Customer Reviews

Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though this book was written and published a half a century ago, the basic principals of curriculum design are clearly the same. This book is to the point, clear, and quite accurate in my opinion. For anyone serious about curriculum design, it is a required read.

I had to read this book in my doctoral program. The assignment after reading the book was to graphically represent the work in some way. That was the greatest help in me remembering the basic premise of Tyler's work and what I could do with what I learned by reading the book.

Basically the teacher, looking at the needs of her/his learners is responsible for curriculum development. Basing choices on competing philosophies and strategies, the learner is always the one under the magnifying glass in the process. The ideas and instruction found in the book really empower the teacher to take charge of the process.

I have used the ideas in this book in leading the Christian education programs in the churches I have served. It's well worth the read. And when you're done, graphically summarize it so you don't forget what you learned as well.

This book celebrates its 60th birthday this year but it's difficult to top it for the most straightforward, comprehensive overview of the curriculum process. There are few curriculum writers or decision makers that don't follow the methods advocated by Tyler, in part if not in whole. The style is clear and easy to read, and furthermore, as one reads through, one realises that Tyler was advocating other developments like outcomes and standards years before they became (in)famous and incorporated in edu-speak. The best modern book on curriculum is by John Biggs ("Teaching for quality learning at university") and he pays tribute to the influence of Tyler's book on his own work. Unfortunately Tyler's is one of those books that everyone has read ABOUT but few have actually read. Do read it - it has pearls of wisdoms for today's educationalists or for anyone interested in schools and what they do, and it is only 128 pages long!

This book is a must-read for anyone in the teaching profession. It's simple and straightforward to understand.

Tyler provides us with a perennial framework for modern curriculum and instruction that is widely used in most classrooms today. Although I am not certain that I agree with the linearist model and tradition of curriculum, I enjoyed reading Tyler's four principles and would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the development of curriculum and standards based instruction.

Although this book was originally published 60 years ago it continues to sell more than one million copies per year and still finds its way onto the syllabi of graduate-level courses of the theoretical (and practical) approaches to curriculum design and school reform. Tyler's model, though not always followed exactly is often still the standard used in many educational settings.

Reading this book was like a review of the undergrad training that I had in lesson planning and the graduate courses that I took in Instructional Design, but much more concise, direct, and with supporting examples. Although these are all concepts that I learned either in those classrooms, or through my own real-world experiences, I picked them up nonetheless; this book seemed to serve as a primer for the textbooks and veteran teachers that I learned from.

While I agree with Tyler that the process he outlines is a solid paradigm for curriculum and instruction, all too often the instructor is left out of the curriculum as it has become dictated by the assessment which is dictated by the objectives that did not take into account many of the sources of selection of objectives he posits such as using the students' contemporary lives, or any particular philosophy. This makes it difficult for the classroom teacher to view such concepts as horizontal and vertical alignment, and although one could argue that an education authority has already ensured that and removed the responsibility from the teacher, it has the negative effect of removing the allowances for individual variance from education.

This book does, however, lay out the basic process of designing an entire curricula, though not always limited to the classroom teacher's purview. He mentions some good points about how to include student interests into the design and how to organize a curriculum from a macro level. Unfortunately, as a rather apparent effect of when it was written it does not take into account many of the more modern influences we consider when planning curriculum such as a multicultural perspective, or critical pedagogy that will include all students.

This last review is an illustration of exactly what is wrong with so many educators. Imagine someone so narrow-minded they can't get past the style of writing that they most prefer in order to understand the ideas behind the writing. This book likely did a great deal to counteract the design of curricula based on the kind of traditionalists who would focus exclusively on "commas in the wrong place". BTW, there are few if any grammar or mechanical errors in the book, and Tyler certainly didn't do the jacket design.

Reading Basic Principles was a bit like taking in a black-and-white movie. The camera work is steady; the actors are well defined; the plot is simple, if not just a bit familiar... Perhaps some of my familiarity with this script is due to the fact that this rationale for curriculum and instruction is very much the one imposed upon me as a teacher the past four years, right down to the terminology ("sequence," "alignment," etc.). This is not to say that I found Tyler's vision of curriculum and instruction wholly bad. There was, however, an omnipresent sense of control, categorization, and order by teachers and administrators that characterized his view of the learning experience. I got the feeling that Tyler would consider my fifth-grade curriculum perfected if I could render twenty-two behavioral objectives alongside my twenty-seven content aspects - all of which I would evaluate, of course, with assessments, checklists, and questionnaires.

Throughout Basic Principles, the watchwords of efficiency and effectiveness lurk behind much of Tyler's rationale. In Tyler's vision of curriculum, learning is something to be made tangible, so that it can be chunked, divided up, and inserted into empty heads on an assembly-line and that the results can be analyzed and conclusions drawn. Certainly, Tyler's rationales were important in their historical context as they helped close the door on rote memorization and provided a useful approach to organizing and unify a school's curriculum and instructional methodology. That the model has endured nearly intact, some sixty years after its being written, is less an indictment of Tyler than it is of policymakers' and school administrators' inability to recognize the potential (and necessity) for other possibilities; in other words, to see the world in color.

I have read books written for children that were better than this. The grammar was grade-school level, the punctuation was horrendous, the wording simplistic. For example, on page 28 Tyler writes, "Let me illustrate these two types of suggestions that can be got from these reports..." Even the back cover, in a tribute to the author, has commas that don't belong. This is a fine illustration of the dire state of our educational system, as it was written by a former Professor of Education and Dean!