A Digital Tool Supporting Goal-Oriented Teaching in Classrooms

Abstract: This paper presents a newly developed tool for supporting goal-oriented teaching and develops a framework for discussing design intentions when developing such tools. The tool was developed in relation to a recent curriculum reform for the Danish primary and lower secondary school system, which transformed the national curriculum into a number of competences that were further divided into pairs of knowledge and skills. Together with this curriculum reform, there is a government initiative to promote goal-oriented teaching and a complementary need to support teachers’ more concrete plans and objectives for their teaching; these form a challenge and a basis for developing a digital tool for mediating between curriculum and pedagogical practice.

The motivation for revising the national curriculum and developing digital tools that support teaching is partly based on evidence that the previous national curriculum was not used to any particular extent by teachers (Danish Evaluation Institute 2012). Hence, the curriculum has been rebuilt based on recent trends in school development and curriculum research suggesting the importance of a competence framework, learning goals, and the aggregation of classroom data for efficient teaching (Earl and Fullan 2003). Learning goals are supposed to support the students’ pace and sense of progression, inform classroom decisions, structure teachers’ planning, and support the dialogue between teachers, students, and parents (Hattie 2009). Based on these concerns, we have developed a technology called “The Goal Arrow.” The Goal Arrow aims to support teachers in creating lesson plans, setting associated situated learning objectives, relating these to the national curriculum, and specifying indicators of learning and progression. The objectives and specific indicators are used when teachers and students assess how the individual student performs in relation to the goal. Data for each student are collected over a certain period in relation to several goal arrows, making it possible to sketch out a student achievement profile, a class profile, and a profile of the curriculum areas covered in the period. These profiles provide an overview of student progression in relation to curriculum levels.

The tool has been tested with approximately 100 teachers and 2,000 pupils. In the paper, we outline the design of the tool and the curricular structure it builds upon. Furthermore, we discuss how the design of the tool tries to accomplish a balance between teachers setting up their own learning objectives and choosing between a set of predetermined goals. We conclude with a number of questions to be addressed empirically regarding teachers’ use of the tool.