The Tyler rationale

Our first task for this weeks reading is to address ways that I experienced the Tyler rationale in my schooling experience. The first thing that comes to mind for when about Tyler’s rationale is that it focuses on what should be considered worthwhile educational content, how to go about attaining those objectives, how to make it efficient to teach and how to assess whether the content is internalized. My school growing up focused largely on language, since I went to a francophone school. The aim was to develop exceptional french speakers and as such everything was taught in french and we were expected to speak only in french while at school.  One way the school aimed to have us attain this outcome was to have teachers always roaming around, in case someone needed scolding for speaking English. Thinking back on this now, it kind of reminds me of the abstinence model that was used to teach us sex ed. Teachers were trying to make us fear speaking English and would threaten punishment if we did so, kind of like how they tried to convince us to fear sex to make us abstain. Neither turned out to be very effective for a many of the students.

The next thing we were asked to ponder was what Tyler’s rationale prevents us from doing as teachers. I think the biggest set back of Tyler’s rationale is that it does not take into account the individual needs of each student. Having overall goals for the student body is certainly a positive thing to have as there are benchmarks we should all strive to obtain, but this model prevents students from being inquisitive and strive to improve their own learning and interests. When student’s aren’t allowed to have some control over their own learning, I feel as though it makes the learning environment more bland and less interactive than it should be.

The final question we’ve been asked is to contemplate the usefulness of Tyler’s rationale. This model is great for developing standards of accomplishment for students as I eluded to earlier. There are certainly some subjects that students should always have a baseline understanding of; math, literacy, writing, sciences, history, etc. Tyler’s rationale helps outline important details for each of the subjects which helps teacher’s focus on the details that are important to each topic.

Author: brodlanj

This site is for my ECS 100 teacher portfolio. I am an joint kinesiology and education student at the university of Regina. I have been studying for six years now, I am currently finishing the education portion of my degree as well as extra minors in french and health. My goal is to one day become a physical education teacher in the francophone school system.

2 thoughts on “The Tyler rationale”

  1. I think that it is interesting that you grew up in a francophone school and was wondering where this school is located. I was wondering where it is because in a place that is dominant in English it would be very hard to restrain from speaking English. I agree with you in that the Tyler rationale is important in developing standards for the class, but also that it has limitations in regards to the students’ differences and needs.

    1. The school I went to is in Regina, but there are many spread out throughout the province. Saskatoon, Belgarde, Zenon Park each have their own just to name a few. You are right though, it was fairly difficult to maintain a decent level of french when I got few opportunities to practice it when I wasn’t at school. I still somehow managed to hold onto it though and I’m more than capable of speaking it, so in the long run it was definitely worth the effort!

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