There are a number of issues with this approach to curriculum theory and practice. The first is that the plan or programme assumes great importance. For example, we might look at a more recent definition of curriculum as: ‘A program of activities by teachers designed so that pupils will attain so far as possible certain educational and other schooling ends or objectives [4]. The problem here is that such programmes inevitably exist prior to and outside the learning experiences. This takes much away from learners. They can end up with little or no voice.
They are told what they must learn and how they will do it. The success or failure of both the program and the individual learners is judged on the basis of whether pre-specified changes occur in the behaviour and person of the learner. If the plan is tightly adhered to, there can only be limited opportunity for educators to make use of the interactions that occur. It also can deskill educators in another way. For example, a number of curriculum programs, particularly in the USA, have attempted to make the student experience ‘teacher proof’.
The logic of this approach is for the curriculum to be designed outside of the classroom or school. Educators then apply programs and are judged by the products of their actions. It turns educators into technicians. Second, there are questions around the nature of objectives. This model is hot on measurability. It implies that behaviour can be objectively, mechanistically measured. There are obvious dangers here: there always has to be some uncertainty about what is being measured. We only have to reflect on questions of success in our work.
It is often very difficult to judge what the impact of particular experiences has been. Sometimes it is years after the event that we come to appreciate something of what has happened. For example, most informal educators who have been around a few years will have had the experience of an ex-participant telling them in great detail about how some forgotten event brought about some fundamental change. Yet there is something more. In order to measure, things have to be broken down into smaller and smaller units.
The result, as many of you will have experienced, can be long lists of often trivial skills or competencies. This can lead to a focus in this approach to curriculum theory and practice on the parts rather than the whole; on the trivial, rather than the significant. It can lead to an approach to education and assessment which resembles a shopping list. When all the items are ticked, the person has passed the course or has learnt something. The role of overall judgment is somehow sidelined. Third, there is a real problem when we come to examine what educators actually do in the classroom, for example.
Much of the research concerning teacher thinking and classroom interaction, and curriculum innovation has pointed to the lack of impact on actual pedagogic practice of objectives. One way of viewing this is that teachers simply get it wrong as they do not work with objectives. The difficulties that educators experience with objectives in the classroom may point to something inherently wrong with the approach, that it is not grounded in the study of educational exchanges. It is a model of curriculum theory and practice largely imported from technological and industrial settings.
Fourth, there is the problem of unanticipated results. The focus on pre-specified goals may lead both educators and learners to overlook learning that is occurring as a result of their interactions, but which is not listed as an objective. The apparent simplicity and rationality of this approach to curriculum theory and practice, and the way in which it mimics industrial management have been powerful factors in its success. A further appeal has been the ability of academics to use the model to attack teachers.
There is a tendency, recurrent enough to suggest that it may be endemic in the approach, for academics in education to use the objectives model as a stick with which to beat teachers. ‘What are your objectives? ‘ is more often asked in a tone of challenge than one of interested and helpful inquiry. The demand for objectives is a demand for justification rather than a description of ends. It is not about curriculum design, but rather an expression of irritation in the problems of accountability in education. [5]