Ralph W.

Tyler (1902–1994)- Curriculum Development Model

Posted on March 24, 2015 by admin

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

ABOUT RALPH TYLER

Ralph W. Tyler’s(1902–1994)   illustrious career in education resulted in major

contributions to the policy and practice of American schooling. His influence was
especially felt in the field of testing, where he transformed the idea of measurement into
a grander concept that he called evaluation; in the field of curriculum, where he
designed a rationale for curriculum planning  in the realm of educational policy.

Ralph Winfred Tyler was born April 22, 1902, in Chicago, Illinois, and soon thereafter
(1904) moved to Nebraska. In 1921, at the age of 19, Tyler received the A.B. degree
from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, and began teaching high school in Pierre,
South Dakota. He obtained the A.M. degree from the University of Nebraska (1923)
while working there as assistant supervisor of sciences (1922-1927). In 1927 Tyler
received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago.

After starting his career in education as a science teacher in South Dakota, Tyler went
to the University of Chicago to pursue a doctorate in educational psychology. His
training with Charles Judd and W.W. Charters at Chicago led to a research focus on
teaching and testing. Upon graduation in 1927, Tyler took an appointment at the
University of North Carolina, where he worked with teachers in the state on improving
curricula. In 1929 Tyler followed W. W. Charters to the Ohio State University (OSU). He
joined a team of scholars directed by Charters at the university’s Bureau of Educational
Research, taking the position of director of accomplishment testing in the bureau. He
was hired to assist OSU faculty with the task of improving their teaching and increasing
student retention at the university. In this capacity, he designed a number of path-
breaking service studies. Tyler first coined the term evaluation as it pertained to
schooling. Because of his early insistence on looking at evaluation as a matter of
evidence tied to fundamental school purposes, Tyler could very well be considered one
of the first proponents of what is now popularly known as portfolio assessment.

After serving as associate professor of education at the University of North Carolina

(1927-1929), Tyler went to Ohio State University where he attained the rank of
professor of education (1929-1938). It was around 1938 that he became nationally
prominent due to his involvement in the Progressive Education related Eight Year Study
(1933-1941), an investigation into secondary school curriculum requirements and their
relationship to subsequent college success. In 1938 Tyler continued work on the Eight
Year Study at the University of Chicago, where he was employed as chairman of the
Department of Education (1938-1948), dean of social sciences (1948-1953), and
university examiner (1938-1953). In 1953 Tyler became the first director of the Stanford,
California-based Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, a position he
held until his retirement in 1966.

Tyler’s reputation as an education expert grew with the publication of Basic Principles of
Curriculum and Instruction. Because of the value Tyler placed on linking objectives to
experience (instruction) and evaluation, he became known as the father of behavioural
objectives. Often called the grandfather of curriculum design, Ralph W. Tyler was
heavily influenced by Edward Thorndike, John Dewey, and the Progressive Education
movement of the 1920s. Thorndike turned curriculum inquiry away from the relative
values of different subjects to empirical studies of contemporary life .Dewey promoted
the idea of incorporating student interests when designing learning objectives and
activities. Tyler targeted the student’s emotions, feelings and beliefs as well as the
intellect.

Tyler also exercised enormous influence as an educational adviser. Tyler also started
his career as an education adviser in the White House. In 1952 he offered U.S.
President Harry Truman advice on reforming the curriculum at the service academies.
Under Eisenhower, he chaired the President’s Conference on Children and Youth.
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration used Tyler to help shape its education
bills, most notably the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, in which he
was given the responsibility of writing the section on the development of regional
educational research laboratories. In the late 1960s Tyler took on the job of designing
the assessment measures for the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP),
which are federally mandated criterion-reference tests used to gauge national
achievement in various disciplines and skill domains. He formally retired in 1967, taking
on the position of director emeritus and trustee to the centre and itinerant educational
consultant. Tyler also played a significant role in the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development (ASCD) and its “Fundamental Curriculum Decisions.” (1983).

THE CURRICULUM RATIONALE

Ralph Tyler’s most useful works is Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, a
course syllabus used by generations of college students as a basic reference for
curriculum and instruction development.

Tyler stated his curriculum rationale in terms of four questions published in 1949 Tyler
his curriculum rationale in terms of four questions that, he argued, must be answered in
developing any curriculum plan of instruction

1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2. What educational experiences can be provided that will likely attain these purposes?
3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
4. How can we determine whether the purposes are being attained?
These questions may be reformulated into a four-step process: stating objectives,
selecting learning experiences, organizing learning experiences, and evaluating the
curriculum. The Tyler rationale is essentially an explication of these steps.

The rationale also highlighted an important set of factors to be weighed against the
questions. Tyler believed that the structure of the school curriculum also had to be
responsive to three central factors that represent the main elements of an educative
experience:

(1) the nature of the learner (developmental factors, learner interests and needs, life
experiences, etc.);
(2) the values and aims of society (democratizing principles, values and attitudes); and
(3) knowledge of subject matter (what is believed to be worthy and usable knowledge).

In answering the four questions and in designing school experience for children,
curriculum developers had to screen their judgments through the three factors.

This reasoning reveals the cryptic distinction between learning specific bits and pieces
of information and understanding the unifying concepts that underlie the information. .
Tyler asserted that this is the process through which meaningful education occurs, his
caveat being that one should not confuse “being educated” with simply “knowing facts.
Indeed, learning involves not just talking about subjects but a demonstration of what
one can do with those subjects. A truly educated person, Tyler seems to say, has not
only acquired certain factual information but has also modified his/her behaviour
patterns as a result. (Thus, many educators identify him with the concept of behavioural
objectives.) These behaviour patterns enable the educated person to adequately cope
with many situations, not just those under which the learning took place.

Tyler’s rationale has been criticized for being overtly managerial and linear in its position
on the school curriculum. Some critics have characterized it as outdated and a
theoretical, suitable only to administrators keen on controlling the school curriculum in
ways that are unresponsive to teachers and learners. The most well-known criticism of
the rationale makes the argument that the rationale is historically wedded to social
efficiency traditions.

TYLOR’S CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT MODEL

Ralph W. Tyler: Behavioural Model Probably the most frequently quoted theoretical
formulation in the field of curriculum has been that published by Ralph Tyler in
1949.Tyler  model is deductive; it proceed from the general (e.g., examining the needs
of society) to the specific (e.g., specifying instructional objectives). Furthermore, the
model is linear; it involve a certain order or sequence of steps from beginning to end.
Linear models need not be immutable sequences of steps, however. Curriculum makers
can exercise judgment as to entry points and interrelationships of components of the
model. Moreover, the model is prescriptive; it suggest what ought to be done and what
is done by many curriculum developers.

It is also unlike the curriculum of social reconstruction, it is more “society cantered.” This
model positioned the school curriculum as a tool for improving community life.
Therefore, the needs and problems of the social-issue is the source of the main
curriculum. Tyler (1990) holds that there are three forms of resources that can be used
to formulate the purpose of education, i.e. individuals (children as students),
contemporary life, and expert consideration of field of study.

This development curriculum model means more of how to design a curriculum in

accordance with the goals and the mission of an educational institution. According to
Taylor (1990) there are four fundamental things that are considered to develop a
curriculum, which is the purpose of education who wants to be achieved, learning
experience to achieve the goals, learning organizing experiences, and evaluation.

Defining Objectives of the Learning Experience

Tyler remarks, “The progressive emphasizes the importance of studying the child to find
out what kinds of interests he has, what problems he encounters, what purposes he has
in mind. The progressive sees this information as providing the basic source for
selecting objectives” . Tyler was interested in how learning related to the issues of
society, and believed studies of contemporary life provided information for learning
objectives. He defines the learning objectives in terms of knowledge, communication
skills, social and ethical perspective, quantitative and analytical skills, and
cognitive/taxonomy. He proposes that educational objectives originate from three
sources: studies of society, studies of learners, and subject-matter specialists. These
data systematically collected and analyzed form the basis of initial objectives to be
tested for their attainability and their efforts in real curriculum situations. The tentative
objectives from the three sources are filtered through two screens: the school’s
educational philosophy and knowledge of the psychology of learning, which results in a
final set of educational objectives
Defining learning experience.
Once the first step of stating and refining objectives is accomplished, the rationale
proceeds through the steps of selection and organization of learning experiences as the
means for achieving outcomes, and, finally, evaluating in terms of those learning
outcomes. The term “learning experience” refers to the interaction between the learner
and the external conditions in the environment to which he can react. Tyler argues that
the term “learning experience” is not the same as the content with a course which deals
nor activities performed by the teacher.  Learning takes place through the active
behaviour of the student; it is what he does that he learns not what the teacher does.
So, the learning experience of students refers to activities in the learning process. What
should be asked in this experience is “what will be done and have been done by the
students” not “what will be done and have been done by teachers.”

Tyler recognizes a problem in connection with the selection of learning experiences by a

teacher . The problem is that by definition a learning experience is the interaction
between a student and her environment. That is, a learning experience is to some
degree a function of the perceptions, interests, and previous experiences of the student.
Thus, a learning experience is not totally within the power of the teacher to select.
Nevertheless, Tyler maintains that the teacher can control the learning experience
through the manipulation of the environment, resulting in stimulating situations sufficient
to evoke the desired kind of learning outcomes.

There are several principles in determining student learning experiences, which are: (a)
students experience must be appropriate to the goals you want to achieve, (b) each
learning experience must satisfy the students, (c) each design of student learning
experience should involve students, and (d) in one learning experience, students can
reach different objectives.

“The most difficult problem is setting up learning experiences to try to make interesting a
type of activity which has become boring or distasteful to the student” . He stresses,
“Students learn through exploration”. Tyler’s mentor, John Dewey, also advocated that
teachers should encourage children to become actively engaged in discovering what
the world is like . “No single learning experience has a very profound influence upon the
learner,” remarks Tyler .

Organizing of Learning Activities for Attaining the Defined Objectives.

“Organization is seen as an important problem in curriculum development because it
greatly influences the efficiency of instruction and the degree to which major educational
changes are brought about in the learners,” asserts Tyler. He believes three major
criteria are required in building organized learning experiences: Continuity, sequence,
and integration. Students need concrete experiences to which the readings are
meaningfully connected

Tyler maintains that there are two types of organizing learning experiences, which is
organizing it vertically and horizontally. Organizing vertically, when the learning
experience in a similar study in a different level. There are three criteria, according to
Tyler  in organizing learning experiences, which are: continuity, sequence, and
integration. The principle of continuity means that the learning experience given should
have continuity and it is needed to learning experience in advance.

Principles of content sequence means that the learning experience provided to students
should pay attention to the level of student’s development. Learning experience given in
class five should be different with learning experiences in the next class.

The principle of integration means that the learning experience provided to students
must have a function and useful to obtain learning experience in other sectors. For
example, learning experience in Arabic language must be able to get help learning
experience in the field of other studies.

Evaluation and Assessment of the Learning Experiences

Evaluation is the process of determining to what extent the educational objectives are
being realized by the curriculum. Stated another way, the statement of objectives not
only serves as the basis for selecting and organizing the learning experiences, but also
serves as a standard against which the program of curriculum and instruction is
appraised. Thus, according to Tyler, curriculum evaluation is the process of matching
initial expectations in the form of behavioural objectives with outcomes achieved by the
learner.

There are two functions of evaluation. First, the evaluation used to obtain data on the
educational goals achievement by the students (called the summative function).
Second, the evaluation used to measure the effectiveness of the learning process
(called the formative function).

The process of assessment is critical to Tyler’s Model and begins with the objectives of
the educational program. . Curriculum evaluation is the process of matching initial
expectations in the form of behavioural objectives with outcomes achieved by the
learner. There are two aspects that need to be concerned with evaluation, namely: the
evaluation should assess whether there have been changes in student behaviour in
accordance with the goals of education which have been formulated, and evaluation
ideally use more than one assessment tool in a certain time.

Tyler asserts, “The process of evaluation is essentially the process of determining to

what extent the educational objectives are actually being realized by the program of
curriculum and instruction” . Furthermore, he states, “Curriculum planning is a
continuous process and that as materials and procedures are developed they are tried
out, their results are appraised, their inadequacies identified, and suggested
improvements indicated” . With his emphasis on the individual student Tyler believes
that all evaluation must be guided by a purpose and be sensitive to the uniqueness of
the individual being assessed.
Tyler  largely determine what he attends to, and frequently what he does . Tyler states,
“Education is a process of changing the behaviour patterns of people” . He values the
individual learner.

Reference:
Maheshwari, VK (2015). Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994)- Curriculum Development Model.
Retrieved from http://www.vkmaheshwari.com/WP/?p=1894
Wraga, W. (2017). Understanding the Tyler rationale: Basic Principles of Curriculum
and Instruction in historical context. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318089758_Understanding_the_
Tyler_rationale_Basic_Principles_of_Curriculum_and_Instruction_in_histo
rical_context