Page 95 - Making Instruction Work

chap 8 3/4/97 3:43 PM Page 81

8

Skill Hierarchies

Situation: You have drafted objectives that describe what
you want students to be able to do at the end of your
instruction. Now you want to know which objectives
must be taught before others can be usefully attempted.

Before plunging into development or improvement of the
instruction itself, it will be useful to arrange your objectives
into a picture that will show you how the objectives relate to
one another.

Why Bother?
Suppose that you come to my class in brain surgery and,
after offering an overview of the course, I anesthetize a couple
of volunteers and ask you to show the class how to do a brain
transplant.
“Wait a minute,” you might scream in protest. “How can I
do a brain transplant when I don’t even know which instru-
ments to use—or even how to get into the head—or how to get
the brains out once I do get in? Hey, I’m not even sure where
the brains are in these two numbskulls!”