In spite of the popularity of behavioral objectives and in spite of the insistence with which many educators urge teachers to use them, opinion is by no means unified as to the desirability of their use. In fact, behavioral objectives are the center of a growing storm of controversy. Those who favor external control of the learning process are wholeheartedly in support of the use of behavioral objectives. They view their use as a means of lifting education to the level of a scientific, quantifiable approach to learning. In addition, they see behavioral objectives as the principal cog in the application of the technological efficiency of the industrial system to education. Only by the delineation of discrete behaviors can the educational process be quantified and made accountable. Since learning is a change in behavior, both the behavior and the means for conditioning the change must be specified.
Henson (1974) lists the following advantages of a learning program based on accountability and performance-based objectives:
1. Behavioral objectives, or performance objectives if the reader prefers, clarify the teaching goals, thus assuring a purposeful teaching process directed toward specific goals.
2. Stating the behavioral objectives for the students enables them to work toward predetermined goals. They know exactly what they are to do at the end of the learning sequence, thus making their learning more meaningful and more enjoyable.
3. By basing their organization of the course on behavioral objectives, the teachers are better organized and more efficient. As a result, they have more time to spend with the students.
4. When the behavioral objectives are prepared commercially by experts, the content of the course is not subject to the variability of teacher competency. The quality of the course can be maintained in spite of the teacher's inadequacy. Thus, learning can be made not only external to the student, but also external to the teacher and the local school situation. In this fashion it would be possible to eliminate the extremes that currently exist in the quality of education offered in different schools and in different areas.
5. Performance-based teaching, i.e., teaching based on behavioral objectives, is the only way to identify and to reward excellence in teaching. Using behavioral objectives provides a quantifiable basis for specifying what the teacher should be doing and comparing that model with what he is doing.
6. Gearing learning to behavioral objectives makes the students more active participants in their own learning and provides more motivation than a teacher-centered class.
7 The use of behavioral objectives is a concrete means of exposing incompetent teachers and motivating them to improve.
8. The practice of including behavioral objectives enables all faculty members as a group to meet, to discuss, and to make joint decisions concerning the curriculum.
9 The use of behavioral objectives frees the teacher for more time to plan for more creative student activities.
10. Behavioral objectives have so great a potential that they will significantly improve education.
As valid as these arguments for the use of behavioral objectives may seem to some, they are strongly rejected by others. For the most part, those who oppose the use of behavioral objectives hold in some way to an internal focus as the central concept to be maintained in the learning process. Cognitive psychologists stress internal mental processes at a highly complex and abstract level of operation. Many of these mental processes cannot be specified in behavioral terms. Humanists stress the individual's internal psychological states, i.e., feelings and emotions, rather than the acquisition of either behaviors or knowledge as such.
The chief criticisms of behavioral objectives include the following:
1. Behavioral objectives deal primarily with behaviors and do not take the entire emotional and social growth of the student into consideration.
2. Basing the learning of all students on the same stated behavioral objectives makes the task quite difficult for some learners but especially easy for others.
3. If the teachers in a system of accountability become concerned primarily with how they appear in the eyes of the administration, this vested interest may lead to a dehumanization of the classroom and of the learning process.
4. The selection of behavioral objectives and activities outside the classroom, even if done by experts, may be unrelated and meaningless in the local situation.
5. It is possible that the stress on efficiency may result in stressing time factors to the detriment of learning.
6. Basing all learning on stated behavioral objectives may lead to an overemphasis on facts, rote memorization, and superficial teaching and learning.
7. It might be possible for the administration to use behavioral objectives as a means of penalizing or dismissing teachers if their students are not accomplishing the stated behaviors.
8. The use of behavioral objectives makes it possible for materials developers to specify exact behaviors without input from the local teachers and administration.
9. Stated behavioral objectives at the beginning of a learning sequence may actually inhibit learning in the sense that desired gains are limited to
teacher-selected objectives. There is no room provided for student imagination and creativity.
10. The use of behavioral objectives is a fad that will be overused and misused to the harm of the educational system (Henson, 1974).
11. Teachers can rarely state their goals in terms of precise behaviors.
12. Stating objectives in specific behavioral terms is more difficult and time consuming than stating general course objectives.
13. Planning in advance specifically how the learner is to behave after learning is undemocratic and manipulative.
14. Those objectives easiest to state in behavioral terms are usually trivial, low-level goals.
15. In certain subject matter areas, such as fine arts and humanities, the goals are difficult to specify in behavioral terms.
16. Predetermination of goals and activities may'deter spontaneous interchanges between teacher and students in class (Waks, 1973).
In a paper related specifically to second-language instruction, Valdman (1975) questions the validity of using behavioral objectives as a basic device in the development of communicative competence, or as he terms it, "communicative performance." First, he states that "competence" cannot be acquired solely by acquiring specific linguistic elements. Nor can the acquisition of a certain number of discrete linguistic behaviors guarantee the ability to function in a communicative situation. In short, there seems to be no meaningful relationship between behavioral objectives specifying linguistic behaviors and the linguistic concepts of "competence" and "performance." Behavioral objectives and classroom drills based on these objectives deal with the manipulation of linguistic elements, not communication. He later adds that the specification and control of linguistic behaviors may in fact keep the learner from formulating hypotheses about the language system and discovering important regularities and irregularities in the language, both of which are basic components of internal theories of first- and second-language learning. The author also maintains that the conception of language learning as an internal process, actively participated in by the learner, in effect relegates behavioral objectives and their associated drills to a secondary role. He concludes that behavioral objectives have contributed little to the improvement of second-language instruction.
The National Council of Teachers of English has passed a resolution urging restraint in the use of behavioral objectives. In 1972 the American Historical Association was opposed to behavioral objectives. The Texas chapter of the AAUP has expressed concern over their use in the competency-based program in Texas. The board of directors of the NEA "recently resolved to fight simplistic approaches to accountability in our schools" (Day, 1974, pp. 305-6).
Some studies to determine the effectiveness of the use of behavioral objectives have been conducted. Levine (1972) found that knowledge of
"criterion-referenced instruction" did not produce significant differences in achievement. Effective practice was the significant variable. Stedman (1972) concluded that objectives had no significant effect on posttest performance. After examining the influence of objectives on the acquisition of complex cognitive learning, Yelon and Schmidt (1973) stated that giving objectives to the student had no positive effect on learning, and, in fact, that there was an apparent negative effect on both achievement and attitude. The results of a study by Webb and Cormier (1972, p. 95) indicated that objectives, criterion evaluation, and remediation produced positive results in the case of "disruptive adolescents." Duchastel and Merrill's (1973) review revealed five comparative studies which indicated that students achieved more with behavioral objectives and five with no significant difference on immediate retention. On long-term retention two studies favored giving the students behavioral objectives with one showing no significant difference.