Q 5: Describe the main approaches of behavioral objectives. Develop ten statements of behavioral objectives of the research course of the Master's level program?
Course: Curriculum Development
Course Code 8603
Level: B.Ed Solved Assignment
ANSWER
The Behavioral Approach is based on a blueprint, where goals and objectives are specified. Contents and activities are arranged to match with specified learning objectives. The learning outcomes are evaluated in terms of goals and objectives that are set at the beginning.This approach is grounded in scientific principles. Everything the students do must be observable as this is the evidence that the student has achieved the goals and objectives, which are also based on observable behaviors. All activities lead to students being able to do whatever the goals and objectives specify.
The Behavioral Approach is the oldest, and still the major approach. This approach relies on technical and scientific principles. It includes paradigms, models, and step-by-step strategies. Goals and objectives are specified. All the content and activities are sequenced based on objectives, and learning outcomes are evaluated based on goals and objectives.
Fredrick Taylor
At the close of the 19th century, American education became ever increasingly affected by the developments and ideas present in business and industry – especially the Scientific Management theory postulated or developed by Frederick W. Taylor.Taylor, an engineer working for Bethlehem Steel, developed his management theory that consisted of four basic principles. Taylor’s four principles along with how his theories are still affecting education are listed below:
• Scientific research & analysis of work - Taylor insisted that the duty of a manager was to examine a task so that the task could be performed faster and better. According to Taylor the ultimate goal of any manager was to increase production. Taylor did several studies relating to the tasks of workers and formulated ways in which production could increase.
• Scientific selection, training, and development – Taylor argued that every worker should be trained as to how best to achieve or complete a task and once trained the worker or employee must follow the adopted practice. This idea is embedded in each state’s requirement for teacher certification. The idea of course is that workers (teachers) who are trained in specific curricula can provide much more information to students than can teachers trained in a wide discipline.
• Intimate, friendly, and hearty cooperation for scientific work principles – Taylor felt that workers should be paid for their production. He advocated paying workers based on what they achieved and
thus workers were placed into an incentive system. Many states have implemented and continue to implement this idea through a variety of plans including “merit pay”, career ladder, and currently the National Board standards.
The idea in education is that those teachers who put forth more effort than others should be financially rewarded.
• Planning work tasks were the responsibility of management. Workers should then be closely supervised to ensure their completion of any assigned tasks. The formal and informal teacher evaluation process of today somewhat mirrors Taylor’s idea concerning the duty of management to closely supervise employees.
Franklin Bobbit
Franklin Bobbit believed that the learning objectives, together with the activities, should be grouped and sequenced after clarifying the instructional activities and tasks. He also viewed curriculum as a science that emphasized the needs of the students. This viewpoint explains why lessons are planned and organized depending on the needs of the students and these needs must be addressed by the teachers to prepare them for adult life. Bobbitt is best known for two books, The Curriculum (1918) and How to Make a Curriculum (1924). In these volumes and in his other writings, he developed a theory of curriculum development borrowed from the principles of scientific management, which the engineer Frederick W. Taylor had articulated earlier in the century in his efforts to render American industry more efficient.The key principle for Taylor was the task idea, the notion that each worker should be given a narrowly defined production assignment that he was to perform at a specific rate using
certain predefined procedures. It was the responsibility of an emerging profession of efficiency experts to identify these precise steps. The procedures for curriculum planning, which Bobbitt referred to as job analysis, were adapted from Taylor's work and began with the identification of the specific activities that adults undertook in fulfilling their various occupational, citizenship, family, and other social roles. The resulting activities were to be the objectives of the curriculum. The curriculum itself, Bobbitt noted, was comprised of the school experiences that educators constructed to enable children to attain these objectives.
Bobbit's Contribution
First, he was one of the first American educators to advance the case for the identification of objectives as the starting point for curriculum making. Second, his so-called scientific approach to curriculum-making served as a precedent for the work of numerous educators during the next half-century in spelling out the procedures for designing the course of study.It was a method that became and has remained the conventional wisdom among American educators concerning the process of curriculum development. Third, Bobbitt along with other early-twentieth-century efficiency-oriented school reformers made the case that the curriculum ought to be differentiated into numerous programs, some academic and preparatory and others vocational and terminal, and that students ought to be channeled to these tracks based on their abilities.
