ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a review of the background from which behavioural and domain-referenced objectives emerged, and is followed by a discussion of how one might set about identifying such objectives for education and training purposes. It will be seen that from the very beginning the behaviourist approach strove to develop a scientific approach to teaching and testing, and as more was learnt about it the automatic reaction to emerging problems was to try to develop techniques that were even more scientific. Subjectivity and human judgement were frowned upon, and the whole drive was towards increased objectivity. However, as the field developed there was increasing recognition that human judgement has an important part to play in all aspects of the approach and that decisions are subject to a wide variety of human factors. This change in perception is reflected in the final section of the chapter, where the concern is with placing behavioural and domain-referenced objectives in perspective.
