Section 1
Taxonomies of Resources
| Professor Gagné received graduate training as an experimental psychologist, and several years ago developed an interest in educational psychology. His continuing research has been in the fields of human learning and memory. He has held positions in several universities, and in organizations conducting research in the behavioural sciences. His present position is as Professor of Educational Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. | 1:1 |
Taxonomic problems of educational systems
Robert M. Gagné
Introduction
In common with other systems that serve the needs of nations, educational systems are generally considered to have certain purposes, which are often referred to as educational goals. These goals in turn are usually related to an even broader set of purposes which reflect the aims of a particular society or nation. As a nation develops, national goals may undergo some changes, at least in their relative priorities. Such changes may occur, for example, when a nation becomes more highly industrialized, or when new natural resources are discovered. Still other kinds of changes take place when new means of achieving national goals are put into effect, such as the use of machines to accomplish goals which once required great numbers of men. Since changes of these and other varieties occur with some frequency and often over relatively brief periods of time, there is naturally a concern that educational goals continue to remain compatible with the more broadly defined societal goals.
The need for periodic revision of educational goals, to insure their alignment with national aims and priorities, is widely recognized. If agriculture becomes mechanized, the society needs fewer farmers, and the continued training of large numbers of people with agricultural skills may yield undesirable social consequences. If industrialization has attained the level at which the hours of work per week are diminished, account must be taken of the human activities which are to fill the remaining time. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that most countries of the world, whatever their stage of economic development, devote considerable effort, at least at intervals of several years, to the alignment of educational aims and national goals.
The purposes of a society are served by a number of systems, such as communication systems, transportation systems, commerce systems, banking systems and so on. Education is one of these systems. Yet education not only involves people, but also seeks to change them. It has the purpose of developing within each individual person those learnable capabilities which make it possible for him to function effectively within his society.
How does one translate the goals of a society, comprising the goals of social systems, into goals for individual development? It is the answer to this question which generates one of the major requirements for a taxonomic system of educational goals and objectives. Somehow, the broad aims of a society must be related to activities that the human adult person can perform, and these in turn to certain capabilities that he comes to possess. Some of these capabilities, of course, are inborn, as in the case with seeing, hearing or digesting food. But by far the greatest number of capabilities which can serve man-in-society are learned, and thus become the proper focus of interest for an educational system.
Deriving educational goals and objectives
Many efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to derive educational goals and objectives from broader societal purposes. Sometimes these efforts are conducted by formally established national commissions, representing the various sectors of a society. Often, the problem of defining educational goals becomes a central interest of educational philosophers. Frequently, too, educational scholars address this question in books dealing with the topic of âcurriculum designâ. To review these writings in a thorough and systematic sense would be too great an undertaking for present purposes. Reference may be made to encyclopedic treatments of the problem (Ammons, 1969; Downey, 1971).
It appears that two major lines of derivation for educational goals can be distinguished. While these two are never entirely independent of each other, they do represent differences in emphasis, which usually lead to somewhat different conclusions. One of these routes may be called societal, reflecting its emphasis on goals of the society or nation; while the other may be termed educational, emphasizing goals reflecting individual needs, or those of man-in-society. In either case, derivation of educational goals proceeds in a number of stepsâone cannot proceed immediately from the statement of a national goal to the inference that students need to learn to convert fractional numbers to decimals. Accordingly, whichever of these routes is followed, there are a number of different levels of specificity to be considered.
These two sources of derivation of educational goals, and some nine levels of specificity which can be distinguished, are displayed in Table 1. First, I should like to discuss briefly the first six of these levels of analysis. Following the Societal emphasis, there are national goals, which lead to system goals (health care), which lead in turn to manpower goals exemplified by the need for teachers, or lawyers, or farmers, or whatever. The followers of this route usually skip the next level, and the implications of this will be pointed out in a moment. One can then proceed to Level 5, the identification of human activities engaged in by particular manpower types, such as ârepairing electric motorsâ. Identification of these activities leads in turn to curriculum goals, such as a course in âelectric motor repairâ, or in âtypingâ.
Consider now the second derivation route, called Educational. This begins with a statement expressing the purpose that man-in-society will âlead a useful and happy lifeâ. In doing so, one segment of his life will be devoted (Level 2) to the âworthy use of leisureâ (Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, 1918). Although one segment identified at this level is bound to be âpursuing an occupationâ, it is nevertheless common for the followers of this derivation route to pay little attention to the next level, which reflects the goals of a variety of occupations. Instead, the tendency is to skip to Level 4, which identifies certain general human functions, like âsocial communicationâ, âmaintaining physical fitnessâ, or âengaging in civic enterprisesâ. From such functions, more specific human activities can be derived, exemplified by âfollowing directions in completing a job applicationâ. And further, these activities can be used to imply, at the next level, the need for courses in social studies, or mathematics, or language.
Table 1. Levels of specificity in the derivation of educational goals and objectives
The consequences of omitting levels of analysis
What happens when certain levels of analysis are omitted in deriving educational goals? Consider first the Societal route, and the implications of omitting Level 4, concerned with the identification of human functions. It is of course possible to proceed directly from the manpower requirement âteacherâ to the specific activities of a teacher, such as grading examination, or from âappliance repairmanâ to ârepairing electric motorsâ. But when this is done, much of the general functioning of a teacher as a person in society, as opposed to the tasks performed by the teacher on the job, is simply neglected. A teacher is a member of a school, and has many functions to perform which derive from such membership. He is also a member of a community, and of other organizations in that community. He functions as an individual in many roles, and has many personally valuable interests to pursue.
Thus it is evident that to overlook the many kinds of human functioning of the person who is a teacher, or the person who is an electrical appliance repairman, is to infer the human activities he needs to perform from too narrow a base. The result is that educational goalsâcurriculum goalsâalso come to be too narrowly defined. Many difficulties and inadequacies follow. A distinction arises between âacademicâ and âvocationalâ education, and important components of curriculum are missed in each case. Vocational education, that is, education for those students who are not going to attend universities, becomes identified with âtrainingâ, which although admirably capable of being precise in its objectives, is nevertheless too restricted to serve the needs of students. In particular, what gets left out because of this narrowness is the general education of the graduateâthe social skills he needs, the knowledge background which will form the basis of his further development, the social attitudes required of a person in a modern technological society. These are serious consequences which continue to plague the design of educational systems which are derived in the manner described.
In deriving goals via the Educational route, the neglect of manpower goals at Level 3 tends to lead to inadequacies. A human function like social communication can readily be derived from a life segment such as leisure, and perhaps equally readily from other life segments such as pursuing an occupation or performing as a citizen. However, the omission of Level 3 means that the relative frequency of these functions within jobs and roles is not taken into account. Communication is obviously a high frequency function in many of the roles an individual may assume, and in many of the jobs he may hold. But suppose the human function mentioned was maintaining physical fitness? Important as this may be, its occurrence among jobs and roles is relatively infrequent.
The result of this omission makes exceedingly difficult the determination of priorities in curriculum goals. In the establishment of objectives for the curriculum, it is not uncommon for committees of educators to list an item like âshows respect for the flagâ in a position coordinate to âreads newspaper articles with comprehensionâ. Regardless of the absolute importance of both of these objectives, it should be obvious that one is vastly more pervasive among the life activities of the individual than is the other. Yet this fact becomes obvious, only when due consideration is given to the roles and jobs which may be occupied by individuals during their lifetimes.
A related deficiency arising from the neglect of roles and jobs in the pursuit of this route of derivation is the tendency to use nominal designations for curriculum elements. Thus the goal âsocial studiesâ comes to be substituted for a carefully analysed answer to the question âwhat social phenomena need to be studiedâ; similarly, a goal like âmathematicsâ comes to serve as an undiscriminating answer to the question âwhat kinds of number operations need to be learned?â The omission of consideration of jobs and roles, then, has the typical consequence of making the curriculum goal taxonomy overly general, and often subject to the charge of being not relevant.
The derivation of instructional objectives
Attention is now invited to the final three rows of Table 1, describing Levels 7, 8, and 9 of the process of analysis leading to objectives of increased specificity. Whichever route of derivation one follows, he arrives at a point where he must begin to consider individual human capabilities, and the performances which are made possible by them. Thus the two different lines of analysis come together at this point, and the deficiencies in each of them continue to plague them in all of these subsequent steps. Irrespective of this fact, the common focus of interest at these levels of specificity is on the question of what needs to be learned. The derivation process at this point begins to reflect directly the goal of an educational system, which is to facilitate the development of the individual learner.
Curriculum goals like âtypingâ and âsocial studiesâ may lead next to the derivation of certain broad categories of human capabilities. Identifying these is a task about which more will be said later. For the moment, these capability categories are illustrated by the phrase âintellectual skillsâ, by which is meant those learned capabilities which make possible the great varieties of symbol-using which human beings can learn to accomplish. From these categories, it is possible to derive, at Level 8, what have come to be called broad objectives, typically those that represent the expected outcomes of âtopicsâ within courses of study. The illustrative example is âknowledge of the origins of World War Iâ. Another example, representing a different kind of capability, might be âcomposing coherent descriptive paragraphs in the native languageâ.
At the most specific level, Level 9, one arrives at the statement of objectives which are usually referred to as âbehaviouralâ or âperformance-basedâ. Much has been written about these kinds of statements (Mager, 1962; GagnĂ©, 1965), and a certain amount of controversy generated (e.g., Popham, 1969). Despite the latter, performance objectives continue to be perhaps the most important and useful tool available to the designer of instruction. They make it possible for him to identify what is learned in terms of observable human performances. This feature permits him to incorporate into instructional design the situations which enable both students and teachers to be confident that the desired learning has in fact occurred.
Kinds of taxonomies
With reference to the derivation of educational goals and objectives, Table 1 indicates twelve kinds of possible taxonomies which are relevant to this task. Naturally enough, the more general categories would find applicability in several other areas of social planningâin the establishment of national priorities, in the estimation of manpower needs, in the description and analysis of jobs, in the determination of career fields. In at least nine out of twelve instances, one can see that the full development of taxonomies would be both feasible and useful.
For the purpose of deriving objectives for an educational system, it ...
