Page 100 - Making Instruction Work

chap 8 3/4/97 3:43 PM Page 86

86 making instruction work

fill out forms if they couldn’t read them? Obviously not. So in
this case the reading skill must be in place before the form-
filling-out skill can be practiced. The little hierarchy would
look like this:

Figure 8.2

Fill out forms

Read English

This tells us that all the skills shown leading into the box to
which the arrow points should be mastered before that skill
can be usefully attempted. We say that the reading skill is sub-
ordinate to, or prerequisite to, the “form-filling-out” skill. This
does not mean that the reading skill is less important than the
other. It means only that it must be in place before the other is
attempted. It also tells us something else: It doesn’t matter
what an instructor alleges to be a preferred style of teaching, or
a student professes to be a preferred style of learning; the hier-
archy shows that one skill must be learned before the other—
because one is part of the other.
Now let’s consider another pair of skills. In reviewing your
task analysis, you find that your sales students will have to
be able to (a) describe product features to customers and
(b) operate the product—let’s say a car.
Would one of these two skills—“describe product features
to customers” and “drive car”—have to be learned before the
other could be attempted? That is, would I have to learn to
describe the features of the car before I could learn to drive it?
Or could I learn to drive without learning how to describe fea-
tures to customers? I could, couldn’t I? Both skills are impor-