This poster was originally published 9 June 2021.

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About growth goal setting

Growth goal setting involves striving to meet personally-set academic challenges, aiming to outperform one’s previous best efforts or performance.

Main findings

• Research shows that growth goal setting improves achievement and student engagement.
• Students who set growth goals are more likely to experience gains in aspirations, perseverance and homework behaviour.
• Growth goal setting bolsters outcomes, particularly for students of low socioeconomic backgrounds and with low prior achievement.
• Growth goal setting can be fostered through explicit teaching, provision of feedback and relevant content.

How to help students set growth goals

1. Understand growth goals: Growth goals are specific, challenging and focused on self-improvement.
2. Pick a type of goal to set: Goals should be adapted to the learning process: decide whether to set a learning, process or product goal. Also decide whether the goal should focus on the learning pathway or the learning outcome.
3. Define the goal: Effective growth goals are positive and measurable. How does the student know that they attained their goal?
4. Assess against previous experience.
5. Specify a timeframe: Short-term goals are more effective than longer-term goals. Goals can be nested in daily, weekly, monthly and long-term goals.
6. Break the goal down into components.
7. Monitor and assess progress: Measurement can be teacher- or student-led.
8. Seek help and feedback: Reflect on what can be done to progress towards the goal.
9. Determine if goal is achieved.
10. Set the next growth goal.