I do not believe that there is a one-size-fits-all set of teaching goals that an instructor can abide by. I believe that my teaching goals should be a function of my current audience, my current students. I currently teach mostly undergraduate freshmen in the physical sciences and my goals for teaching these students will be considerably different from my goals for teaching graduate students within the same field or, high school students aspiring to become physical scientists or, aspiring painters and sculptors.
For my current audience, I have a lot of teaching goals but those which I consider to be the most essential are;
To develop the ability to apply principles and generalizations already learnt in the fields of chemistry and materials science, to new problems and situations
We are training future professionals. Most of what we supply to our students in the classroom, are the fundamentals of the discipline; no employer would high a chemistry or materials science graduate for instance, to recite the elements in the periodic table and their properties, rather, a more plausible role would be to rationally design a material for a specific purpose, after considering the properties of the elements. Who really cares if you know Schrodinger's equation or Bloch's theorem if you cannot identify instances that require the application of either? While the first scenario represents rote learning, the second, represents a higher-order level of reasoning that requires considerable skill, practice, experimentation and research. I want my students to be able to possess these skills and be able to make connections between the properties of a material and its application, learnt theorems and applicable instances and the ways that I would achieve this would include presenting them with problems that require them to make rational designs based on what they have learnt.
To develop the ability to draw reasonable inferences from observations
This goal goes hand-in-hand with the first goal. The field of materials science can readily be divided into two sections: synthesis and characterization. A new material is only as good as its properties and what those properties can be used for. No one will invest in a very shiny, lightweight material that costs little or nothing to produce, if these properties cannot be put into practical use. In other words, the ability to predict the applications of a material after observing its properties is essential. This ability to infer can be expanded to include predictions or projections made from observations of chemical reactions, results of past literature or research on the subject matter.
To develop the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion
A lot of information is accessible to the current age and this makes it very easy to perpetuate falsities and misconceptions. The integrity of a scientist and their work, is determined by the correctness of the inferences or results that they present. I want my students to be able to distinguish fact from opinion when they search for information and I also want them to be able to present information that is factual. This can be achieved by training them to think logically , scrutinizing any information by applying the basic principles that they already know. This scrutiny would involve considering how a material has been experimentally proven to behave and considering the conditions under which the assertion was made. It entails rigorous research to find sufficient evidence that consolidates or supports the assertion and may include questioning the validity of the source itself. This in fact, is how meaningful learning should occur.