The Meaning of Organization
The Meaning of Organization
Why organization matters
- Changes in thinking, habits, concepts, attitudes, and interests develop slowly, over months and years.
- Change is the cumulating of educational experiences that reinforce each other: the cumulative effect.
- Organization affects teaching efficiency and how much learners actually change.
Two relationships
- Vertical: relationship over time, from grade to grade.
- Horizontal: relationship across subjects at the same level.
- Cumulative effect = vertical plus horizontal.
With objectives set and experiences selected, Tyler’s third question follows: how can these educational experiences be effectively organized? Organization is not housekeeping. It is what turns a pile of separate experiences into learning that lasts, and a curriculum that ignores it wastes much of the good work that went before.
Why organization matters
The reason is that real change takes time. Changes in a learner’s ways of thinking, fundamental habits, operating concepts, attitudes, and interests all develop slowly. Educational objectives take concrete shape over months and years, not single lessons. No one experience produces them.
So change is the cumulating of educational experiences. When experiences are organized to reinforce each other, they add up to a real change in the learner. This adding-up is called the cumulative effect, and it is the whole point of organizing. Because of it, the organization of learning experiences affects both the teaching efficiency and the degree to which changes are actually brought about among learners. Poorly organized experiences, however good individually, do not accumulate.
The build-up of organized experiences that reinforce each other into lasting change
Because changes in thinking, habits, and attitudes develop over months and years, no single experience produces them. Organization makes experiences add up rather than fade.
Vertical and horizontal relationships
The cumulative effect comes from two kinds of relationship between experiences, and a curriculum needs both.
A vertical relationship runs over time, from grade to grade. Teaching geography in grades 6 and 7 can build greater depth and breadth in geographic concepts and skills, because the later year builds on the earlier one. Vertical organization stacks experiences through time.
A horizontal relationship runs across subjects at the same level. Teaching geography and history in grade 6 can let the two reinforce each other and give greater unity of ideas across the subjects. Horizontal organization links experiences happening side by side.
The cumulative effect is the result of both the vertical and the horizontal aspects together. When the two are missing, the opposite happens: experiences in conflict nullify each other, and a lack of connection between subjects produces compartmentalized learning that the learner cannot apply in real life.
| Relationship | Direction | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical | Over time, grade to grade | Geography in grades 6 and 7 |
| Horizontal | Across subjects, same grade | Geography and history in grade 6 |
Vertical runs over time grade to grade; horizontal runs across subjects at one level
Geography across grades 6 and 7 is vertical; geography and history in grade 6 is horizontal. The cumulative effect comes from both together; conflict or disconnection nullifies it.
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