ProcessGoals

Focus on Process

Happiness Line

Outcome Goals

Focus on End Result

Source: Adapted from image created by Ryan Willer. Used with permission.

Goal failure results in pride in effort and willingness to try again.

Expectation achieved results in moving on to the next expectation and lack of fulfillment. Missing the expectation results in disappointment and giving up.

Figure 3.1: The outcome and process goal tool. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/SEL for a free reproducible version of this figure.

• How do people with outcome goals deal with mistakes? How do people with process goals deal with mistakes?

• How might those with outcome goals and process goals view cheating?

• If you were to find out many of your students were below the happiness line, how could you change this in your classroom? How could your school change this?

• Could students’ grades affect if they are above or below the happiness line? In other words, how might a kindergartener look at school compared to a high school student?

• If teachers find themselves below the happiness line, how could they change this? How could the school change this?

• Think of various relationships you have in your life. How might this tool be used to explain relationships with others? Does someone with outcome goals or process goals have better relationships with others?

Questions to Prompt Class Discussion

These are questions to promote class understanding about the tool. This can be done with small- or large-group discussion or by quietly reflecting in a journal.

• What do you think this tool is trying to say? Do you agree? According to this tool, what do you think is the difference between a goal and an expectation?

• How hard do people with outcome goals work? How hard do people with process goals work?

• According to the outcome and process goals tool, how happy are people with outcome goals? How happy are people with process goals?

• How do students with outcome goals and process goals view mistakes?

• How might students with outcome and process goals view cheating?

• Think of yourself in school. Where are you on the tool? How does it make you feel? If a student wanted to get above the happiness line, what should they do? How difficult would that be?

Questions for Student Reflection

After a content-specific lesson that is also an opportunity to assess the outcome and process goals, these questions can assist students in evaluating their thoughts and behavior during the lesson as they pertain to the concept.

• During the lesson, where were you on the tool? How hard did you work? How did it make you feel?

• Imagine a student who is clearly below the happiness line during this lesson. What advice would you give?

• Beyond this lesson, how might a student work to be above the happiness line in school? How possible is this?

Sacrifice and Reward

If a student is going to sacrifice and put forth effort, they do it for some reward that they wish to receive. Sacrifice and reward share an important relationship. Sacrifice of time and effort in school leading to a desired reward elicits pride and gratitude but sacrifice of time and effort that does not end with a desired goal is frustrating. What reward can a student pursue that will help them lead more toward gratitude and less toward frustration? The previous section discussed that, maybe, a process goal (instead of an outcome goal) should be the type of reward a student should seek. A reward of process is learning and improvement. To make this reward happen, a student needs a growth mindset and understanding that learning and skills are malleable and can be improved. If students can do this, they have a greater chance at gratitude as improvement is a reward that can be obtained daily with sacrifice. If a student’s reward was a result, they would only need to sacrifice as much as they needed to obtain the result. Additionally, if they didn’t achieve the result, that could lead to frustration.

In the introduction of this book (page 1), I referenced a program at my school where a group of certified coaches lead an obstacle course training every weekend for our students. Knowing this was available, one of the school’s government teachers offered her students the following choice: they could take the regular final for the course, or in lieu of the final, they could attend seven of these hourlong training sessions by the end of the semester. She based her idea off business school professor Andrew Johnston’s TEDxYouth (2015) talk where Johnston asks his students to interview business owners. Johnston offers “what business owners are telling my students the key to success has everything to do with the development of this: character, life skills, things like passion for your work, work ethic, persistence, determination, and good old-fashioned grit.” To learn all these performance character traits, Johnston started a class called Change Through Challenge where, as part of the course, students are required to run a marathon. Since we had an opportunity at our school to teach character traits, this teacher wanted to use it to help her students become better people.

Several students took her up on the offer and attended the workouts, but they always stood out from the peers in attendance who were not part of the AP government class. They wanted an outcome reward (not taking the final), and they had no motivation to sacrifice more than the bare minimum to get it. For the hour, they could be found taking lengthy water breaks, talking in the shade, and spending their time at the easiest obstacles while avoiding running and the more challenging ones. The only thing that mattered to them was getting a signature from a coach at the end of the session to mark that they did, indeed, attend for the hour.

The other students who attended were there of their own accord. From the beginning, their desired reward was improved physical health or stronger mental health—they wanted to get fitter, tougher, or improve in some way. For this reason, they were more willing to sacrifice both time and energy in furtherance of that goal—they tended to push themselves harder, waste less time, take on the challenging obstacles, and seemed to be prouder of their efforts at the end. The government teacher’s goal was to motivate students to improve their performance character traits, which is laudable. It’s the type of risk-taking that I admire in teachers. However, the approach is flawed, and it starts with the fact that participation in the program was in no way connected to the actual course curriculum. While the goal was to improve their resilience, the students who participated did so specifically to avoid having to engage with curriculum content. It seemed like they weighed the amount of sacrifice for the final against seven hours of their time where they oversaw their level of challenge, and they went for the easier option. In the end, I’m not sure that these students were grateful or proud of their choice.

So, what is the bridge that will empower students to attack school with the reward of process-driven growth? Unfortunately, we know that many of our students fall prey to outcome goals. How can teachers inspire outcomemotivated students to change their default and ingrained mindset? Luckily, there are a few research-supported interventions you can use to change your mindset, which you can introduce to students when you are discussing this piece of performance character with them in class.

Changing Your Mindset

According to research, it is possible to switch mindsets with intervention— sometimes. Some interventions prove successful in changing fixed to growth mindset while others show little or no improvement. University of Oklahoma education professor Teresa DeBacker and colleagues (2018) note “modest” gains in growth mindset with a one-shot intervention—where an expert comes in for a day to teach a lesson to students. Researchers Lisa Blackwell, Kali Trzesniewski, and Carol Dweck (2007) see more positive changes with an eight-week workshop for a group of seventh graders. The authors explain the program:

The key message was that learning changes the brain by forming new connections, and that students are in charge of this process. This message of malleable intelligence was presented in the context of an interesting reading, which contained vivid analogies (e.g., to muscles becoming stronger) and examples (e.g., of relatively ignorant babies becoming smarter as they learned), supported by activities and discussions. (p. 254)

Teaching about process goals and growth mindset is a difficult task—especially when many students are focused on outcomes as rewards. The style and consistency of the method led to more understanding of growth mindset and more students buying into the concept. But is two months of creative lessons and discussions enough?

In another study, researchers Helene Zeeb, Julia Ostertag, and Alexander Renkl (2020) note that many interventions about mindset training are not as effective because they aren’t woven into the regular school day. The authors offer this:

The interventions are usually isolated from regular instruction and delivered by special trainers or online programs. While the effects of educational interventions are often strongest when researchers implement the training, the isolation from ordinary lessons may be problematic in the particular case of a mindset training. The reason is that instructional practices—for example, teachers’ feedback—influence students’ beliefs in a vigorous and permanent manner and may thus influence whether growth mindsets actually take root in the classroom after a training.

For this reason, Zeeb and colleagues (2020) developed a lesson-integrated training on growth mindset for a physics class that the classroom teacher would administer. (They chose physics because they felt it provided significant challenge for students.) Lessons taught both physics and growth mindset simultaneously. For example, the physics teacher would lead a lesson on growth mindset. Then, the teacher would apply those lessons to challenging physics problems where the students had an opportunity to use what they learned and the teacher could coach them through concepts they learned, like they can improve if they put in the effort, mistakes are part of the learning process, and so on. In the study, students with the mindset-enhanced lessons showed strengthened growth mindsets and motivation.

The tools in this book intend to replicate the Zeeb and colleagues (2020) study. The belief is that, when teachers administer these lessons about performance character and teach them in conjunction with the class content, students will feel empowered to adjust their mindset toward that content and enhance their capacity to learn. Further, when teachers integrate performance character concepts with a content-specific lesson, they generate opportunities for students to self-assess not only their understanding of the content but also their mindset while learning that content.

Discussing Performance Character With Students

Because teachers are around students for the entire school year, they inevitably form relationships with those students. As such, few others are in a better position to mold tools to instill performance character for the needs and personalities of individual students. Nels Larsen, longtime educator and creator of the humility tool (see page 28), uses the following system to get students to think about changing their purpose to focus on process rather than result. As a physical education teacher, he asks students who seem to lack motivation what their purpose is for being in his class. If it’s a result-focused goal, he asks them why they’ve set that goal until they get to a process goal. The following is a sample of the kind of conversation Larsen would have with one of his students.

Nels: “Why are you in this class?”

Student: “I want to pass.”

Nels: “Why do you want to pass?”

Student: “So that I can graduate.”

Nels: “Why do you want to graduate?”

Student: “So that I can go to college.”

Nels: “Why do you want to go to college?”

Student: “So that I can get a good job.”

Nels: “Why do you want a good job?”

Student: “So that I can make money?”

Nels: “Why do you want to make money?”

Student: “So that I can move out of my house and live on my own.”

Nels: “Why do you want to do that?”

Student: “So that I can show that I’m responsible and, eventually, can take care of a family.”

Nels: “So you want to be self-sufficient, responsible, and able to help others? Those are all things you can work on daily. Maybe that should be your reason for being in school and in this class? Isn’t that better than just wanting to pass?”

Student: “Are you a wizard?”

Nels may or may not be a wizard; but he contends that, with this exercise, students will find a more meaningful and worthwhile purpose or reward. As you get deeper and deeper into the conversation, students’ reasons tend to get more selfless, lifelong, and purposeful. Additionally, the process aims to change an outcome reward into a reward focused on process.

Students will sacrifice time and effort to get a reward they want whether that reward is an outcome or a process goal. The difference is that a reward that is focused on outcomes might lead to frustration if the student does not obtain the reward. The student who has a reward focused on improvement has a better chance of receiving that reward as improvement consistently happens through the process of learning. The following tool allows a teacher to lead a class discussion so students can think about what kind of reward they want, what kind of sacrifice they make, and what will help them become more successful and emotionally content.

The Sacrifice and Reward Tool

Sacrifice is spending time and effort to receive a reward. Use the tool in figure 3.2 to serve as a springboard for a rich class discussion about sacrifice and reward. According to this tool, being unwilling to sacrifice to receive a reward can result in boredom and complacency if that reward isn’t received. If it is, it results in feeling entitled (an aspect of egocentric thinking). If you do sacrifice, you will become frustrated if you don’t receive the reward that you were seeking and grateful and proud if you do.

After reviewing the tool with the class, your peers, or on your own, please use the following questions to discuss and reflect. See appendix A (page 189) for the complete instructions on using the tools in this book.

Questions for Educators and Their Colleagues

Use the following questions to help you discuss the sacrifice and reward tool with colleagues to gain a more personal and broader understanding.

• Do you think any of the words in the four quadrants should be changed? If so, what would you change them to?

• Imagine you have a student in class who is sacrificing time and effort but isn’t getting the reward they wanted of an A. What quadrant are they in? What quadrant would they be in if a parent talked to the administration and got them out of your class? What quadrant would they be heading for if their parents tried to bribe you for an A? If administration refused to let them out of the class, what advice would you give them to deal with this situation?

• What do you think is the reward for most of the students at your school? Where are they on the tool?

• If you wanted more students to be in the Grateful/Proud quadrant, how could you do it? How could you change their reward to give them a better chance to get to that quadrant?

• Where are most teachers at your school on the tool? Why do you think they have ended up there?

• What is your reward for teaching? What quadrant are you in? Are there things you can change to get to where you want to be?

Questions to Prompt Class Discussion

These are questions to promote class understanding about the tool. This can be done with small- or large-group discussion or by quietly reflecting in a journal.

• Where are most students in your school on the tool regarding academics? What reward do they want and how much do they sacrifice?

• What is your reward for school and where are you on the tool? How grateful are you for your classes?

• How might a reward as an outcome goal (focused completely on the outcome or result) or a process goal (focused completely on learning and what you are doing to reach the goal) affect this tool?

• Let’s say your friend is on a basketball team and their reward is getting to play in the games. They are sacrificing their time to be at practice and sacrificing effort during the practice, but they only play a few minutes in competitions. They are frustrated and come to you for advice. What would you tell them?

• What quadrant are you in for school and why? How could you change your reward and sacrifice to help you become more grateful and proud?

Questions for Student Reflection

After a content-specific lesson that is also an opportunity to assess sacrifice and reward, these questions can assist students in evaluating their thoughts and behavior during the lesson as they pertain to the concept.

• During this lesson, what quadrant were you in? How do you know? During this lesson, what reward were you looking for? Was it an outcome or a process goal? How do you know?

• In school, how much do you sacrifice and what is your reward? What quadrant does that lead to?

• Can you change anything you’re doing in school to be in quadrant 1 more often?

Event, Response, and Outcome

Once you have determined your reason for doing something, it’s not a purpose until you make it a priority. You can say that you have a purpose and even explain it to people, but it doesn’t become official until you start and continue working toward it (more on putting well-planned and exceptional effort toward something in chapter 7: Commitment, page 119). To make this happen and ensure that your purpose is, indeed, a purpose, you can start to make decisions leading to behaviors that will feed your purpose.

The word equation event + response = outcome (Canfield, 2007) represents this concept as it’s an effective means to set priorities. Events are things that happen to us every second of every day that we cannot control. We can, however, control our response to that event. The event, coupled with our response to it, leads to an outcome. If we think logically about achieving our purpose rather than emotionally, we can be outcome focused. If our purpose for school is to learn, we want that to be our outcome. As events happen, we can think of what responses we need to make to achieve the desired outcome of learning. For example, if a teacher assigns an essay to the student and the student has a purpose and outcome of learning, the student should want to attack the challenge as it will help them learn.

Consider the example of the British rowing team, which competed in the eightman crew Olympic races in 1992 and 1996 and did not place in either. For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, they decided to do something different. According to Dr. Benjamin Hardy (2022), “With every decision or opportunity, every member of the team asked themselves: WILL IT MAKE THE BOAT GO FASTER?”

(Hardy, 2022). If the event was someone asking them if they wanted to attend an all-night party, they would ask, “Will it make the boat go faster?” (Hardy, 2022). If they determined that it would not, they wouldn’t do it. If they were offered more time on the water to practice, they would ask, “Will it make the boat go faster?” If that extra time would increase their speed, they would do it. If they determined that they were already training too hard and this extra time on the water would decrease their speed, they wouldn’t do it. Event. Response. Outcome. With this simple method, the team had a process goal which was to do whatever would improve their time, and they made decisions based on this. With this direction on their purpose, the British eights won gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics (Hardy, 2022).

If you have found your reason for being in education, you have the direction toward which you want to row. If you’re serious about your purpose, you will make decisions based on the outcome you want. For example, if you’re teaching to help students understand and find joy in mathematics, you will look up or create lessons that will engage and excite them. If the opportunity of going to an innovative mathematics lessons conference comes to your attention, you may want to attend. If it will make the boat go faster, it might be worth the choice. Event. Response. Outcome.

It’s the direction and the action of the rowing that really determines the purpose, not the intention alone. Those who have a legitimate purpose have goals, while those who don’t have a real purpose have wishes. A wish is something that you want to do, but instead of taking the time to make it happen, you’re just hoping that it will come true. On the other hand, someone with a goal has a purpose and makes decisions to move toward it. Unlike a wish, a goal is comprised of a series of decisions that will get you closer to the desired outcome. A goal motivates, making the effort to back up the decisions feel worthwhile.

Being motivated to make decisions based on a purpose can be explained with expectancy-value theory. Researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan respectively Allan Wigfield and Jacquelynne Eccles (2000) explain the concept, saying, “Theorists in this tradition argue that individuals’ choice, persistence, and performance can be explained by their beliefs about how well they will do on the activity and the extent to which they value the activity”

(p. 68). Researchers Kelvin Seifert of the University of Manitoba and Rosemary Sutton of Cleveland State (2021) explain more:

[The model is] sometimes written with a multiplicative formula: expectancy x value = motivation. The relationship between expectation and value is ‘multiplicative’ rather than additive because, in order to be motivated, it is necessary for a person to have at least a modest expectation of success and to assign a task at least some positive value. If you have high expectations of success but do not value a task at all (mentally assign it a ‘0’ value), then you will not feel motivated at all. Likewise, if you value a task highly but have no expectation of success about completing it (assign it a ‘0’ expectancy), then you also will not feel motivated at all.

In the case of the 2000 British Olympic eights, they had a high expectation of success (they believed that they could improve enough to be the best in the world) and strongly valued what they were doing; therefore, they remained motivated to achieve their goal of making the boat go faster. It would have been interesting if they didn’t have this process goal and, instead, had a result goal of winning a gold medal. Based on the previous two Olympics, where they didn’t place, some or all the members of the team might have deemed the expectation of success as too difficult and rated it low, diminishing their motivation. Because they did have a process goal of making the boat go faster, they may have increased their expectation of success (improving boat speed is something that can be achieved daily).

What if students changed to process goals as well? Let’s say that, as a student enters high school, they determine that their purpose is to be the valedictorian. After a few weeks in high school, the student sees how hard this will be and starts questioning whether this is possible. This might decrease the student’s motivation. If the student gets a B or sees another student with higher grades, the student might lose their expectation of success and, therefore, all motivation. On the other hand, if that same student had a purpose for school to learn or make their family proud, the student’s motivation might have a better chance to stay strong. These purposes are things that make the boat go faster. They are things that, with effort, the student can achieve many times throughout a school year. A process goal makes it easier to make decisions that will lead to a desired purpose. Students will experience situations and events that will test their dedication to their purpose and their motivation. If a student says they have a purpose to learn and a teacher assigns a project, the student can ask, “Will it help me understand the concept?” If the student determines it will and makes the decision to engage in the project to feed their goal, the student either has or is on their way to a solid purpose. Event. Response. Outcome.

The Event-Response-Outcome Tool

Use the tool in figure 3.3 (page 62) to serve as a springboard for a rich class discussion about setting priorities in line with your purpose.

After reviewing the tool with the class, your peers, or on your own, please use the following questions to discuss and reflect. See appendix A (page 189) for the complete instructions on using the tools in this book.

Questions for Educators and Their Colleagues

Use the following questions to help you discuss the event-response-outcome tool with colleagues to gain a more personal and broader understanding.

• Look at the following scenarios that could happen to you in teaching. What responses could you make to them? What outcomes might come from those responses? Consider the following examples.

Š Seventy percent of your students fail an assessment.

Š A student sasses you in front of the class.

Š Another staff member is rude to you.

Š Your principal tells you that you’re going to teach a different grade level or course.

• What is your purpose or reason for teaching? If that is your desired outcome, how would you respond to the aforementioned events?

• How often are your responses based on emotion and how much are they based on logic? Which one is better? Can you have both?

• How might your life be different if you always thought about the outcome you wanted before you responded to events? How do you think that would make you feel?

Questions to Prompt Class Discussion

These are questions to promote class understanding about the tool. This can be done with small- or large-group discussion or by quietly reflecting in a journal.

• Look at the following events. What responses could you make to them, and what outcomes would come from those responses?

Š You fail an assessment.

Š Someone writes something bad about you on social media.

Š You find a wallet on the ground with $200 in it.

Š Your teacher assigns you a ten-page paper.

You may want to think of the outcome you want before making a response. If you wanted an outcome to be a person who always works to improve (both in school and as a person), what responses would you make to the aforementioned events?

• Are most of your responses to events based on emotion or logic? How often do you take the time to think logically? How can emotional responses harm or help you?

• What do you want your outcome or purpose for being in school to be? Does your purpose motivate you and make you happy? How serious are you about that purpose? How do you know?

Questions for Student Reflection

After a content-specific lesson that is also an opportunity to assess eventresponse-outcome, these questions can assist students in evaluating their thoughts and behavior during the lesson as they pertain to the concept.

• What outcome did you want for this challenge? How did your responses lead to that outcome?

• How much control do you have over your responses?

Put students into groups of three to four students and provide each group with a large piece of blank paper and a handful of colored pencils, markers, or crayons. Limit the colors so that some groups only have primary colors, some have all the colors, and one group has only gray, black, brown, or white. Give the class a set time to complete a drawing. When time is up, discuss how groups responded to their limited options and what the outcome was.

• Do you have a consistent outcome you want for school? How important is it to you? How often do you make responses that lead to the outcome you want?

• If you could do this lesson over again, would you respond differently? Why or why not? How would you like to respond to difficult challenges in your life?

Summary

A person without purpose has no direction and, therefore, no reason to put forth effort. A person with a purpose has a goal to strive toward. Two major types of purpose are outcome and process goals. Outcome goals are end results while process goals focus on the actions you are taking to reach the goal. For students, outcome goals may be grades, completion of assignments, graduation, and getting into a specific university. Students with process goals might have an outcome to head toward, but their attention is on the journey and how they are getting there. Outcome goals can get students to work very hard, but these students can experience anxiety and depression when they fail along the way or don’t reach their goal. Students with process goals may work hard as well, but they understand that failures are necessary on the journey to improvement. They can also be proud of their improvements even if they don’t reach their desired outcome. If a person has a purpose that is important to them (whether it’s an outcome or process goal), they will make decisions in life that will help them move closer to that goal.