Page 105 - Making Instruction Work
P. 105
chap 9 3/4/97 3:35 PM Page 91
9
Target Population
Description
Situation: You are ready to describe the key character-
istics of the intended audience of your instruction, so
that you can decide where the instruction should begin.
No doubt about it.“Target population description”is a piece
of jargon right out of the late-night horror flicks. But not to
worry. It means nothing more than “the students at whom
your instruction is aimed.” It could be called “audience
description,” but the word audience is generally reserved for a
clump of people expecting to be entertained. Since we are not
in the entertainment business (well, not officially, anyway), the
word audience has misleading implications. As you run into
the target population description verbiage below, just keep in
mind that it refers to that particular gang of people for whom
your instruction is intended, whether they are all alike or all
different. So having swept the mystery aside, onward!
To this point in the string of analysis events, we have been
considering procedures that will help us describe the end
