How can setting SMART goals lead to greater self efficacy and motivation for my students?

Kirsten Rude


Seminar Title


How can setting SMART goals lead to greater self efficacy and motivation for my students?


Concept/Strategy

Focus of the Research


Growth Mindset, SMART Goals, Self-Efficacy, Student Data Collection


Grade Level

Research Was Applied


2nd Grade


Relevant Grade Level

Connections


Elementary


Discipline

Where Research Was Applied


Mathematics


Additional Discipline Areas

I see Application to


Reading


Invitation/Commercial


What is the one trait that you wish for your students to have at the end of your year together? Did you say self motivation to be a lifelong learner? Then this is the session for you! Come and learn about the research behind self-efficacy and students tracking their personal goals and be prepared to share some ideas that have worked for you. This is a session where the research was indicating wonderful ideas, but the “real-world” classroom provided many unforeseen challenges. Come and learn the factors that influence the climate of the classroom in this day and age and together we can brainstorm and discuss ways to best instill the self-efficacy and drive that we want in our students.


Abstract


The question leading my research is “How can setting SMART goals lead to greater self-efficacy and motivation for my students?”. Through my research, I discovered the following things are needed to foster a classroom of greater self-efficacy: 1) Introduce and improve on their growth mindsets, 2)build on their self-efficacy through positive and specific feedback through one on one conferencing with the student, and 3) work on SMART goals individually with students and record results. Some skills that I worked on was fostering and modeling my own idea of growth mindset for my students. Assessment of self-efficacy, growth mindset, and SMART Goals included 1) self-reflection journals on growth mindset and the students’ thinking, 2) teacher observation of self-efficacy in the classroom with real-world challenges and experiences, 3) utilizing exit tickets to gage growth mindset based on academic instruction. Through my research I have learned how to foster a student’s growth mindset through setting SMART Goals and meeting with them in independent conferences. Students were able to make some gains in based on their SMART goal that they chose. Meeting with my whole class independently proved to be challenging with the time we had available so I chose a small group of students to meet with to get more in depth data. I also found it too challenging for my class to be able to get enough time to journal on a weekly basis and doing exit tickets proved to be too timely as well. In meeting with students one on one, they seemed very happy to have the time with me and they seemed to increase in most of their scores. As a result, I am finding that my research had amazing ideas on how to improve students’ self-efficacy; but it is just not feasible in the amount of time given in a school day, only one teacher in a classroom of 27 students, and in a setting where the students are mostly dependent to complete tasks.