In the article Curriculum theory and practice, Smith talks about the different ways in which we can approach curriculum, including the Tyler rationale. In my experience I never heard of the Tyler rationale until this class, but throughout high school especially it was somewhat clear that things were done in a systematic way. Teachers did things in a specific order, and in some cases, it was a good thing and in others it would have been better if it had been done differently. The rationale tends to leave little room for flexibility and creativity. It creates the mindset that everything must be done in a certain way and may not work for everyone or be effective for teaching all students.
One nice thing about the rationale is that it provides some stability and consistency, some students do best with that. I think this rationale has its place but I don’t think it should be written in stone as something that all teachers should follow all the time. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to plan and organize everything that happens down to every little thing. And one thing that I have been thinking about when it talks about “selection of learning experiences” in step 5, because you can’t always predict what students are going to learn from, there’s always going to be a kid that will come out of a what you think is a great learning experience and not get anything, which is why you have to continually asses your students and adjust from there.
One of the drawbacks of the rationale is that it puts assessment at the end, which seems to be the way that many teachers still do it, but it might not be the most effective way to do it. You might want to asses at the beginning of a class and all the way through instead of relying on that one assessment point. For example, if you were teaching math at the beginning of the year you might want to assess your students to see what they already know and what they need help on, this would give you a better idea of what you should be teaching.
