What is a "need?"

We talk about "needing" things all the time, but usually we are pretty vague about it really means to need something. Often what we call a need is simply a "want," something that we could do very well without, no matter how strong the desire. Similarly, although various fields in education and social services often talk about needs without defining the term. Therefore, the fields of performance technology and instructional technology have tried to develop a somewhat better defined concept of what a need is.

In this field a need is a gap between what is and what should be, between the actual situation and the situation that is the desired one. It is important to note that this is a gap in the results or the performance in those situations. This caveat distinguishes a need based on actual results from one based on inputs or resources. For example, consider the corporate trainer who receives a call from a production supervisor in the company with the news that the supervisors "needs" a training videotape on safety procedures. The supervisor could easily say that there is a gap in the situation between the actual situation (they have no videotape) and the desired situation (they should have a videotape). However, the videotape is not a desired result. It is an input to the situation or, perhaps, the solution to meeting the actual need.

The actual need, the one based on results, probably is found in the data on accidents and near misses in the production facility. The supervisor believes that there is a need for a safety training videotape because he or she believes that there are too many accidents taking place. The real need in this situation is the gap that exists between the actual accident rate and the desired accident rate. A videotape may be all or part of the solution to that need, or it may not be. Either way, by expressing the need in terms of results, we have taken the first step toward making a real difference by solving the underlying problem (the accident rate) rather than a superficial one (the lack of a safety videotape).

The same concepts apply to educational settings. It is often maintained that we all "need" computers in our classrooms. However, what is really needed is improved learning on the part of the students. For some subjects and in the hands of some teachers, computers in the classroom may actually help us meet that need. In other cases, they may not. In Ohio, there is a big push for the proficiency tests. A meaningful need might be found in the gap between student performance on these tests and how well they could or should be doing.