Page 3 - Principles of instructional design

The Outcomes of Instruction 41

not as "health," but as "performing those activities that will maintain health."
The goal, or goals, are most inadequately conveyed by the term citizenship; thev
are better reflected in a statement such as "carries out the activities of a citizen in
a democratic society."
Although it has not yet been done, it would be helpful for educational
scholars to define the array of human capabilities that would make possible the
kinds of activities expressed in educational goals. It is these capabilities that
represent the proximate goals of instruction. To carry out the activities required
for maintaining health, the individual must possess certain kinds of capabilities
(knowledge, skills, attitudes). In most cases, these are learned through de-
liberately planned instruction. Similarly, to perform the various activities appro-
priate to being a citizen, the individual must have learned a variety of capabilities
through instruction.
Educational goals are statements of the outcomes of education. They refer
particularly to those activities made possible by learning, which in turn is often
brought about by deliberately planned instruction. The rationale in our society
is not different from that of a primitive society. In the latter, for example, the
educational goal of becoming a hunter is achieved by a customary regimen of
instruction in the various component human capabilities (locating prey, stalk-
ing, shooting, and so on) that makes possible the total activity of hunting. The
difference, however, is an important one. In the more complex society, the
capabilities required for one activity may be shared by a number of others. Thus,
the human capability of "performing arithmetic operations" serves not only one
educational goal (such as making a family budget), but several, including
changing money and making scientific measurements.
To design instruction, one must seek a means of identifying the human
capabilities that lead to the outcomes called educationalgoals. If these goals were
uncomplicated, as in a primitive society, defining these human capabilities
might be equally simple. But such is not the case in a highly differentiated and
specialized society. Instruction cannot be adequately planned separately for each
educational goal necessary to a modern society. One must seek, instead, to
identify the human capabilities that contribute to a number of different goals. A
capability such as reading comprehension, for example, obviously serves several
purposes. The present chapter is intended to serve as an introduction to the
concept of human capabilities.

Courses and Their Objectives
The planning of instruction is often carried out for a single course rather than for
larger units of a total curriculum. There is no necessary fixed length of a course
or no fixed specification of "what is to be covered." A number of factors may
influence the choice of duration or amount of content. Often, the length of time
available in a semester or year is the primary determining factor. In an}' case, a
course is usually defined rather arbitrarily by the designation of some topics