Instructional Objectives

Instructional objectives are written by teachers or instructional designers and express the intended outcome of instruction. They specify what the learners will be able to do as a result of instruction by stating the performance standards that learners are expected to achieve. Instructional objectives also go by other labels, such as behavioral objectives, performance objectives, or simply objectives. Two examples of instructional objectives are as follows: (1) given two single-digit numbers, the students will be able to add the numbers without the aid of a calculator, and (2) given a diagram of an amoeba, the seventh-grade science students will be able to label the protoplasm, nucleus, cytoplasm, and the pseudopodia.

Instructional objectives do not state instructional procedures. Instructional procedures refer to what teachers do during instruction, including the media used and instructional activities. Instructional objectives, by contrast, are student-focused; these objectives center on what students should be able to do at the end of instruction. Thus, although instructional procedures are determined in light of objectives, the objectives state what the students should do rather than what the teacher should do. Instructional objectives are also different from instructional goals. A goal is a broad, general statement regarding the intended benefits of instruction. Typically, goals are long term, spanning entire units of instruction. Objectives, by contrast, are specific and proximal. Thus, the instructional objectives provide the level of specificity needed to guide daily activities and allow for monitoring of goal progress. A single instructional goal may be achieved after students have met a series of progressive instructional objectives.

How instructional objectives are conceptualized and written has been the focus of much work in educational psychology. The work of several researchers, such as Robert Gagne, Benjamin Bloom, and Robert Mager, has converged on a set of recommendations for writing objectives, and both behavioral and cognitive learning theories have established principles for the use of objectives in instruction.