The purpose of this book is to promote discussion about educational objectives generally and objectives in the teaching of educational psychology in particular. To this end, Part 1 contains a review of the literature concerned with these two subjects, and also reports on investigations into the views of British students, teachers, college staffs and educational psychologists on the question of the objectives of educational psychology in teacher preparation. A comprehensive bibliography is provided. A further important section of Part 1 proposes a method of systematizing teaching objectives, and suggests a heuristic device for the generation of objectives at different levels of conceptual generality and complexity of learning. An example of this model in the field of educational psychology is presented, which illustrates the general approach to the generation of teaching objectives and proposes a specific approach to the production of teaching objectives in educational psychology. In Part 2 a selection of readings in the fields of objectives and educational psychology provides the reader with some of the key source material referred to in Part 1.
As well as being a valuable and stimulating addition to the current debate on the specifying of educational objectives, the arguments in this book about the role of educational psychology in teacher preparation raise some fundamental questions for those concerned with teacher education.