ABSTRACT
A student teacher hopefully seeking guidance from the literature on education intention must feel like turning away in dismay. The whole area abounds in terminological confusion, being replete with words like aims, goals, tasks, objectives, learning outcomes, used freely and apparently indiscriminately. The word aim, for instance, formerly possessed a degree of specificity in the context of teacher education which it now appears to have lost; the words aim and objective are often used with an implied synonymity; and even the word objective connotes different things to different people. This confusion may result in part from national differences for, as Davis1 has pointed out, British educators have been more interested in defining aims than in stating objectives, while American teachers have tended to think in terms of more concrete objectives.
