The tyler's model

1. Tyler’s Model: Objective Model
In 1949, a small book had a big impact on education. In just over one hundred pages, Ralph
W. Tyler presented the concept that curriculum should be dynamic, a program under
constant evaluation and revision. Curriculum had always been thought of as a static, set
program, and in an era preoccupied with student testing, he offered the innovative idea that
teachers and administrators should spend as much time evaluating their plans as they do
assessing their students.
Since then, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction has been a standard reference for
anyone working with curriculum development. Although not a strict how-to guide, the book
shows how educators can critically approach curriculum planning, studying progress and
retooling when needed. Its four sections focus on setting objectives, selecting learning
experiences, organizing instruction, and evaluating progress. Readers will come away with a
firm understanding of how to formulate educational objectives and how to analyze and
adjust their plans so that students meet the objectives. Tyler also explains that curriculum
planning is a continuous, cyclical process, an instrument of education that needs to be fine-
tuned.
This emphasis on thoughtful evaluation has kept Basic Principles of Curriculum and
Instruction a relevant, trusted companion for over sixty years. And with school districts
across the nation working feverishly to align their curriculum with Common Core standards,
Tyler's straightforward recommendations are sound and effective tools for educators
working to create a curriculum that integrates national objectives with their students'
needs.
1. What Educational Purposes Should the School Seek to Attain?
 Studies of the Learners Themselves as a Source of Educational Objectives
 Studies of Contemporary Life outside the School
 Suggestions about Objectives from Subject Specialists
 The Use of Philosophy in Selecting Objectives
 The Use of a Psychology of Learning in Selecting Objectives
 Stating Objectives in a Form to be Helpful in Selecting Learning Experiences and in
Guiding Teaching
2. How Can Learning Experiences Be Selected Which Are Likely to Be Useful in Attaining
These Objectives?
 Meaning of the Term “Learning Experience”
 General Principles in Selecting Learning Experiences
 Illustrations of the Characteristics of Learning Experiences Useful in Attaining Various
Types of Objectives

2. 3. How Can Learning Experiences Be Organized for Effective Instruction?
 What is meant by “Organization?”
 Criteria for Effective Organization
 Elements to be organized
 Organizing Principles
 The Organizing Structure
 The Process of Planning a Unit of Organization
4. How Can the Effectiveness of Learning Experiences Be Evaluated?
 The Need for Evaluation
 Basic Notions Regarding Evaluation
 Evaluation Procedures
 Using the Results of Evaluation
 Other Values and Uses of Evaluation Procedures

3. Tyler, Ralph W. (22 Apr. 1902-18 Feb. 1994), educator and principal designer of the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, was born Ralph Winfred Tyler in Chicago, Illinois, the
son of William Augustus Tyler, a physician and minister, and Ella Clara (Kimball) Tyler. Tyler
grew up in several small Nebraska towns where his father served as a clergyman in the
Methodist and, later, Congregationalist denominations, and he began high school in Crete,
Nebraska, when he was twelve. Despite working nine hours a day in a creamery, Tyler
graduated three years later; he subsequently attended Doane College in Crete, where he
majored in science and graduated with honors in 1921. That year he married Flora Volz,
whom he met at Doane. They had three children before their divorce in 1942.
After graduating from Doane, Tyler spent a year teaching high school science in Pierre,
South Dakota, to a markedly diverse group of students, some the children of unlettered
farm workers, others the children of civil servants. Fascinated by the challenge of teaching,
in 1922 he enrolled as a master's degree student in education at the University of Nebraska
and earned his master's degree in 1923. During and after his studies he taught at the
university's high school and supervised student teachers of science. In the spring of 1926
Tyler started work on a doctorate at the University of Chicago, studying with the educational
psychologist Charles Hubbard Judd.The following year,he completed his Ph.D. dissertation,
"Statistical Methods for Utilizing Personal Judgments to Evaluate Activities for Teacher-
Training Curricula,"which in its technical protocols advanced Judd's conviction that
schooling methods could be assessed by quantitative measurement.
At Chicago, Tyler also lent his services as a statistician to the Commonwealth Teacher-
Training Study directed by W. W. Charters, an education reformer who called himself a
"curriculum engineer" and sought to connect classroom subjects with the particular needs--
especially the vocational needs--of students. Tyler was influenced as well by George
Sylvester Counts, then a professor of educational sociology at the university and a liberal
political activist. As a newly minted Ph.D., Tyler accepted an appointment as associate
professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; in 1929 he joined
Charters at Ohio State University, serving as assistant director of the Bureau of Educational
Research and as the director of its division on accomplishment testing.
In the early 1930s as the Depression filled the public high schools with youth who would
previously have foregone the classroom for the workforce, the Progressive Education
Association devised a study to determine how curricula could be adapted to the demands
posed by a larger and more diverse cohort of students. Tyler, who combined proficiency
with statistical methods and a firm grounding in progressive theories of curriculum design,
was enlisted in 1933 to head the Evaluation Staff of what became known as the Eight-Year
Study. This national study involved thirty high schools, both public and private. Almost every
major accredited college in the nation agreed to accept the schools' evaluative records
instead of the scores of conventional college-entrance examinations, thus freeing the
schools to explore innovative courses of study.
Analyzing data from the Eight-Year Study, Tyler found that graduates of the thirty secondary
schools did as well in college as those who entered after standardized tests. He also found
that success in college could be predicted by competence in reading, writing, and just one

4. high school subject. Mathematical ability, it appeared, correlated with success only in
engineering and technical institutions. Influenced in part by the study's findings, James
Bryant Conant, Harvard's president from 1933 to 1953, persuaded the College Entrance
Examination Board to reformulate its main aptitude test so that the test would be
independent of any particular curriculum; today's SAT is the result.
In 1938 Robert Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, persuaded
Tyler to head the university's department of education and agreed to provide support for
Tyler's staff for the Eight-Year Study. At Chicago, Tyler also assumed the role of the
university examiner, and from 1948 to 1953 he served as dean of the university's Division of
Social Sciences.
At the university Tyler taught a course known as Education 360, for which he developed a
syllabus that he titled "Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instructions." In 1949 the
University of Chicago Press published the syllabus as a book with the same title, and it has
remained in print ever since. Basic Principles was a codification of what Tyler had learned
while working both with W. W. Charters at the Bureau of Educational Research and on the
Eight-Year Study, and it has had a lasting influence not only on curricula but on American
education in general. In what became known as the "Tyler Rationale," he argued that
curriculum design had to be organized around four basic questions:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
3. How can the purposes be organized?
4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
For Tyler, evaluation was not simply a way to measure a student's or teacher's success or
failure; it was an integral part of the educational process, ensuring an alignment between
the classroom experience and pedagogical objectives.
In 1954 Tyler became the founding director of a Ford Foundation-sponsored think tank
called the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, located in Stanford,
California. Over the next twelve years he built the center into a highly selective fellowship
program. While Tyler was at the center,Francis C. Keppel, the U.S. commissioner of
education in the Kennedy administration, asked Tyler to devise a plan for measuring the
nation's educational progress. Tyler conferred with two statisticians who happened to be at
the center, John W. Tukey of Princeton and Fred Mosteller of Harvard, as well as the
psychologist Clyde H. Coombs of the University of Michigan. The result came to be known as
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Even in its exploratory stages in the mid-1960s, the plan caused considerable controversy.
Many feared that it would allow the federal government to take control of the schools or
that the findings might lead to invidious comparisons among schools. Tyler insisted,
however, that it was not his aim to promote competition among schools, districts, states,
regions, or other political demarcations. He wanted no individual scores but instead

5. proposed that results be issued along a number of demographic aspects. In 1967 the
Carnegie Corporation financed the first administration of the assessment program; the
following year Harold Howe II, then U.S. commissioner of education, authorized funding
through the National Center for Educational Statistics. For the first time reliable information
about the educational attainments of American youth was made available. In the years
since, the NAEP has evolved into a legal federal obligation that has received continuing
bipartisan support.
Tyler retired from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1966, but in
1969 he became president of the System Development Foundation in San Francisco and
continued to be active on many other commissions, committees, and foundations, advising
on education in both the United States and a number of other countries. Indeed, in a career
spanning some six decades, Tyler served as an adviser on educational matter to seven
presidents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F.
Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter.
Having the democratic sympathies of the early Progressive educators, along with a
dedication to quantitative rigor and to the paramount importance of evaluation, Tyler
eludes easy categorization. His considerable influence no doubt reflected a preference for
results-oriented pragmatism over ideological doctrine. As an accomplished teacher himself,
he was also notable for the people to whom he served as a mentor, including James
Michener, Bruno Bettelheim, Daniel J. Boorstin, Theodore W. Schultz, Allison Davis, David
Riesman, Benjamin S. Bloom, and John I. Goodlad.
Tyler died in San Diego.

6. Bibliography
Tyler's personal papers are in the University of Chicago Archives. His single most influential
book remains Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949); a useful selection of his
writings can be found in George F. Madaus and Daniel L. Stufflebeam, eds., Educational
Evaluation: Classic Works of Ralph W. Tyler (1989). Biographical and bibliographical
information can be found in George A. Antonelli, "Ralph Tyler and the Curriculum Arena: A
Historical Interpretation" (Ph.D. diss., Southern Illinois Univ., 1972); John Goodlad,
"Introduction," in Ralph W. Tyler, Perspectives on American Education (1976); and Morris
Finder, Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught America to Teach (2004). For a
discussion of Tyler's contributions see Herbert M. Kliebard, "The Tyler Rationale
Revisited," Journal of Curriculum Studies 27 (1995): 81-8, and Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, An
Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Educational Research (2000). Obituaries are in
the New York Times, 23 Feb. 1994; theChicago Tribune, 24 Feb. 1994; and Phi Delta Kappan,
June 1994.