Beyond the grade: Cultivating lifelong learners through growth goal assessment in education

Katie Cork, Deputy Head, St Mary’s School, Gerrards Cross, UK Setting growth goals can improve a student’s academic processes and their outcomes. By emphasising individual skill and knowledge development, they assess both cognitive and non-cognitive factors in learning. By fostering an environment conducive to growth, leaders can ensure that these goals become an integral part of the educational journey. A growth goal is one that is focused on developing in a skill or a set of knowledge and aims to achieve a level of performance that is better than one’s previous best (Martin et al., 2022). Growth goals are sometimes called ‘personal best’ goals (e.g. Burns et al., 2019), a language often associated with the field of sport. In education, success in academic growth goals is measured in terms of a student’s individual progress in a skill or a subject relative to their past performance, thus encouraging a mindset of learning from mistakes and seeing opportunities for growt