Hilda Taba was an Estonian-American educator and curriculum theorist. She received degrees from Tartu University and Bryn Mawr College before earning her PhD from Teachers College at Columbia University. Taba was influenced by the ideas of John Dewey and focused on developing curriculum that encouraged critical thinking and problem solving skills in students. She believed curriculum should be tailored to students' developmental levels and connect new information to prior knowledge. Taba created a model for curriculum development that involved identifying student needs, defining objectives, selecting content and organization, choosing learning experiences, and evaluating outcomes. Her work emphasized teacher involvement and had a lasting influence on American education.

1. Hilda Taba
Hilda Taba (7 December 1902 – 6 July 1967) was an architect, a curriculum theorist, a
curriculum reformer, and a teacher educator.[1] Taba was born in the small village of Kooraste,
Estonia. Her mother’s name was Liisa Leht, and her father was a schoolmaster whose name was
Robert Taba. Hilda Taba began her education at the Kanepi Parish School. She then attended the
Voru’s Girls’ Grammar School and earned her undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy
at Tartu University. When Taba was given the opportunity to attend Bryn Mawr College in
Pennsylvania, she earned her Master’s degree. Following the completion of her degree at Bryn
Mawr College, she attended Teachers College at Columbia University. She applied for a job at
Tartu University but was turned down because she was female, so she became curriculum
director at the Dalton School in New York City.
Author
Taba was a student of John Dewey; she wrote her first dissertation after studying with him and
wrote a total of seven books. Her dissertation entitled Dynamics of Education: A Methodology of
Progressive Educational Thought (1932) focused on educating for democracy. She discussed
how children should learn how to relate to one another through democratic relationships. Two
other key ideas in her dissertation included how learning should involve dynamic, interrelated,
and interdependent processes and how educators are accountable for the delivery and the
evaluation of the curriculum. She also believed educational curriculum should focus on teaching
students to think rather than simply to regurgitate facts. After working with John Dewey,
Benjamin Bloom, Ralph W. Tyler, Deborah Elkins, and Robert Havinghurst, she wrote a book
entitled Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice (1962). Taba wrote:
One scarcely needs to emphasize the importance of critical thinking as a desirable ingredient in
human beings in a democratic society. No matter what views people hold of the chief function of
education, they at least agree that people need to learn to think. In a society in which changes
come fast, individuals cannot depend on routinized behavior or tradition in making decisions,

2. whether on practical everyday or professional matters, moral values, or political issues. In such a
society, there is a natural concern that individuals be capable of intelligent and independent
thought.
Taba explains a process for what educators should teach and how they can accomplish desired
student outcomes. In order for teachers to teach effectively, they need to understand the three
levels of knowledge. Taba lists them as facts, basic ideas and principles, and concepts. Too much
factual information is often presented very quickly, so students do not make connections between
the new information and the information stored in their brains. Hilda Taba explains how when
facts are simply memorized and not connected to previously known information, students forget
the memorized facts within approximately two years. Taba says basic ideas and principles should
be selected based on what information children are able to learn at their ages and based on what
information has scientific validity. The final level of knowledge, concepts, involves students
using knowledge from all content areas to predict outcomes or effects.
Approach
Because Taba died in her sixties while she was still an inspiring educator, her students continued
her work. Many of her students, who were members of the Institute for Staff Development in
Miami, used Taba’s ideas to create four thinking strategies known as the Taba approach. The
four strategies are concept development, interpretation of data, application of generalizations,
and interpretations of feelings, attitudes and values. Using all four strategies, the Taba
approach’s goal is to facilitate students in thinking more efficiently. Based on Taba’s methods,
“to think” means “helping them [students] to formulate data into conceptual patterns, to verbalize
relationships between discrete segments of data, to make inferences from data, to make
generalizations on the basis of data and to test these generalizations, and to become sensitive to
such corollary relationships as cause and effect and similarities and differences.”
Taba’s strategies for encouraging students to think focus on the teacher as the mediator rather
than the teacher as the lecturer. When utilizing the Taba approach, the teacher leads the
discussion but encourages the students to share their opinions and to relate their own ideas to
their peers’ ideas. The teacher must not judge the students by their answers and can neither agree
nor disagree with their responses. Phrases such as “That’s not quite what I had in mind,” are not
acceptable when using the Taba approach. Even positive phrases such as “Correct,” or “Now
you’re thinking,” are too judgmental for teachers to say. Along with verbal feedback, the teacher
should avoid giving nonverbal cues such as smiling during certain students’ responses and
scratching his or her head during other students’ responses. The teacher’s role in the discussion is
to encourage the students to expand on their classmates’ ideas or to ask students to clarify their
own ideas.
Legacy
Through Hilda Taba’s teachings and through her books, Taba greatly contributed to American
education.[2] [3] [4] In a 1970 survey of over two hundred educators who had participated in
training concerning the Taba approach, nearly all of the educators said the strategies were

3. valuable to their classrooms. Some of the teachers even reported that Taba’s approach to
teaching was “the most valuable teaching technique they had ever acquired.”
References
1. Craig Alan Kridel, Robert V. Bullough, Paul Shaker, Teachers and Mentors: Profiles of
Distinguished Twentieth-century Professors of Education, Taylor & Francis, 1996, ISBN
0-8153-1746-8, p59
2. Costa, Arthur L., Loveall, Richard A. (Fall 2002). The Legacy of Hilda Taba. Journal of
Curriculum & Supervision, 18, 56-62. Retrieved October 27, 2008, from Academic
Search Premier database.
3. Trezise, Robert L. (April 1972). The Hilda Taba Teaching Strategies in English and
Reading Classes. The English Journal, 61(4), 577-580, 593. Retrieved October 27, 2008,
from JSTOR database.
4. Crocco, Margaret Smith, Davis, O.L. (2003). Building a Legacy: Women in Social
Education, 1784-1984. In NCSS Bulletin, (pp. 57-58). Washington, D.C. Retrieved
October 27, 2008 from ERIC database.
Taba Model
The Taba Model for curriculum was developed by Hilda Taba. It was called a grassroots
effort as she advocated that the teachers themselves needed to be heavily involved in the
development of the curriculum. She developed seven steps that should take place when
developing curriculum.
1. Identify the needs of the students and the expectations of society.
2. Formulate the learning objectives.
3. The learning content will be selected based on the objectives.
4. How the content is organized needs to be decided upon by the teachers based on the
students.
5. The learning experiences need to be selected.
6. The organization of the actual learning activities needs to be determined.
7. Determine what is going to be evaluated and how to determine the effectiveness of the
curriculum.
Resources:
Frankel, Jack R., (1994). The evolution of the Taba Curriculum Development Project.
Social studies (84)n4, p. 149-159.
Parry, L., ( ). Innovation and Consolidation in Curriculum Development & Reform.

4. Strategies:
The Taba Model lends itself to the idea that thinking can be taught and activities should
be built for this. Some of the problems from using the Taba Model are:
1. Teachers not understanding the connection between the content, activities, teaching
methods and evaluation.
2. Keeping the resources up to date.
3. Maintaining training for new teachers on the method as well as support needed for
teachers as they must review the plan often.
Taba Model
Discussion by Fran Stikes, member of Curriculum Gals.
The curriculum approach that I will discuss is that of The Taba Model. Hilda Taba was a colleague of
John Tyler's whose idea of how to develop curriculum was there must be a definite order to the creation
of a curriculum. Taba's approach is based on the behavioral approach to curriculum design. It is based on
a step by step plan, with specific goals and objectives with activities that coincide and are evaluated with
the stated objectives. Taba developed a process for determining what needs to be taught to students and
included a guide on how to accomplish the outcomes from students (Costa & Loveall, 2002). Hilda Taba
believed that there must be a process for evalutating student achievement of content after the content
standards have been established and implemented. The main concept of this approach to curriculum
development is that teachers must be involved in the development of the curriculum. She believed that
the curriculum should be organized around generlized learning objectives which enables students to
discover principles that will enable them to be successfully (Middaugh & Perlstein, 2005).There are seven
major steps for developing a "grassroots approach to curriculum development. These steps are: 1)
diagnosos the needs of the students; 2) teacher defines objectives to be taught; 3) objectives and content
should match; 4) the content is sequenced according to learner's interest, achievement level;
5)instructional methods must keep students engaged; 6) learning activities are organized, remembering
the students being taught; and 7)students and teachers involved in evaluation procedures (Ornstein &
Hunkins, 2009).The development of curriculum based on the ideals of Hilda Taba are found in
curriculums used in many schools today. Taba stated that there are three groupings of objectives:
knowledge- what children need to understand; skills-children need to learn how to; and concepts-children
need to be (Ornstein & Hunkins, 2009). She was an advocated for students using prolem solving and
inquiry discovery techniques. The main idea to this approach is that the needs of the students are at the
forefront to the curriculum. The use of Taba's ideals of charting students status in learning and placing
students with similar learning in diverse groupings, what is now called cooperative learning groups. This
is an idea that needs to be considered if using the basic ideas of this approach in curriculum design.
References:
Costa, A. L.; Loveall, R.A.. The Legacy of Hilda Taba. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision,
Fall 2002, vol.18 issue 1, p56.
Middaugh, E.; Perlstien, D.. Thinking and Teaching in a Democratic Way: Hilda Taba and The
Ethos of Brown. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Spring 2005, vol. 20 issue3, p234-256.
Ornstein, A.C. & Hunkins, F.P.(2009). Curriculum Foundations, Principles, and Issues (5th ed.).
Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

6. Ralph W. Tyler
Ralph W. Tyler (1902–1994) was an American educator who worked in the field of assessment
and evaluation. He served on or advised a number of bodies that set guidelines for the
expenditure of federal funds and influenced the underlying policy of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965. Tyler chaired the committee that eventually developed the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). He has been called by some as "the father
of educational evaluation and assessment".[1][2]
Biography
Tyler was born on April 22, 1902, in Chicago to a professional family. His maternal grandfather
was in the Civil War and had been appointed as a judge in Washington by president Ulysses S.
Grant.[3] His father, William Augustus Tyler, had been raised in a farm, and had become a
doctor. Being deeply religious, there came a time when both of Tyler's parent thought that the
medical profession was too lucrative and that they should realign their priorities, at which point
his father became a Congregational minister.[4] As the sixth of eight children, Tyler grew up in
Nebraska where he recalled having to trap animals for food and wear donated clothing. He
worked at various jobs while growing up, including his first job at age twelve in a creamery.
Tyler went to college during the day and worked as a telegraph operator for the railroad at night.
He received his bachelor's degree in 1921 at the age of 19 from Doane College in Crete,
Nebraska. There was a time when Tyler wanted to become a missionary in Rhodesia, but he
declined because he had no formal instruction in ministry,[5] unlike his younger brother who had
gone to Yale Divinity School. However, later all the brothers pursued a career in the field of
education.[6]
His first teaching job was as a high school science teacher in Pierre, South Dakota. In 1923,
Tyler wrote a science test for high school students which helped him "see the holes in testing
only for memorization." He earned his master's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1923
and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1927.

7. His graduate work at the University of Chicago connected him with notable educators Charles
Judd and W. W. Charters, whose ideas influenced Tyler’s later work in curriculum development
and evaluation. Tyler’s first appointment was at the University of North Carolina in 1927, where
he worked with state teachers to improve curricula. Later in 1927, Tyler joined the faculty at
Ohio State University, where he refined his innovative approach to testing while working with
Charters, who was the director of the university's Bureau of Educational Research. Tyler helped
Ohio State University faculty to improve their teaching and increase student retention. He is
credited with coining the term, "evaluation," for aligning measurement and testing with
educational objectives. Because his concept of evaluation consisted of gathering comprehensive
evidence of learning rather than just paper and pencil tests, Tyler might even be viewed as an
early proponent of portfolio assessment.
Tyler headed the evaluation staff of the "Eight-Year Study" (1933–1941), a national program,
involving 30 secondary schools and 300 colleges and universities, that addressed narrowness and
rigidity in high school curricula. He first gained prominence in 1938 when he was lured by
Robert Maynard Hutchins from Ohio State University to the University of Chicago to continue
his work there. In 1953, Tyler became the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, a position he held until his retirement in 1967.
A decade after completing his work with the Eight-Year Study, Tyler formalized his thoughts on
viewing, analyzing and interpreting the curriculum and instructional program of an educational
institution in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949). This book was a bestseller
and has since been reprinted in 36 editions, shaping curriculum and instructional design to this
day. The book laid out a deceptively simple structure for delivering and evaluating instruction
consisting of four parts that became known as the Tyler Rationale:
1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? (Defining appropriate
learning objectives.)
2. How can learning experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these
objectives? (Introducing useful learning experiences.)
3. How can learning experiences be organized for effective instruction? (Organizing
experiences to maximize their effect.)
4. How can the effectiveness of learning experiences be evaluated? (Evaluating the process
and revising the areas that were not effective.)
In this book, Tyler describes learning as taking place through the action of the student. "It is what
he does that he learns, not what the teacher does" (Tyler p. 63).
Tyler advised President Truman on reforming the curriculum at the service academies in 1952
and, under Eisenhower, chaired the President’s Conference on Children and Youth. The Johnson
Administration used Tyler’s advice to shape many of its education bills and programs.
Tyler was named founding director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
in 1954 and held that position through 1967. The center was originally envisioned as a five-year
project, but later became an ongoing independent institution that would eventually claim to have
supported over 2,000 leading scientists and scholars. As a member of the governing board, Tyler

8. is credited with playing a critical role in determining the character of the center as a new type of
educational institution.
In 1964, the Carnegie Corporation asked Tyler to chair the committee that would eventually
develop the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1969. Before this time,
Tyler wrote, "no comprehensive and dependable data about the educational attainments of our
[young] people" were available.
Ralph Tyler also contributed to educational agencies such as the National Science Board, the
Research and Development Panel of the U.S. Office of Education, the National Advisory
Council on Disadvantaged Children, the Social Science Research Foundation, the Armed Forces
Institute, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Ralph Tyler also
served the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and helped
publish its Fundamental Curriculum Decisions in 1983.
Tyler formally retired in 1967 from the Center for Advanced Study, but he later became
president of the System Development Foundation in San Francisco in 1969, which supported
basic research in information sciences. He was also on many other commissions, committees,
and foundations. He was on the National Advisory Council on Education for Disadvantaged
Children, a panel to study SAT scores, and was also the chairman on the Exploratory Committee
on Assessing Progress on Education.
After his retirement, Tyler maintained an active life as a lecturer and consultant. He was a
visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and he advised on evaluation and
curriculum in Ghana, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel and Sweden. Tyler was reported to have
remained strongly optimistic about the future of education, right up until the end of his life. Tyler
died of cancer on February 18, 1994, at the St. Paul's Health Care Center in San Diego.
Tyler believed in the social role of religion and remained a member of the First Congregational
Church of Palo Alto, to which he paid contributions.[7] However, he refused to adhere to
fundamentalism.
References
1. International Honor Society in Education. Ralph W. Tyler 1976 KAPPA DELTA PI.
2. Jeri Ridings Nowakowski. On Educational Evaluation: A Conversation with Ralph Tyler
Educational Leadership.
3. Tjerandsen, Carl; Chall, Malca (1987). "Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught
America to Teach". University of California. Greenwood Publishing Group.
4. Tjerandsen, Carl; Chall, Malca (1987). "Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught
America to Teach". University of California. Greenwood Publishing Group.: "he and
Mother felt that they were probably worshipping Mammon rather than God, and prayed
over it and finally decided he had to give up medicine it was too profitable and become a
minister."
5. Tjerandsen, Carl; Chall, Malca (1987). "Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught
America to Teach". University of California. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 7: "In fact,

9. at one point I was quite tempted when I was a senior in college to go to Rhodesia as a
missionary, but decided not to. [Why?] Because I didn't think that I could do enough. I
hadn't been trained as a minister. I was only trained in science and math and that's what
I was a teacher for."
6. Tjerandsen & Malca (1987). p. 7
7. Tjerandsen, Carl; Chall, Malca (1987). "Educating America: How Ralph W. Tyler Taught
America to Teach". University of California. Greenwood Publishing Group. "Major
Influences in Ralph Tyler's Life and Career". To the question "Has religion remained a
potent force in your own life?", Tyler replied: "Yes. If by the sense of religion you mean
the view that the purpose of life is to help improve the nature of humankind and make
them more and more civilized, that every individual is worth preserving as a person
himself. Things of that sort which are part of the deep religious beliefs held by most of the
modern religions Judaism, Christianity, the best of some of the other religions. The
religious question is how to explain the world and what is the purpose of living?... I'm
still a member of the First Congregational Church at Palo Alto, and I pay contributions
to them, but I haven't been there for a long time.
1949
Ralph W. Tyler Publishes Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction
With the publication of Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Ralph W. Tyler
could not have suspected that his little book of only eighty-three pages would make such
an indelible mark on the field of curriculum theorizing, as well as on teaching practices in
the American public schools. In 1949, Tyler probably could not have predicted that in
time he would become the most prominent name in curriculum studies in the United
States, either. Yet, this is exactly the course his career would take through the mid-
twentieth century.
A student of Charles Judd at the University of Chicago, Ralph W. Tyler graduated with a
Ph.D. in 1927. Approximately ten years later, he went on to fill a prominent position on
the Eight Year Study as the Director of Research for the Evaluation Staff. In this position,
Tyler initially formulated his approach to education research which was grounded in the
belief that successful teaching and learning techniques can be determined as a result of
scientific study. By applying such methods during the Eight Year Study, Tyler soon
determined that evaluation of student behaviors proved to be a highly appropriate means
for determining educational success or failure. In Appraising and Recording Student
Progress, Tyler wrote:
Any device which provides valid evidence regarding the progress of students toward
educational objectives is appropriate...The selection of evaluation techniques should be
made in terms of the appropriateness of that technique for the kind of behavior to be
appraised (Tyler, cited in Pinar, p. 136).
Here we see the beginnings of Tyler's thoughts on the relevance of behavioral objectives
to the teaching process. In other words, Tyler came to believe that any learning objective

10. needed to be determined via student behavior in the classroom. In time, such objectives
would mark the cornerstone of curriculum decision-making and teaching strategies for
the American public schools.
A decade after completing his work with the Eight Year Study, Tyler was prepared to
formalize his thoughts on educational research and behavioral objectives with the
publication of Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. In this short text that was
originally the syllabus for one of his courses at the University of Chicago, Tyler
expanded upon concepts he began to formulate during the Eight Year Study. Specifically,
this work focused on the administrative aspects of the curriculum and called for the
application of four basic principles in the development of any curricular project. These
four basic principles include:
1. Defining appropriate learning objectives.
2. Establishing useful learning experiences.
3. Organizing learning experiences to have a maximum cumulative effect.
4. Evaluating the curriculum and revising those aspects that did not prove to be effective.
As a result of the basic principles, the role of the curricularist and teacher shifted to that
of scientist. In the development of any curriculum using the Tyler method, hypotheses are
to be established in direct relation to the expected learning outcomes for students. As the
curriculum is enacted, teachers and curricularists become scientific observers,
determining whether or not their curricular hypotheses are in fact demonstrated by
student behavior. Following the application of the curriculum, educators return to the
curricular plans to make any adjustments so as to ensure the proper outcomes in the
classroom. In this case, students do not participate on any level in the planning or
implementation of their education; rather, they solely assume the role of object of study.
Tyler's basic principle were widely welcomed in classrooms and curriculum texts across
the United States in 1949. Their functionality was well received and teachers generally
appreciated the ease with which they could be applied to the daily work curriculum
planning. It would be nearly thirty years, in fact, before any significant criticism were
waged against Tyler's work. And by that time, his approaches were so entrenched in
classroom practice that radical critiques of his approaches left few marked changes in the
implementation of curriculum in the public schools.
Source:
2. Pinar, W., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., and Taubman, P. (Eds.) (1995). Understanding
Curriculum. New York: Peter Lang.