The Role of the Goal: Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions of Goal-Setting

Linda C. Thornton, The Pennsylvania State University

Kristina R. Weimer, The Pennsylvania State University

Goals and goal-setting are important to planning, assessment, and reflection in teaching. According to Schunk (2012), “Goal setting involves establishing a standard or objective to serve as the aim of one’s actions” (p. 138). Pre-service teachers are often asked to establish goals for their teaching development, instruction and students’ learning. However, little research has provided insight into pre-service teachers’ understanding of goals and goal-setting, nor how they learn to set goals for teaching and learning. Therefore, the purpose of this embedded case study (Yin, 2014) was to examine music education pre-service teachers’ value, understanding, use and development of goal-setting within a field-based methods course.

Building upon previous research in goal-setting we, as course instructors, developed assignments and course meetings aimed toward growing students’ understanding in goal-setting. These practices were carefully designed to elicit meaningful, self-selected goals by students, based in Schunk’s (2012) definition of goals as specific, proximal, and difficult. As the course progressed, students engaged in peer teaching as well as a five-week sequential field experience. Students initially selected goals through reflection on past effective teachers, course discussion, and discourse regarding their own teaching experiences. As the semester progressed, students could adapt, drop, or maintain goals through their reflection on their goals and their teaching. The data for the main case (instructor perspective) consisted of these student assignments and teaching, as well as the instructors’ journals that were kept throughout the semester.

However, feeling that our interpretation of the students’ development was incomplete, we engaged some of the students in the class as co-researchers in this investigation. In addition to the coursework, the students responded to journal prompts regarding goals and goal-setting in the course, in other courses, and in their lives. As co-researchers, these students inductively coded their assignments and journals for meaningful themes. This student perspective was the embedded case, as Yin (2014) described, “within a single case, attention is also given to a subunit” (p. 53).

In this session, we will share the themes and implications identified in the study. For example, we found that the students seem to effectively identify appropriate goals, but the interaction of pre-set goals and experiences is complex. Further, goal-setting perhaps limits student growth if goals lose fluidity. The more structured the goal, the more the students seemed to be confined by the goals in their planning and delivery. The near proximal goals received the most careful attention by students, but we believe the far-proximal goals seemed to be most meaningful to them.

In addition, we will explain how we have changed our own practice in the course based on our research. We will offer suggestions as to how we can help our pre-service teachers move toward becoming reflective practitioners, addressing one mission of the Music Teacher Socialization ASPA: “the undergraduate student’s transformation from student to teacher through program components and experiences.” Understanding how students think about goals and enact them in their pre-teaching experiences can inform the discussion regarding how best to help students become reflective practitioners.

References

Schunk, D. (2012). Learning theories: An educational perspective. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Yin, R. (2014). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.