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Against “Goals”
Rethinking the role of an outcome focus in teacher development
Every year, I’m required to set goals for myself as a teacher, and every year, I hate the exercise. It’s hard for me to say exactly why this is, but try as I might, I do not understand the obsession that organizations have with highly prescribed goal-setting. I suspect that the way most schools handle goal-setting is actually counterproductive to the project of education, at least if that project is one focused on getting educators to do their best work for their students. Here are some thoughts, offered solely as a reflection of me, and my motivational frame. Apologies in advance if your own way of being an educator/person gives you value in the kind of goal-setting process that I’m reacting to.
Declarative goals are an empty gesture
I have plenty of things that I am trying to work on over the course of the year. But something vital gets lost for me in the process of taking some subset of them and enshrining them as my goals, to be passed up to my supervisors for their consideration. Given that I have a half-dozen things that I could easily point to that might fit the definition of what is being requested when I am asked to set my formal goals, the two or three that I actually write down and send up the line are really just an exercise…
