While chapter two, and its focus on front-end analysis, tells us we need more specific and measurable goals for student success, chapter three teaches us exactly how to develop a goal analysis and create goals that are significant to the students within the actual learning environment. The chapter outlines how to create the goals so they are written in terms of the learning steps and not the teaching steps. Often, when I write goals I make this fundamental mistake, and I didn't even realize I was doing it. Writing goals that are specific to the kind of learning that will occur is the first major step in conducting a goal analysis. Dick, Carey, and Carey identify four specific domains of learning. Each with a specific needs for goal analysis and writing. The four domains are verbal information, intellectual skills, psychomotor skills, and attitudes, Verbal information asks a student to recall information (state, list, describe). Intellectual skills require students to do something (solve, apply rules, problem solve). Psychomotor skills also require students to do something, but this time the activity must be physical (throw a ball, run a mile). Finally, attitudes are long term goals that may or may not be immediately measurable. Since I am a math teacher, my focus in this chapter was on the verbal and intellectual domains of learning. For verbal learning, a sequential list of the information to be recalled will suffice, but for intellectual goal analysis the process is much different. The diagram above shows one of the options for intellectual goal analysis. In each of the boxes an action that the student will perform is outlined. Each box, must contain a verb that tells what the student will be doing. This is a basic listing of the steps that will be required for students to meet the intellectual goal. These steps, and the size of the steps, is determined, in large part, by the analysis of learners and their background content knowledge. Perhaps the most important element is the element that makes these steps student centered. It is not about what the teacher is going to do to ensure the learning, it is about what the students will be doing in order to accomplish the goal. For two step equations, my goal analysis may look like this:
This approach to analyzing the goals I am setting for my students has really given me a new approach in planning my lessons. I am no longer looking at it from the perspective of the teacher, but from the perspective of the student. My students write the objective down daily because I think it is important that they know what they are expected to do. Looking at it from this angle has given me better objectives for them to write. It has also alleviated some of the questions. For example, if students know that they are using order of operations to solve equations, they can relate that to the previous unit. If I just say they will be able to solve two step equations, they start off knowing its completely knew, so how in the world will they ever be able to learn it. I have seen a shift in my students believing they will be able to do the math. It is really exciting, as a teacher, to such a big shift, with such a small change.