ABSTRACT
A great deal has been written and said about instructional objectives in recent years. The impact of programmed learning and the ideas of curriculum development have been two major specific influences, and there is an extensive literature about the subject. The number of exemplifications of systems of objectives related to particular fields of study, on the other hand, is extremely small. There is, therefore, little of direct practical value in the literature; there are, however, some useful general arguments that bear on the subject and provide a context within which to approach the question. Some contributions are more help than others and suggest guidelines for the working out of a specific set of objectives related to a practical teaching task. In order to establish a context within which to work and also to make as much use of promising approaches as possible, we examined a wide spectrum of views about the question of objectives. We found that there were a number of issues that attracted attention and these we now consider.
