards or measures hold teachers and students accountable.

• Objectives can address knowledge, skills, and ethics instruction.

• Let your objectives guide your instruction to address all dimensions.

• Publish your objectives to students to help them focus on the goal.

• Align your assessment to your instruction and objectives. 

Read Chapter 10.