A proposed taxonomy of educational objectives to develop professional teaching competencies for the distributive education teacher-coordinator

Because of the rapidly expanding distributive education program, distributive teacher educators have had to re-evaluate their curricula to be sure that graduates are adequately prepared to perform their job responsibilities as teacher-coordinators. The research study entitled, "A Proposed Taxonomy of Educational Objectives to Develop Professional Competencies of the Distributive Education Teacher-Coordinator," was conducted to provide a basis for curriculum construction which could be used at the college level in pre-service and/or in-service training for persons preparing to become distributive education teacher-coordinators.

The specific objectives of the study were: (1) to construct educational objectives to assure the development of professional teaching competencies needed by distributive education teacher coordinators; and (2) to classify the educational objectives into the cognitive domain as set forth in the Taxonomy of Education Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain.¹ Professional teaching competencies developed in the research study, “A Competency Pattern Approach to Curriculum Construction in Distributive Teacher Education,” were used as a basis for constructing the educational objectives.²

Before developing the educational objectives, the writer conducted a review of the literature for guidelines to be used with the construction of the objectives. The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain and other literature regarding the taxonomic system of classification was studied before attempting to classify the objectives into categories which would aid the teacher-educator in recognizing the level of performance desired.

A total of 108 educational objectives to assure the development of professional teaching competencies needed by distributive education teacher-coordinators was developed and classified into a taxonomy in this study.

¹Benjamin s. Bloom, (ed.), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (New York: David McKay Co., 1956).

²Lucy Crawford, "Professional Teaching Competencies of the Distributive Education Teacher Coordinator." (Mimeographed.)