I periodically have my students write a paper that answers the question "Why am I here?" where they are to tell me what it is that brings them to my class everyday, what their expectations are of themselves and of me as their instructor. Additionally, I have them tell me what it is that motivates them to get out of bed and show up in the mornings.

The responses I get always start with "I want to get my GED" but they end with "I want to be a better role model for my child/children/brothers/sisters" or " I want to feel better about myself" or "I want people to respect me more." I don't do this as a shared group experience all the time - but have each student write and submit to me. This is one of the few writing assignments where I don't mark mechanical or grammatical errors and simply read for content and provide feedback as necessary. Occassionally, we'll discuss the goals that they've given and how important it is to understand that goal setting is a process. We'll take it to the "how do I get to where I want to be" steps.

Regards
Katrina Hinson


>>> "David J. Rosen" <djrosen at comcast.net> 07/17/06 5:54 PM >>>

Posted for Andy Nash:

Hi John,

I was surprised and heartened to read the following in your 7/10 response to Marie Cora:

. . .  we explored the goals of students and found that they usually expressed both an instrumental goal (“I want to get my GED, so I can get a better job” for example) and a transformational goal (I want to be the kind of person who has a high school education,” for example). Many programs ask students at intake to state their goals, which is probably helpful. But, it might be helpful to weave the goal-setting process into instruction as well. . . . 

My sense is that the focus in programs, so far, has been on the instrumental goals * those that are clear, measurable, functional, etc. Since I’m interested in the “transformational” goals, particularly in the sense of helping adults see themselves as “the kind of person” who reads a newspaper or “the kind of person” who understands (and speaks up about?) the decisions that are being made about their lives, I’ve been dismayed by this trend toward the immediately practical. 

While I agree that goal-setting needs to be an on-going process infused into instruction, I don’t think transformational goals are likely to be identified by students through an individual process. I have only seen individuals name the kinds of concrete items that appear on the goal lists being developed in many programs.  It seems to me that only when goal-setting is done as a group, and when students are invited to discuss what their concerns are, or what kind of person they want to  be, or how they want their lives to be different after participating in the program, that we’ll be able to start surfacing those transformational goals. Can you please comment on this, and on how you saw those transformational goals expressed during your research?

Andy Nash
New England Literacy Resource Center/World Educaton


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