Goal-setting Methods Research Articles

Renewing Urban Schools some recommendations

Tom Gross Marc Bassin High School Renewal Program New York, New York Guest Editors The foregoing articles add up to much more than the sum of their separate contributions. While each article makes a contribution in its own right to meeting some of the challenges of renewing urban schools, the gestalt constituted by all of the articles offers a message of optimism for the advocates of change in urban schools uncommon in the research literature of the past generation. Perhaps the applied behavioral sciences have begun to turn the comer in their capability for making a contribution to constructive renewal in urban schools! To summarize the collection of articles briefly: The initial article by Richard Schmuck defined the domain and the content of this issue, that of self renewal for urban schools through the various applications of process consultation. Process consultation was defined as focusing primarily on the how of interpersonal and group interactions rather than on the what of their content. Thus process facilitation aims to help urban educators with methods of communication, goal setting and problem solving and with procedures for planning, decision making, and implementing change. The next article by Warren Bell presented a detailed description of some of the debilitating social-psychological features of urban schools. In particular the psychodynamics of helplessness, powerlessness, and depersonalization act as severe hindrances to renewal. But as the subsequent articles revealed, these hindrances need not block all efforts at self-renewal in urban schools. The case studies offered by Gross, Bassin, and Jordan, by Porterfield and Porterfield, by Francisco, Keys, Milstein, and Scheinfeld each-at least in a partial way-demonstrated that despite the array of restraining forces present in a majority of our urban schools, there are some promising methods for facilitating their renewal. Indeed, the six cases-drawn from some of the largest urban environments in the United States-showed that not every urban school is beyond hope; that not every urban staff is unwilling to try out new procedures for working together; and that not every urban school is a nightmarish situation for process consultation. And the more we learn about what other process-oriented change agents are doing in other urban school districts right now, the more we gain optimism about the potential for the renewal of our toughest schools. Nevertheless, we are not naive optimists. Obviously, the task of renewing urban schools has a long, long way to go. And it seems clear that process strategies alone are only a partial antidote. The challenge of creating supportive, stimulating, and collaborative school climates for urban students is being tackled at a snail's pace and is many leagues from

Effects of Two Methods of Goal Setting on Learning a Gross Motor Task

This study investigated the effects of goal setting in student-led small groups and in teacher-pupil conferences on the learning of a gross motor task—three-ball juggling. Female high school students (N = 93) were randomly assigned to five treatment groups: student-led interaction with goal setting; student interaction only; teacher-pupil conference with goal setting; teacher-pupil conference only; and control. The subjects practiced three-ball juggling in 16 practice and testing periods. The Trussell juggling achievement test was used. Subjects in the four experimental groups met weekly during the three-week instructional period for structured interaction sessions or conferences. Subjects in the two goal-setting groups were directed to set specific numerical and verbal goals. There were no significant differences in juggling achievement among the five groups, either on the final test, or on a posttest administered to determine possible long-term effects.

National Goal Formation in a Time of Transition

Discontinuous change of institutions, values, concepts, etc. is the characteristic of the world today. In the face of this discontinuous change the methods of goal setting remain essentially unchanged in the traditional steady-state mold. In times of transition such as now we must be able to learn how to handle large quantities of unstructured and unfamiliar information, often qualitative in nature, which exceeds the capacity of the unaided human mind. The hallmark of our present society is the success of science and technology in meeting our dated social goal. This, in turn, has caused the absolute need for reexamination of the values and goals in relationship to science and technology. Yet, no new guide for this reexamination has yet been proposed. What we offer here is a viable alternative to steady-state resolutions-transition management. This approach to resolving the issues of value differences in times of discontinuous change is based on the premise that solutions to problems during transition can be attained effectively only if value differences are made explicit. The major elements in the management of discontinuous change require skills in supportive confrontation and conceptual mapping. These skills lead to making values explicit and then to the development of new insights and value relationships. This leads to the cognitive reformation of previously held value patterns and to emergent solutions to otherwise insoluble conflicts.

Goal-setting in urban planning: A case study from Czechoslovakia

The discussion on goals and goal-setting procedures in town planning which has recently been going on in the social and planning sciences1 is concerned – with a few exceptions – with the general methodological aspects of the problem. Undoubtedly this approach, stressing a typology of planning and the importance of planning environments and discussing the advantages of different goal-setting methods, has stimulated planning methodology and helped to modify strictly normative models2 of planning, which did not take into account that planning is also a social process.3

Individually Guided Motivation: Developing Self-Direction and Prosocial Behaviors

Previous articleNext article No AccessIndividually Guided Motivation: Developing Self-Direction and Prosocial BehaviorsHerbert J. Klausmeier, Juanita S. Sorenson, and Elizabeth Schwenn GhatalaHerbert J. Klausmeier Search for more articles by this author , Juanita S. Sorenson Search for more articles by this author , and Elizabeth Schwenn Ghatala Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 71, Number 6Mar., 1971 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/460652 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1971 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jean Burley Moore Effects of assertion training and first aid instruction on children's autonomy and self-care agency, Research in Nursing & Health 10, no.22 (Apr 1987): 101–109.https://doi.org/10.1002/nur.4770100206Mary L. Barnett Effects of Two Methods of Goal Setting on Learning a Gross Motor Task, Research Quarterly. American Alliance for Health, Physical Education and Recreation 48, no.11 (Mar 1977): 19–23.https://doi.org/10.1080/10671315.1977.10762144William Harry Berdine A Comparison of Retrieval Systems to Prescriptively Select Materials, Exceptional Children 41, no.33 (Nov 1974): 195–197.https://doi.org/10.1177/001440297404100311