Taxonomies of objecTives and learning

An objective can be defined as a statement of what educators intend students to learn as a result of the educational experiences in which educators engage students. Because objectives are statements, they take on a common form, namely, subject-verb-object. The subject is the learner or, more generally, the student. The object indicates the content to be learned. The verb indicates how the student is expected to process the content. Using this form, one objective might be, “The student will learn to classify poems.” In this example, the content is poems; the process is classify. The phrase “will learn to” is simply a reminder that intentions are involved, which, one hopes, will be actualized at some time in the future. Learners can learn to classify content ...