Module 3Establishing Goals and Expectations

Learning Intentions

1.Understand the basics of goal theory.

2.Understand the power of intermediate outcomes and monitoring.

3.Reflect on your own approach to goal setting and identify ways to improve.

Success Criteria

You can articulate some conditions that make goals effective.

You are able to review your method of pursuing current goals and streamline your efforts this year.

You are able to identify changes for the next academic year regarding your use of goals.

How goals work

Goals and motivation

Big Ideas

Just as sports teams do not walk out onto a field and 'wing it', nor should educators. They analyze the opposition's strengths and weaknesses and plan how to respond to them.

1. Goals, when used well, harness the energy of a team to work towards a prioritised area for improvement. They motivate focused action. Without a goal focus, there is, by definition, no leadership.

2. The sports analogy helps us to understand that goals are not magic. Making progress requires that we work to understand why we are getting the current results, and to problem solve about how to change that and get a better result.

3.The game highlights the

-need for analysis of where you are now and where you want to be - clarity of goal

-need for analysis of strengths and weaknesses - capability of your team

-need for real time monitoring and continual adjustment of short-term targets to reach the long-term goals.

Big Ideas

Goals must be few and clear so teams have the space and time (capacity) to focus on improving one or two areas. They also need to be committed to the goal, so they must see the goal as a worthy area to prioritise.
Effective goals set up an appropriate disparity between the current reality and the desired state – not too big (as to make the challenge unachievable) and not too small (as to make the target trite). By and large, if there is commitment to the goal, the higher the goal, the higher the performance.
If people are clear about a school's priority to improve, they can put in more time and energy to resolving problems that impede progress in that area.
It is important that schools narrow their focus to work on a part of the goal at a time. The goal may be to improve written language, but in junior classes getting sentences written with a full stop and capital letter may be their first focus. Once that is achieved the next bite at the goal is taken
The consequences of taking small bites at the goal are teachers and students have an increased sense of purpose, make progress in the targeted area, which in turn motivates them to keep problem solving and improving. As they see results their sense of efficacy is increased as is that of the students. There is then more team cohesion and satisfaction.

Goals and targets

Big Ideas

Senior leaders in schools generally set the goals, usually in consultation with staff so that there is agreement on what is important to pursue.
Goals set the direction e.g., improve written language results; improve HSC results.
These goals need to be refined into more specific targets for different areas of the school or different departments based on the analysis of data pointing out student needs.
Targets are specific, measurable and timebound e.g., improve HSC results in band 6 by 10%. The higher the target, the higher the achievement if everyone can focus on that target and truly put time and energy into pursuing it.
These targets need to be translated into a team's target e.g., "what is the maths department's job in reaching this HSC target?"; "what is the junior department's job to help the school reach its written language target?"
These targets should help drive each teacher's target e.g., what improvement do I need to get in my results to help achieve this target? And this can cascade to students also - what do I have to do to reach my HSC/written language target?
The key is that good goals motivate united and coherent action.
There are too many goals and, therefore, team members do not know them, are not committed to them and are not putting time and energy into pursuing them. The goals are not driving prioritized action.

Mapping the theory for improvement

Theory for Improvement

Big Ideas

Annual goals should be seen as steps towards the vision of what you want for your students. In the example above improving written language is viewed as a step that will help improve the literacy of students, which in turn will contribute to the development of students that fit the school's vision or 'leaver profile' which is usually a lofty goal such as "students who are highly literate, numerate, creative and self-managing learners".
In the example of a theory for improvement above there is also an annual goal of improving lateness to school, because the school has a problem with lateness and theorizes that if students are not at school on time, it is even more challenging to get them to higher levels of literacy. It is another priority problem that this school sees as critical for success.
Agreeing on a few key improvement strategies is critical for school-wide improvement. Improvement is realised by coherent action across teams.
Monitoring of short-term indicators is possibly the most powerful strategy. Higher performing schools are characterized by tight monitoring of student outcomes and reacting to the outcomes in the goal area. In the case above, a key strategy would be to have someone take charge of monitoring the daily lateness data and feed it back to staff at regular intervals, and then to problem solve in reaction to that data. If raising band 6 HSC results was the target, the team would have to come up with indicators that would help give assurance that each department was going to have more students reach that goal by the end of the year. Indicators might include the number of students handing in all assignments on time or to a certain level.
Goals are not achieved without hard work and persistence. It is these short-term indicators of success (sometimes called 'quick wins' or 'small wins' that motivate people.

Four ways to set targets

Target setting

Big Ideas

Goals and targets should be focused on the students, not the adults. What the adults need to do to improve outcomes (e.g., be clearer on expectations for written language and punctuality; provide professional development for teachers on how to teach written language), are strategies. Once you have decided on your priority goals, there are four key ways to set measurable targets.
First - 'Finger in the air'. This is basically just making an arbitrary percentage increase such as "Let's go for a 20% improvement". This is often used in schools and is powerful if the main goal conditions are met (the goal is clear, people are committed to it and have the capacity in that they are freed up to concentrate on it).
Second, 'Extrapolation'. Calculating from the baseline (current performance) to the desired performance in a few years time, and then using that figure to set annual targets e.g., "we are at 40% this year and we want to be at 70% in three years time so we need to make a 10% improvement per year".
Third - 'National, state or regional benchmarks'. For example, if a school is performing below national average or state averages setting that as a target may be a good start. Of is similar schools in similar socio-economic neighbourhoods are scoring higher on average, using that as a benchmark may be a good start.
Finally, 'Real names and numbers'. The real students performing below expectations are counted and they become the 'target' when the numbers are converted to a percentage e.g., 50 out of 200 students are not performing to expected levels. This might mean we want a 25% increase but when we look at the students we calculate that it would be challenging but realistic to try for 15%. Then part of the strategy is to focus on lifting the performance of these particular students.

What goes wrong?

Big Ideas

Most schools have too many goals and targets and they are merely a compliance exercise as opposed to a motivational exercise. Even if you have to have three or four goals, you should prioritise one or two to work on as a school, because there is little or no motivational effect when there are multiple goals. The whole point of goals is to narrow your focus and create space to problem solve on one or two fronts at a time.
You cannot pursue a goal if you do not know what it is. Middle leaders often do not know the goals or are not really part of the team that decided to pursue the goals, yet they are expected to lead teachers. Without their commitment, it is difficult to get shifts in teacher behaviour so it is wise for senior leaders to work with middle leaders and teachers in creating the goals and the plans for how to pursue them.

Conclusion

1. Goals are about motivation. There is not leadership without a strong goal focus. Leaders must know their goals and how they going about pursuing them and be able to communicate that clearly to staff throughout the year.

2. For goals to motivate a team effort, they must be clear, there must be commitment to pursuing them and there must be the capacity (time) to focus on them. It takes hard work and persistence to achieve a goal.

3. Feedback on progress towards the goal is what motivates ongoing effort. A key strategy towards achieving a goal, therefore, is the ability to feed back to the team progress made on small parts of the goal ('small wins').

Group Task

Review your goals and discuss as a team:

Do you really have one or two student-focused goals or targets, or do you have many? What are they?

Do you have a clear theory for improving (i.e., agreed strategies) in those areas?

Do you have a way of gaining regular feedback on progress towards the goal e.g., at least every term?

Considering the above, write in no more than100 words, what are the next steps for your leadership team in pursuing your goals this year?

After attending the course facilitator's webinar submit assignment (only one submission per school is required)