The power of goal-setting

⦁ Short-term goals can help students to structure the learning process. This means that students get more aware and selective about what they need to learn and how to make the desired progress.
⦁ Goals provide extra incentives. They direct students’ actions and make them more motivated to pursue the momentum.
⦁ They can help students feel in control of their learning and so motivate them to do better.
⦁ Goal setting dramatically increases learning gains. Research has found that effective goal-setting practices help students focus on specific outcomes, encourage them to seek academic challenges, and make clear the connection between immediate tasks and future accomplishments (Stronge & Grant,2014).

The steps to use the goal-setting process in your class

1. Clarify the objective of goal setting

Goal-setting is not just about shooting goals and making progress. But, it has to do more with helping students to excel outside schools, to learn how to manage their plan, and time, and to get more organized.

So, goal-setting is a matter of students’ reflection, decision, and choice. You can help out with your pieces of advice and guidance, but your students should do the WORK on their own regularly.

Besides, goal-setting is an ongoing process that requires students’ commitment. Such a process does not only involve undertaking the planned actions to accomplish the targetted goals, but it also requires overcoming the difficulties that may interfere with such a process.

So, your students won’t engage in setting their own goals unless they see the relevance of doing so. They should understand that it pays off to spend their time and expend their effort on setting and working to obtain their goals.

That kind of awareness is likely to motivate them and reenergize them whenever they feel upset or unable to reach their goals.

2. Help students define their goals clearly

Explain first what your learning expectations are for this school year and how these are related to your teaching objectives.

Try to outline the basic skills and knowledge your students need to learn your content clearly and simply (See the example below).

Second, If your students are setting goals at the beginning of the school year you can help them with some prompting questions to promote their reflection on their learning needs such as:
⦁ What are the things that you’re struggling with at school?
⦁ What difficulties do you find in learning this subject?
⦁ What should be done to fix that?

When your students set goals after having their work assessed you can ask them the following questions:
⦁ What do you notice about your work?
⦁ What still are you missing?
⦁ How can you improve future performance?
⦁ How can your teacher help?

Then, explain the characteristics of the goals that work best. The goals should be:
– clear and specific, describing concrete outcomes in detail;
– measurable, describing the outcome in terms that can be evaluated;
– achievable, reasonable for the student’s age and strengths;
-realistic
-time-bound, should have a stated completion date.

After setting their goals, students work in pairs to discuss why these are appropriate goals for them. They can also help each other focus more or prioritize important goals for them then write them on cards and share them with the rest.

In the case of elementary levels, you may list from time to time a set of potential goals and ask every student to commit themselves to a particular subset while specifying the amount of effort they need to make.

3. Set your framework

To use goal-setting methods effectively with your students you should have a framework. That is a firm structure for students to follow to set their goals and track their progress.

So, you need to plan:
⦁ How your students will record the details of their set plans. Are they going to use their portfolios, goal-setting logbooks, etc?
⦁ How and when students need to evaluate their progress. Using reflective worksheets, journals, etc? weekly/monthly, etc?
⦁ The kind of ongoing feedback you will provide and how. Are you going to use goal-setting conferences with students?
⦁ The motivational method to boost students’ commitment to goals. Are you going to use contracts (detailing agreements about what is to be done from the beginning to the end of a term/course/project) with individual students or with the whole class? Do you intend to reward students who accomplished their goals? If yes, how?

When setting your framework, be sure to focus on the four elements (Usher & Kober,2012) that make goal setting successful:

1. Provide students with opportunities to build competence. This is by helping them focus on overcoming personal challenges to learn as much as possible instead of hitting specific targets or avoiding failure (Wolters,2004).
2. Give them control or autonomy by supporting them to set their goals and figure out the steps to get there.
3. Cultivate interest. To achieve this, encourage students’ involvement in setting their goals and make the process part of the day-to-day instruction, making individual contact with each student.
4. Alter their perceptions of their abilities. This is through boosting their confidence: supporting them to focus on their learning needs, nudging them to take action to progress, and celebrating their accomplishment.

After setting your goal-setting framework, explain it to your students. Demonstrate how they need to go throughout the process and provide them with the necessary resources.

4. Engage students in the goal-setting process

To build goal-setting practices in your class and make students more engaged in you need to make the process both easy for them to understand and interesting to accomplish.

How?

Show your students the learning path for meeting them and provide the necessary incentives.

Students need to decide what actions are required to reach their goals. For instance, if a student is struggling with vocabulary in writing, he can include tasks, assignments, study behaviours, and other actionable steps to get to the goal of developing vocabulary. Then, he’ll put his actions into a schedule, setting a timeline for reaching his goal.

Hence, goals can get tough and overwhelming to accomplish if students take too many actions or steps to take.

Therefore, help your students set specific short-term goals that usually last no longer than four to six weeks. This will help you do your regular weekly check-ins to revise their progress and provide your feedback.

Besides, show your students how to break down tasks, and assignments into small steps (See the example below) and how to assign deadlines to these.

Assigning deadlines depends on what the student already knows and understands, what he needs to know, and practise about the subject matter. So, more time is required for tasks students are struggling with.

To support our students to accomplish their goals we also need to teach them to chart their improvement regularly.

You can provide your students with a daily/weekly checklist to identify completed actions. You can also use reflective worksheets or journals to encourage them to reflect on their learning at the end of a lesson/unit and identify evidence of learning.

Visualizing knowledge is not just fun, but it’s also a creative way to let students show their learning achievements and gaps. So, you can ask them to draw mind maps/graphs/posters showing their progress towards particular learning goals or assessment targets.

Conferring regularly with students is also an effective way for students to voice out their needs and concerns. During such conferences, you can address your questions to find out about where they are, where they’re going, and how they should close the learning gap.

Allowing such opportunities for communication can motivate students to think of solutions and better alternatives to reach their goals.

5. Provide constructive feedback

To use goal-setting as a tool to boost students’ learning, teacher feedback needs to increase students’ capability and confidence in obtaining their goals.

Ongoing feedback should be provided through regular check-ins with individual students. This will support you to make goal-setting part of the classroom culture.

It will also show your students how valuable is the process to their learning process, thereby helping them overcome any feeling of discouragement to reach their goals.

When you check in with your students about their goals, try to understand their needs to help them set goals that are specific, measurable, and connected to their learning. Based on the students’ work you can also define the kind of effort required to meet their goals.

Also, be sure to make goal-setting conversations simple, targetted, short-term, and part of your daily instruction.

A goal-setting conversation should help students recognize that they have some control over their learning process. You can help them find the right goals based on the skills students are missing and suggest the necessary steps to reach a particular goal leaving the selection of the goal itself in the hands of students.

Even with young students who are less capable of self-reflection, providing them with a set of goals to choose from can help them get more self-aware and feel accountable for their learning.

The process of goal-setting may seem overwhelming at first. Yet, through regular practice, you will make effective use of it. So, it’s necessary to keep on reflecting on how it needs to apply to your students and get ongoing feedback from them.

References
Stronge, J.H. & Grant, L.W. (2014). Student achievement goal setting. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Usher, A. & Kober, N. (2012). Student motivation: An overlooked piece of school reform. Washington, DC: Center for Education Policy.
Wolters, C.A. (2004). Advancing achievement goal theory: Using goal structures and goal orientations to predict students’ motivation, cognition, and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96 (2), 236-250.