Why Is The Dissemination Of Learning Objectives Standard?

The ritual dissemination of learning objectives does not guarantee learning, says Julie Price Grimshaw. So why is it standard practice in many schools?

The Year 6 lesson began with the teacher asking all the pupils to copy out what was written on the board. I watched them copy ‘L.O. To learn how to use the subordinate clause to create complex sentences.’ Some were writing just one letter at a time, some were writing a word and then pausing; as the clock ticked, the teacher became increasingly anxious. “Hurry up, hurry up. We can’t start the lesson until everyone has copied the learning objective!” But few had got as far as ‘subordinate’ at that point and, after 10 minutes, the teacher decided to move the lesson on – even though some had still not finished copying. The quality of learning in the following 20 minutes was variable; some pupils made reasonable progress, others did very little. The pupils’ books showed similar inconsistency in the quality of learning; the only thing they had in common was the ‘LOs’, dutifully copied at the start of every lesson.

When I discussed the lesson with the teacher later that day, I suggested that quite a lot of time had been spent copying the objective and that perhaps the lesson could have started with an activity that got the pupils straight into the learning. She looked at me with absolute horror. “But they have to copy the objective! How will they know what they are learning about if they don’t? Besides, we’ve been told that Ofsted expect to see learning objectives on the board for every single lesson or the lesson will be inadequate!”

Objective-directed learning has been at the heart of teacher training for decades, and with good reason; if we don’t have a clear idea of the intended learning then we cannot plan and deliver the content that will bring about that learning. Sharing the objective has long been thought of, by many, as fundamental to high-quality learning. However, it’s a curious notion that we can only learn something by being told in advance what that something is. In life outside school, it tends not to work this way; we learn things either through serendipity and experience or because we have an interest in something and actively pursue this.

Sharing the objective is not the only way of making pupils aware of the intended learning. At times, it doesn’t work well at all and can result in a lot of time being wasted, as in the example above. Learning objectives are not magical statements that make high-quality learning happen just by reading, writing or speaking them. Familiarisation with a learning objective is not the same as actually learning. And you’ve got to have a good rationale for copying an objective, or indeed anything that takes up so much time.

I’ve seen weak teaching and learning in lessons that started with the very structured sharing of objectives. I’ve also seen excellent learning where the pupils started off by getting straight into interesting, motivating activities and didn’t actually discuss the objective until the end of the lesson. This was the case in a Year 5 lesson I saw where the pupils came in and were immediately engaged in a motivating group task making scale models using different sets of measurements given to them. At the end of the lesson, the teacher said that she had forgotten to share the learning objective. One of the pupils responded with “It’s obvious, Miss – we learnt how to scale things up and scale things down.”

I am not suggesting that all schools totally abandon objective sharing; if there is solid evidence that it’s working well, then fine. But there are no guarantees that the ritual of objective sharing will automatically lead to high quality learning. In some lessons, even where objectives have been shared at the start, the rapid progress that followed had more to do with the careful checking of learning and re-framing of tasks.

What about the suggestion that Ofsted expects to see learning objectives displayed in every lesson? This is simply untrue. Ofsted have made clear that they cannot endorse or criticise any particular approach to teaching. The only reason to do something is because it will lead to high quality learning, not because it is perceived that it might please an inspector.

How will your next lesson begin?

Julie’s new book is Self-propelled learning and effective teaching (available on Amazon). It examines dozens of teaching strategies to discover what works and what doesn’t.

About the author

Julie Price Grimshaw is a teacher, teacher trainer, and education consultant. She has taught in primary and secondary phases in schools and has been involved in school inspections since 2001.