Step Into Student Goal Setting

As we find ourselves immersed in resetting and reimagining schools for student directed learning, Chase Nordengren provides us with current research on student motivation while offering educators practical strategies for student goal setting. Through Setting the Path: Using Goals to Drive Learning for Students, practitioners are offered a well grounded WHY for this practice along with essentials for measuring learning, supporting autonomy, developing a classroom culture of "academic press", and "One-on-One" conversations, all which empower learners as well as teachers on this journey. This is a tool that can be used by administrators with staff to shift the paradigm, by classroom teachers to reflect and rethink their positions on student directed learning and open the door for a school to ground themselves in how humans learn. Let's get started!

Chase Nordengren's book carefully balances a grounding in research related to goal setting (with gentle reminders not to rely on a single study) with practical suggestions for how to turn that research into classroom practice. To support students increase their use of goal setting practices and move towards greater autonomy of learning, teachers may need to engage with similar strategies: to that end Chase also provides opportunities for teachers to reflect, plan, and act on the recommendations within each chapter. This book provides a wealth of tools for teacher learning communities to engage with over an extended period of time to address an important teaching practice that will support student learning.

In his book, Chase Nordengren reminds us about the power of intentionality and how we can use goal-setting to empower our students to become agents in their own learning. With a combination of practical application and thoughtful approaches, he helps re-cast goal-setting from an often used strategy, to a pedagogy that ensures the centering of our students. It's a perfect read for anyone who is ready to re-ignite purposeful learning.

What if the best parts of our assessment and teaching practices were focused around the humans they are intended to most impact? In other words, what if our assessment practices were student-centered by design? What if we could live these values in our classrooms; learn through empathy so we can understand the lived experience of each and every student; begin the learning journey by centering students as active partners; co-create aspirational outcomes; and liberate students to build their own pathways to achieve their visions? Step Into Student Goal Setting is an opportunity to do just that. Nordengren's book offers tangible steps all educators and students can take as they unlearn disempowering educational habits and roles, opting instead for a student-powered system that elevates student involvement and shared decision making that gives students a stake in their own future.