The Challenges of Creating Learning Goals and Objectives

 

The Challenges of Creating Learning Goals and Objectives

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Defining goals and objectives is the most important aspect of instructional design (Brown, and Green, 2016). However, teachers face various challenges due to many factors in the school, especially while designing their learning goals and objectives. The challenges usually come from both educational and non-educational factors due to the influence of politics, institutional traditions, and the cultural atmosphere of the learning environment. They are described as “outside factors.” Moreover, teachers are interfered with a lot in the school due to various reasons in which they undergo challenges while designing the goals and objectives because they become helpless when the instructions come from the top.  This discussion discusses how politics, institutional traditions, and the cultural atmosphere of the learning environment influence the way I follow to develop instructional goals and objectives.

How the traditions, politics, and predilections of my school have influenced the instructional goals and objectives development process.

All teachers are guided by their own learning goals and objectives designed by them based on the national curriculum. But things don’t happen in the manner they should be dealt with when its implementation process is the concern. Various factors due to the school’s influence change the way we design the goals and objectives. Teachers are often dependent on the expectations of the school.

I teach English in class XII, and my school always expects class XII teachers to maintain the school’s tradition of attaining top ten positions nationwide. In doing so, we are asked to drill our students in the class and through extra coaching classes, which are purely teacher-centered teaching. On the other hand, students are habituated to the spoon-feeding system of learning, and they are too dependent on their teacher. However, our curriculum expects us to follow process learning whereby a learning-by-doing approach should be followed while teaching in the classroom, and students are expected to explore with the use of technology, collaborate with their peers, and learn. In aligning my learning goals and objectives with the school’s expectations of the national curriculum, I tried to engage my students through group activities and research-based learning to teach Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (A part of class XII text) because my goal was to build their confidence in understanding the text critically and contextualize the theme presented. I found that students were reluctant to do the given task and were expecting me to explain the text line by line, and that made me disappointed. I didn’t have any choice other than to explain them at the end. Finally, although my predilection was for good literature learning, later, I realized that I ended up following the goal of the school and students, which wasn’t mine. Thus, Brown and Green (2016) pointed out that preparing goals for any instructional design process depends on the tradition, politics, and predilections that school policymakers have.

How can I be certain that my learning goals and objectives match the instructional intent, regardless of the school’s influence?

We use learning objectives differently with the focus on attaining various long-term instructional goals that are related to learning progressions, sequencing the academic expectations to meet the various developmental stages, ages, or grade levels of our students in a structured manner (EdGlossary, 2014).

Regardless of my school’s influence, I try to align my learning goals and objectives as per the curriculum that is based on the process of learning, and I every time engage my students through collaborative learning so that I can match the instructions intended. But I also try my best to infuse whatsoever the school wishes me to do alone with my learning goals and objectives that the curriculum set. I feel that the national goal of education is more important than the goal set by the school because the national curriculum aims based on what the students should be learning exactly to make them completely human, not like the school influences that aim for their fame alone targeted upon only a few performing students. I look at curriculum as an instrument to achieve educational goals in the interest of my country, not in the interest of my school alone (ChalkyPapers, 2022). Education should aim for the development of students, not the school alone. It means that my learning goals are free from outside influence, although I try hard to meet the intended goal of the school.

Any forms of goals and objectives that we design for our students should not be based on what our school plans to do but should be based on what we want our students to be capable of doing things after we teach them so that from the learning activities, they form the new knowledge to better their lives (Beathe, 2005). The world is being ruled by digital technology nowadays and the purpose of education should be based on the present needs, something that must train our students to be quick like the computer, making them creative and effective thinkers so that they become more efficient and can achieve the legitimate goals of their life.

 

References

Beathe, J. (2005). Setting Goals and Objectives. https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/4931_Moore_Chapter_3.pdf

Brown, A. H. & Green, T. D. (2016). The essentials of instructional design: Connecting fundamental principles with process and practice. Routledge. https://ikhsanaira.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/the-essential-of-instructional-design.pdf

ChalkyPapers. (2022). Curriculum Design and Educational Goals & Pressures. https://chalkypapers.com/curriculum-design-and-educational-goals-and-amp-pressures/

EdGlossary. (2014). Learning Objectives. https://www.edglossary.org/learning-objectives/