Learning objective

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Learning objectives describe the intended learning gain of a learner in relation to a certain learning material . Teaching goals indicate which goals a teacher wants to achieve with the help of the teaching topics. The combination of teaching and learning objectives is called the teaching objective.

School learning

The education ministries set basic learning and teaching objectives for schools through curricula or framework plans. The plans are implemented by instructed teachers . For the planning of individual teaching units , they have to set the “intermediate learning goals” in order to implement the requirements for their students with the previous knowledge, if necessary through individualized learning . Finding and setting meaningful intermediate learning goals and appropriate teaching methods for each teaching unit is one of the main tasks of the teacher. They serve as an orientation for the implementation of the lesson and verification in learning objective controls .

Self-determined learning

In self-determined learning , learning goals are set through individual learning plans . This is done by the learner alone ( self-taught ) or in collaboration with a learning assistant (e.g. specialist , pedagogue ). Self-determined learning is most likely to be used in schools with a reform pedagogy and in adult education . The learning plan is often broken down into individual learning units with intermediate learning objectives .

history

In the course of the professionalization of the teaching profession in the 20th century, many theorists identified and further differentiated decision-making and condition variables in the teaching / learning process. These include socio-cultural conditions, learning methods , media , learning content and, in the center, the learning objectives.

One of the best-known theories about learning goals is the taxonomy of Benjamin Bloom (1913–1999, USA). His contribution lay mainly in the fact that he divided learning objectives into different levels or levels, thus making them easier to use. Lorin W. Anderson (1945–) and David Krathwohl (1921–2016) established Bloom's taxonomy in 2001 with the help of empirical studies and practical experience.

One of the problems of setting learning objectives is the question of whether there are exact criteria for finding the specific learning objectives for each lesson from the top learning objectives, the so-called “guideline objectives” of the curriculum. Such a compelling deduction from top to bottom is hardly possible. The teacher has to weigh the starting conditions of the students, the expectations of society in terms of their knowledge, the state of science and many other factors in a didactic reflection (= didactic analysis ) and ultimately make the decisions on their own responsibility. This competence is one of the didactic core competencies of the teaching profession, which should be trained in teacher training. The current discussion about educational standards does not abolish didactic responsibility, but only places it in front of more precisely formulated requirements in order to guarantee more uniformity and effectiveness of teaching.

The American Robert F. Mager has defined the conditions for a good learning goal as "an appropriate description of the goal ... with which it is possible to communicate the teaching intentions to the reader". Further: “So a clearly described learning objective is one with which you successfully communicate your intentions. A good description of the objective also rules out the greatest possible number of possible misinterpretations. ”In the learning objective, he also names verbs to be avoided, such as B. "understand", since these do not allow a review based on recognizable actions of the learners ( operationalization ).

This development mainly took place in the 1960s and 1970s and has remained valid to this day.

In the 1980s, a discussion on "learning goal-oriented didactics " followed in German-speaking countries , in which the role of learning goals in lesson planning was examined more closely. The main representatives were Bernhard and Christine Möller from Oldenburg (see curriculum didactics ).

Classification of educational goals

Learning target classes

The educational goals are arranged hierarchically according to their degree of detail:

  • Key objectives form the top level of the hierarchy. They are the supreme educational goals (as laid down e.g. in the Constitution of the Free State of Bavaria, Art. 131 (2), e.g. self-control, sense of responsibility, willingness to help) and the general educational goals (e.g. solidarity, self-determination Ability to judge, to one's own point of view, ability to criticize). For more see educational goals .
  • Indicative goals designate the subject, school type and year-specific level. They can usually be found in the curriculum and serve to develop skills at a higher level .
  • Learning goals form the level of operationalizable educational goals that can be further differentiated.
  • Rough goals indicate the goal of an entire lesson or unit.
  • Fine goals indicate the goal of a lesson phase or a partial goal. It is the most detailed level of teaching objectives that still describes a completed unit.

Learning objectives can also be distinguished with regard to the learner's psychological requirement profile:

  • Cognitive learning objectives relate to knowledge and intellectual skills.
  • Affective learning objectives relate to changes in interests, attitudes and values.
  • Psychomotor learning objectives relate to physical, manual, motor, sensory or technical skills.

Taxonomies

Learning objectives can be classified according to the degree of their complexity of the desired performance (“Bloom's taxonomy”). Here is the classification for cognitive learning goals:

  1. Know
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyze
  5. Merging (synthesis)
  6. Assessment (evaluation)

Bloom himself has revised this approach and in particular swapped the order of priority of synthesis and evaluation. The difference between knowing (“knowing” a year: e.g. end of the Second World War, 1945) and understanding (“recognizing” that 1945 was an hour zero) lies in the degree of mental activity required, which is based on mere retention, on the other hand, it aims at the assignment of a meaning and here additionally at the resolution of a linguistic image. Krathwohl has transformed synthesis into creation . This learning objective taxonomy is widely used in Switzerland.

Similarly, but not directly, the German psychologist Heinrich Roth distinguished between four levels of learning objectives in the structure plan of the German Education Council in 1970:

The German Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs has adopted these levels in the standardized examination requirements for the Abitur examination , but has now combined them into only three requirement areas .

Formulation of learning objectives

There are recommendations to avoid certain formulations when setting learning objectives that allow too many interpretations and do not describe any observable processes.

  • Understand, be aware, recognize meaning, grasp the meaning of something, be incorporated, memorize, understand, extract, learn, enjoy, believe, be informed, be interested in, know, get to know, be aware of, be able to, learn, with something to be familiar, to empathize, to understand, to be aware of a thing, to remember, to feel, to know about something, to internalize, to promise, to understand, to be familiar with, to perceive, to really understand, to know, to appreciate

Therefore, it is better to use the following active verbs that can be checked in the learning outcome (depending on the learning area):

  • derive, analyze, change, apply, argue, (re) arrange, build, break down, divide up, enumerate, show, fill in, (select), justify, give examples, report, describe, determine, (judge), (be ) evaluate, refer, represent, diagnose, discuss, perform, classify, classify, classify, discover, design, develop, illuminate, explain, explain, calculate, (h) create, expand, tell, generate, evaluate, manufacture, find, deduce, formulate, contrast, shape, produce, point out, identify, illustrate, integrate, interpret, clarify, criticize, solve, modify, name, use, order, organize, plan, practice, justify, regulate, collect, create, estimate, close, write, structure, synthesize, share, separate, check, translate, reshape, reformulate, outline, rewrite, distinguish, examine, subdivide, generalize, change Change, connect, compare, use, predict, prepare, demonstrate, suggest, reproduce, show, summarize

Today it is often required to formulate the learning objectives in a way that is oriented towards the operators . However, many operator lists (such as those of the EPA) are only designed for exams and therefore do not cover all useful learning objectives. Practicing something is pointless in an exam, but it can be a learning goal.

Learning objective control

The setting of learning goals corresponds didactically with corresponding success checks. The function of learning controls is to determine the current learning status that was aimed at with the learning objective. They serve to undertake any corrective measures in the first objective or methodology and to be able to plan the further path accordingly.

Without this measure, there would be an educational disorientation, which the didactician Siegbert A. Warwitz depicts with the example of a sailor who sets out with his ship into the vastness of the ocean with the aim of New York, but then orientation in the absence of a location loses and arrives somewhere or nowhere.

All learning objectives are subject to the need for learning controls. The criticism of the feasibility or objectivability of such reviews mostly results from a confusion of the (concrete) "learning objectives" with the superordinate category of the (abstract) " guiding objectives ", sometimes also from an exaggerated idea of ​​the operationalization of the learning objectives.

Problems

The extreme epistemological concept of behaviorism , as it was mainly propagated by Burrhus Frederic Skinner in the middle of the 20th century, tried to optimize the operationalization of the learning specifications in the didactic area according to scientific standards. According to the different structures in the humanities field, this could only succeed in partial areas and led to excessive technocratic handling that no longer did justice to the purpose of the learning controls. Certain educational and psychological learning goals, such as changing motivations and behaviors, cannot be measured and captured mathematically.

Key objectives such as learning objectives are set within a broad framework, also differing according to the type of school, by society and the curricula. However, it is the task of the teachers to make the students aware of their usefulness or even their necessity and to use the given freedom with them in order to achieve acceptance and a good working atmosphere.

literature

  • Margaret Ammons: The Definition, Function, and Use of Educational Objectives . In: The Elementary School Journal . tape 62 , no. 8 May 1962, p. 432-436 .
  • Hans Aebli: Basics of teaching: a general didactics on a psychological basis. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003.
  • Lorin W. Anderson, David R. Krathwohl (Eds.): A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Addison-Wesley, New York 2001.
  • Benjamin S. Bloom: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. David McKay Co Inc., New York 1956.
  • Benjamin S. Bloom (Ed.): Taxonomy of learning goals in the cognitive area. 4th edition. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel 1972.
  • DR Krathwohl, BS Bloom, BM Bertram: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook II: Affective Domain. David McKay Co. Inc., New York 1973.
  • Robert F. Mager: Learning Objectives and Lessons. Beltz, Weinheim 1994, ISBN 3407251564 (first on 1962, 1975).
  • Christine Möller: The curricular didactics: Or: The learning goal-oriented approach. 1980, In: Herbert Gudjons, Rita Teske, Rainer Winkel (eds.): Didactic theories: Articles from the journal Pedagogical Contributions. 8th edition. Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1995, pp. 63-77.
  • Jürgen L. Rößler: The operational definition. Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 978-3-631-32891-0 .
  • AM Strathmann, KJ Klauer: Learning process diagnostics: An approach to long-term learning progress measurement. Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology 42 (2010), pages 111-122.
  • Siegbert Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: The objectification of success controls. In: Dies .: Project teaching. Didactic principles and models. Verlag Hofmann, Schorndorf 1977, ISBN 3-7780-9161-1 , pages 24-27.
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz: Learning objectives and learning controls in traffic education. In: Ders .: Traffic education from the child. Perceive-play-think-act. 6th edition. Schneider-Verlag, Baltmannsweiler 2009, ISBN 978-3-8340-0563-2 , pages 23 and 26-28.

Web links

Wiktionary: Learning objective  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lexicon of the ABayCD
  2. ^ Robert F. Mager: Learning objectives and lessons. Beltz, Weinheim 1994, p. 19.
  3. ↑ a b Jürgen L. Roessler: The operational definition. Frankfurt am Main 1998.
  4. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Learning objectives and learning controls in traffic education. In: Ders .: Traffic education from the child. Perceive-play-think-act. 6th edition. Schneider-Verlag, Baltmannsweiler 2009, pages 26-28.
  5. ↑ http://sts-ghrf-giessen.bildung.hessen.de/intern/Schriftliche_Vorbereitung/Grundschule/V towards_zur_Formulierung_von_Lernzielen.pdf
  6. ↑ Robert Mager (1994), p. 20. https://ibw.at/resources/files/2020/1/10/1995/lernlösungen-kurz-erklaert-01-02-2020.pdf
  7. ↑ Hans Aebli: Basics of teaching: a general didactics on a psychological basis. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003.
  8. ↑ AM Strathmann, KJ Klauer: Learning progress diagnostics: An approach to long-term learning progress measurement. Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology 42 (2010), pages 111-122.
  9. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Learning objectives and learning controls in traffic education. In: Ders .: Traffic education from the child. Perceive-play-think-act. 6th edition. Schneider-Verlag, Baltmannsweiler 2009, pages 23 and 26-28.
  10. ^ A b Siegbert Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: The objectification of success controls. In: Dies .: Project teaching. Didactic principles and models. Verlag Hofmann, Schorndorf 1977, pages 24-27.
  11. ↑ J. Kuhl: Motivation and Personality. Interactions of Mental Systems. Hogrefe, Göttingen 2001.