This week’s reading focuses on different learning strategies and goals based on different perspectives. This week are specifically looking at Tyler’s rationale. To add context, Tyler’s rationale is based on “four fundamental questions:
- What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
- What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
- How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
- How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? (Tyler 1949: 1)” (Smith 200)
Tyler’s learning strategies is based on “Bobbitt’s emphasis on rationality and relative simplicity” (Smith 2000). In my own schooling experience, I can say that:
- In question one, Tyler asks, “What educational purposes would the school seek to attain?” Question like these makes me remember the rubrics that teachers show to us before we start an activity or project. This way we have an idea what our teacher is expecting to come out in this project. These expectations come from this rubric; it is the list of words and sentences as to why we need to create this project. On what purpose does it have on students? Is it beneficial for them in the future? Or is it just a fun little activity that seeks on educational purpose? An example of this is back in my 12th grade Earth Science class. After learning about earthquakes, we were asked to create an “earthquake-proof” structure using only uncooked pasta, marshmallows, and tape. The purpose of this class is to learn about earthquake and what measures do engineers and construction workers make to prevent massive damage if an earthquake happens.
- Second question asks, “What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?” I think this is extremely connected to the first question. As we said before, different students learn differently. Some students like a more hands-on tasks while others do better writing exams. In terms of experiences, I can share a schooling memory of mine from my cooking class in 9th grade. We could probably assume that culinary students do not learn cooking by just writing down notes on their paper. Rather, they are training in the kitchen, baking, cooking, and so on. I can say that I feel that experience in my cooking class. So, the purpose is for students to learn cooking, and an educational experience to attain this purpose is to have the students cook.
- Third question asks, “How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? An obvious answer from my cooking class experience again is students must start on basics such as mixing eggs, kneading, simmering, and so on before students can make actual dishes. For instance, I will not know how to make a pizza dough if I was not taught how yeast works.
- Fourth question asks, “How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?” All I could think of a schooling experience where this question is answered is from final projects. If students really learned something, they should be able to use these purposes and create something from what they have learned.
Although this is quite a strong structure of learning from Tyler, it has its limitations. In question four in the rationale, it asks how to determine whether the purpose are being attained. If students are only told what to do without having their own style of learning be mixed in, it becomes robotic in a way. Experiences, to apply the purpose, comes from real life so if students do not have creative freedom of what to do in certain learning, it makes it hard for both students and teacher to find that harmony in learning/teaching. Second, as said from the reading, it can “deskill teachers” in a way that activities are set to e a real-life example so the curriculum will be more “‘teacher proof’”–this defeats the purpose of having teachers around if the curriculum is teacher proof (Smith 2000). The rationale also does not account for other ways for students to learn since the rationale is a linear learning system.
However, it is beneficial for students who prefers linear learning: such as learning the material, using those learning materials to work on questions or projects, and evaluate the lessons these projects have to offer in terms of the topic of interest in the first place. Additionally, the rationale itself is quite organized so it proves the linear strategy will work successfully to students that prefers this way of learning. The way Tyler’s rationale works is to prepare students for real life using activities that are related and used in real life (Smith 2000). Overall, this rationale focuses on student’s success versus focusing on what school can offer to students to create their needs.