Tyler, Ralph Winifred

Ralph Winifred Tyler (1902–1994) made significant contributions in the areas of curriculum design, testing, and evaluation. Some consider him “the father of behavioral objectives.” Tyler was among the first to advocate student testing, not to produce a normal curve distribution, but to provide information for improvement of curriculum and determine if students had reached the aims intended. His book, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, written in 1949, has been in continuous print and has been translated into many languages. This document is a syllabus for a curriculum class that Tyler taught during his time at the University of Chicago. Within the document are four questions that may have influenced curriculum development, perhaps more than any other document. The perspective offered by the questions in this work has come to be known as the “Tyler Rationale.” He directed the famous Eight-Year Study and was instrumental in the creation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is still administered today as a measure of educational attainment for children across the nation.

Tyler was born April 22, 1902, in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly after his birth, Tyler's family moved to Nebraska, where he spent his childhood. Tyler attended Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, where he earned an AB degree at the age of 19 and began teaching high school science in Pierre, South Dakota, in 1921. His MA degree was earned from the University of Nebraska in 1923 and in 1927, he earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. His work in higher education began as assistant supervisor of sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was there from 1922 to 1927, and during this time completed his MA and PhD. He served as an associate professor at the University of North Carolina; in 1929, he moved to Ohio State University, where he achieved the rank of full professor. At Ohio State, Tyler began his work as director of the now classic Eight-Year Study, involving 30 high schools and some 300 colleges and universities. The secondary schools served as educational laboratories pursuing innovative programs and creating their own forms for evaluating student performance. In Recording and Appraising Student Progress, coauthored with E. R. Smith, many of today's advocated “authentic assessment” practices can be seen (criterion testing, performances, student projects, etc.).

In 1938, Tyler moved to the University of Chicago as the chairman of the Department of Education and later the Dean of Social Sciences and the University Examiner. He continued his work on The Eight-Year Study through 1941. Tyler became the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, based at Stanford University, in California. He remained in this position from 1953 until his retirement. While Tyler officially retired in 1967, he remained active in education for another 25 years through teaching, lecturing, consulting, writing, and serving on a variety of committees, commissions, and foundations. In his 70-plus years as an educator, he authored or coauthored hundreds of articles and books.