Assesslog

The second core reading of the week I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed digesting was Chapter 2 of Elliot Eisner’s The Art of Educational Evaluation, titled ‘Educational Objectives: Help or Hindrance?‘.

Before I started reading the chapter, I read a bit of background about Eisner, his life and his work - and I’m glad I did as it helped me to get an idea of the context in which he was writing. Eisner’s educational origins in the teaching of art history give some insight into his views on educational work as a form of creative artistry, and the parallels he makes between education and art.

To me, this article was quite a radical deconstruction of the assumption that the curriculum design process has to start with the statement of educational objectives, and to use a metaphor (which I generally don’t), it rocked my foundations a bit. In bish-bash-bosh format, Eisner’s argument against starting the curriculum design process with the statement of educational objectives is as follows:

1. We can’t accurately predict educational outcomes
2. Subject matter has a significant impact on precision in stating objectives.
3. Educational objectives are often assumed to be standards for measurement when in many situations they can only be used as criteria for judgement.
4. Teachers often start with means (’what am I going to do’) and then relate them to ends (’what am I going to accomplish’), and this (according to Eisner) is logical.

At first I felt that the latter point was a pretty brave thing for Eisner to stick his neck out and say. But then I thought about it some more, admitted to myself that that’s the pattern I, and my colleagues, tend to work in, and thought that maybe it’s not because we’re all lazy, incompetent bunglers – maybe it IS logical. Whenever I’ve tried doing it the other way round – identifying an objective and then thinking up an activity that will result in that objective being met - it’s not that it’s impossible, but creatively it’s a lot harder and, to be brutally honest, the activities often aren’t as much fun  

Eisner’s argument really spoke to me, although I must admit I still see the rationality behind the argument for starting with objectives – I trained as a personal fitness trainer several years ago, and the best way to get clients in shape (and, frankly, to get clients in the first place) is not by suggesting ’lets run around and lift some weights and see what happens’. But I’m willing to concede there may be subtle differences between education and physical training (on reflection, the physical training metaphor seems a very good description of the traditional approach to setting objectives – and the theory of specificity of transfer too!).

More later…