Experience-Based Objectives

Educational objectives focus practice and dictate what happens in US classrooms. Currently, instructional objectives are privileged in K–12 schools over other forms of objectives, thereby marginalizing the implementation of some educational perspectives. We argue that objectives should be expanded to attend to the student experience, promoting a variety of practices to utilize in classroom operations. In so doing, we suggest an addition to the network of objectives: experience-based objectives. We review the history of objectives before presenting experience-based objectives as embodying 5 major shifts in thinking, and as actualized through four criteria.