Why do we educate students? Education is a set of planned, scheduled, and specific activities. An entrance is made at the beginning of the chapter in order to ensure that the readers perceive that the education is carried out for certain goals. How do the goals in education come to be expressed? They are formulated as aims, goals, objectives. When planning the education, it is seen that the objectives are expressed under different concepts. These can be expressed as aims, goals, and learning objectives. In order to prevent the reader from getting lost in these different goal expressions, these types of goals should be explained in a comparative way. How are objectives classified? Is it more functional to try to take and use them directly after the objectives have been expressed, or should we classify the objectives around certain criterion? Which option gives us more leads? In this chapter, classifications made by Bloom, Anderson, and Krathwohl, and other taxonomies will be mentioned. What should be considered when expressing objectives?
Top1.1 Education
Education is a term used to describe the process of helping and encouraging individuals or groups to achieve their cognitive, physical, social, emotional or moral development. Education is purpose oriented and emphasizes a system of values. Besides, it can be performed formally as at schools or informally. The formal education at schools aims to establish a balance between personal needs and social needs (Collins & O’Brien, 2011, p. 156).
Education is the effort to train individuals or groups in areas such as talents, beliefs, knowledge, habits, skills, personality and “values” (Cevizci, 2006, p. 116). It is an activity of changing and transforming in a predetermined way based on the life experiences of young people and the values and knowledge conveyed to them in the meanwhile (Cevizci, 2010, p. 165).
Definitions show that education can either be carried out in a structured way at schools or in an unstructured or less structured way in families, communities, outside schools. Definitions state that education is carried out in a context of certain objectives. Definitions also state that through education, the goals of developing, training, transforming individuals or groups in certain areas and conveying information to them are fulfilled. It is possible today to see that all countries exhibit concrete examples of what is mentioned here. Developed countries strive to preserve their level of development and to further improve it by means of education. Developing countries hope to reach the level of developed countries and to solve the problems they experience on a social level again via education. In this context, countries, communities have great expectations from education. Countries experiencing economic problems seek solution from social sciences lessons at schools by teaching their citizens conscious consumption, and demands and needs regimes, those experiencing traffic problems, from traffic or life skills lessons to solve so called problem and countries experiencing human rights problems, from human rights lessons. Similar expectations of countries seek help from engineering education for the sake of technology, from health sciences education for the sake of health and from law education for a better legal system. This list can be further prolonged under the topic “people’s expectation from education”.
1.1.2. Education and Objectives
Countries invest in education to satisfy their expectations from education. A certain budget is allocated. Schools and infrastructure are provided. Educators are trained. Administrators, educators and students are asked to spare a certain amount of their time for education. Families are requested to allocate a budget for the education of their children. Although one third of individuals in a country take part in a formal education system, considering the families of these individuals and those working in the field of education, at least two thirds of a society is involved in education.
What has been discussed so far is meant to convince the reader that education cannot be carried out unintentionally; it needs to be handled in a planned and scheduled way and has to involve an accountable, transparent system. If the readers have agreed that education has been designed as a structured, planned and scheduled, accountable system, they should also agree that this system can be steered correctly only if the objectives are followed.
What functions do objectives have? Objectives are the answer to the question “Why do we carry out all these activities?” If you are in the position of a policy maker or a decision maker assigned to handle education, you can be enabled to see with respect to which educational activities go wrong or right. Objectives help us determine whether education as a system at a policy level or education at an institutional level for management is being implemented as planned or not. If you have been assigned the role of an educator, objectives will help you understand according to what you will guide your education and teaching activities. If you are in the position of a learner, objectives will give you information as to what and how you should learn.