It is soon the start of a new school year for students in Australia. In other parts of the world, the year continues after a short break for Christmas while New Year festivities are just around the corner for those observing the lunar new year. The start of the year is considered an excellent time to reflect on key ideas that matter to our learning and potential for success. But does this equate with goal-setting?
Many students (and teachers) will begin the calendar year with a goal-setting activity. They will take time to reflect in class on what they hope to achieve in the twelve months that follow. They will, for the most part, set achievement goals linked to their academic life, the sort of goals that are achieved through diligent application to classroom learning. They will decide that the way to accomplish these goals is through a commitment to hard work, maintaining focus on the task of learning and effectively managing their time. They will evaluate their success through increases in their assessment results and the hopefully positive feedback that they receive from their teachers.
In but a few weeks, if not days, these goals will have been forgotten. It is not that the students have lost motivation or have abandoned their hopes for a successful year. It is that the goals set in this way, this structured and forced manner, do not connect with what truly matters to the individuals who set them.
Our students (and teachers) have learned to play the game of school. We understand its grammar and can interpret its fundamental discourse. School is about getting good grades, pleasing the teacher, providing lots of correct answers and complying with expectations. The goals we set reflect more about our understanding of the nature of school than they do about what we hope to achieve. Very few students share a goal of being creative, thinking outside of the box and disrupting the status quo. “My goal is to express my inner self and explore the questions and wonderings which drive my passion for learning. I will make a dent in the universe” is something Steve Jobs might have thought of sharing with his teachers, but probably didn’t while he was in high school.
Neurobiology sheds some light on why compliance goals have little real impact in the long term.
“It is literally neurobiologically impossible to build memories, engage complex thoughts, or make meaningful decisions without emotion. Put succinctly, we only think about things we care about”. (Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, 2016)
“When learning and knowledge are relatively devoid of emotion, when people learn things by “rote” without internally driven motivation and without a sense of interest or real-world relevance, then it is likely that they won’t be able to use what they learn efficiently in the real world”.(Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, 2016)
Our goal-setting should be around the things that matter to us. They should make a bridge between what we must do and what we care about. If we have no emotional connection to our goals, or to the process of setting goals, we are unlikely to truly commit to them. This is largely why new-year’s resolutions don’t stick with us into February, the process is artificial, and the timing of the goal-setting activity could not be worse. We might better use our time planing for the friends and family we hope to connect with over the break as this is what matters to us at this time. We are probably not thinking meaningfully about work, and our students shouldn’t be focussing on school over their break.
And if we plan to utilise bribery to motivate our students (or ourselves), or if we hope they might identify rewards for achieving their goals, we are likely to be disappointed. Self-Determination theory shows that this type of external motivation has limited impact.
“Also, research revealed that not only tangible rewards but also threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations and imposed goals diminish intrinsic motivation.” (Ryan & Deci, 2000)
Our goal-setting also falls down because we tend to forget about the things we need to maintain a healthy mind that is ready to learn when we need it to be. Rather than committing to being highly focused and on task at all times, we might need to set goals for downtime. Emerging conceptions of brain functioning reveal that neural networks responsible for maintaining and focusing attention into the environment appear to toggle with a so-called default mode of brain function (DM) that is spontaneously induced during rest, daydreaming, and other non-attentive but awake mental states. (Mary Helen Immordino-Yang) Our brains need to have time to switch off, to relax and do the background processing they require to turn experience into memories. Learning will not occur without this, and so goal-setting that does not include downtime is bound to produce poor results.
In his book “Start with Why” Simon Sinek writes “Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money— that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?” (Sinek, 2011) We are reminded that unless we understand why we do what we do and why it matters, we are likely to lose track of what matters most. We must strive always to be guided towards our “Why” and avoid actions that take us away from this. As Simon Sinek points out that truly successful people and organisations are those who use their “Why” as their north star and never lose sight of it.
The take away might be that if we hope to achieve great things, we are better served by taking the time to reflect on what truly matters to us. If we knew we could not fail, what would we hope to achieve, what would fill us with joy and a sense of purposes achieved? With this clear understanding of our “Why” we can identify the actions, we need to take to transform our dreams into reality. Such a process would have much more transformative than forced goal-setting activities.
By Nigel Coutts
Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen. (2016) Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience (The Norton Series on the Social Neuroscience of Education) W. W. Norton & Company.
Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000) Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
Sinek, S. (2011) Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Portfolio Penguin: London