SMART Goals to Build Student-Ownership

I felt this intervention would be most valuable for students who seemed disengaged, were not turning in work, or who routinely turned in perfunctory, incomplete assignments. I identified several students fitting this description, as well as other students who demonstrated a broader range of skill sets and levels of engagement. I also asked for voluntary participation; several students were not willing to participate. I ended up choosing a single class on which to focus my inquiry, which included students from each of the above categories.

Planning

My project was inspired and informed by the articles listed below, which discuss the value of SMART goal setting as a strategy for empowering student agency. 

Resources 

• https://www.teachervision.com/blog/morning-announcements/strategies-to-support-student-goal-setting

• https://www.edutopia.org/article/framework-student-goal-setting

• https://udlforteachers.com/set-goals-to-support-students-developing-agency/

Baseline data

I collected data on each student’s rate of assignment completion for Units 1&2 (prior to intervention), including specifying “high quality” submissions. This distinction was meant to differentiate between assignments submitted simply to achieve a passing grade and those which display a greater level of effort (which I interpreted as a demonstration of some level of student ownership and pride in their work).

Measuring success

I collected the same data for Unit 3, which began around the same time as this intervention. I hoped to see an increase in the rate of high quality submissions, or those assignments which students appear to have approached with a sense of engagement, agency, and motivation to do their best work. I would take this as a sign that the student was taking ownership of their educational experience.

The goal of this project was to explore a potential strategy to improve student engagement and agency. By helping students establish their own goals, I intended to encourage an alternative framework to traditional compliance. Rather than completing assignments simply to achieve a passing grade, I intended to help students connect their classroom experience to their broader personal goals. In essence, I hoped that this strategy would help students come up with their own “why.” 

I do not, unfortunately, feel that this project was successful. While SMART Goals (and, more broadly, the concept of helping a student connect their personal goals to their education and day-to-day experience in school) may indeed be powerful methods for improving student educational outcomes and engagement, the strategy I employed to implement this in the classroom was ineffective. Though the sample size is small, the data does not show evidence of an increase in student engagement. 

If I were to adjust and revisit this practice, I would implement it on a larger scale, and incorporate it into instruction more intentionally. A larger sample size would have given more meaningful data, but it also would likely be more effective as a class-wide activity. In this iteration, I had one-on-one meetings with students on a roughly weekly basis, but these meetings had to be squeezed into other instructional time, rather than occurring at scheduled, predictable times, and making it part of our instructional routine.

Several small adjustments were made during the course of the project. The first version of the worksheet asked students to list “Personal” and “Academic” goals, but I quickly amended this, as it occurred to me that this distinction was contrary to the messaging that students’ personal goals and educational experience may be interrelated. I also digitized the worksheet as I realized that it would be valuable for students to have the ability to monitor their own progress toward their stated goals rather than only being reminded once per week.