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Setting goals to beat previous efforts improves educational outcomes. And the gains are bigger for disadvantaged students
Setting goals to try to outdo your previous best effort is known as growth goal setting or personal best goals. It is fundamentally focused on self improvement, such as investing more time or effort in a task than before or striving to achieve a higher result in the next test than the previous one.
Research over the past decade into approaches like these in education has shown it has many benefits. They include improved engagement, learning and achievement.
But it is unclear if these benefits disproportionately apply to already academically advantaged students. We wanted to know if setting goals to improve past performance affected the educational outcomes of academically disadvantaged students.
Our study, recently published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, looked at goal setting to beat previous efforts in high school students.
We found students who set goals like these were much more engaged in school than those who didn’t. And the benefits were even more positive for students in lower socioeconomic groups and students who had low levels of prior achievement.
