Educational Psychology

10. Planning instruction

From specific to general: behavioral objectives

Compared to the cognitive approach, the behavioral approach to instructional planning reverses the steps in
planning. Instead of starting with general goal statements accompanied by indicator examples, it starts with the
identification of specific behaviors—concrete actions or words—that students should perform or display as a result
of instruction (Mager, 2005). Collectively, the specific behaviors may describe a more general educational goal, but
unlike the indicators used in the cognitive approach, they are not a mere sampling of the possible specific outcomes.
Instead they represent all the intended specific outcomes. Consider this sampling of behavioral objectives:

Objectives: Learning to use in-line roller blade skates (beginning level)

1. Student ties boots on correctly.


2. Student puts on safety gear correctly, including helmet, knee and elbow pads.


3. Student skates 15 meters on level ground without falling.


4. Student stops on demand within a three meter distance, without falling.
   The objectives listed are not merely a representative sample of how students can demonstrate success with
   roller-blading. Instead they are behaviors that every student should acquire in order to meet the goal of using roller
   blades as a beginner. There simply are no other ways to display learning of this goal; getting 100 per cent on a
   written test about roller blading, for example, would not qualify as success with this goal, though it might show
   success at some other goal, such as verbal knowledge about roller blading. Even adding other skating behaviors
   (like “Student skates backwards” or “Student skates in circles”) might not qualify as success with this particular
   goal, because it could reasonably be argued that the additional skating behaviors are about skating at an advanced
   level, not a beginning level.

In the most commonly used version of this approach, originated by Robert Mager (1962, 2005), a good
behavioral objective should have three features. First, it should specify a behavior that can in fact be observed. In
practice this usually means identifying something that a student does or says, not something a student thinks or
feels. Compare the following examples; the one on the left names a behavior to be performed, but the one on the
right names a thinking process that cannot, in principle, be seen:

Behavioral objective

The student will make a list of animal species that

live in the water but breathe air and a separate list of

species that live in the water but do not require air to

breathe.

Not behavioral object

The student will understand the difference between

fish and mammals that live in the water.

The second feature of a good behavioral objective is that it describes conditions of performance of the

behavior. What are the special circumstances to be provided when the student performs the objective? Consider

these two examples:

Special condition of performance is specified

Given a list of 50 species, the student will circle those

that live in water but breathe air and underline those

A special condition of performance is not

specified

After three days of instruction, the student will

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