The 1920s: Concepts of Objectives

Frankin Bobbitt: Social Efficiency Movement

"Education is a shaping process as much as the manufacture of steel rails." -- Franklin Bobbitt

Franklin Bobbitt (1876-1952) was a member of the faculty in educational administration at the University of Chicago in the early 1900s. He became famous for developing the modern concept of "objective analysis," a forerunner of job and task analysis.

Bobbitt advocated the practice of analysing the activities involved in discreet academic subjects and using that analysis to establish specific teaching objectives. Essentially, he looked at what specific activities experts in a subject engaged in and made those activities the driving forces behind the curriculum design. This way of developing teaching objectives is highly compatible with behaviorism. Teaching objectives are to this day an integral part of most teachers' lesson plans in the K-12 classroom.

Frankin Bobbitt believed that schools should provide experiences specifically related to those activities demanded of citizens by their society.Furthermore, he thought that the goals for schooling could be derived from an objective analysis of those skills necessary for successful living.

It is not difficult here to see the roots of job and task analysis: the notion of analyzing a complex skill into its component subskills.

Also evident was an endorsement of the connection between outcomes and instruction: specifying desirable outcomes and then planning instructional experiences that would facilitate their acquisition.