Diagnosing Learning Goals: An Often-Overlooked Teaching Competency

Abstract

We propose that an often overlooked competence for teaching is diagnosing learning goals. We propose further that this competence is an empirical process of hypothesis generation, testing, and revising. To understand our argument, diagnosis must be conceived as a process of analysis and mathematical decomposition, and learning goals must be treated as mathematical statements that can be decomposed into component parts or subgoals that must be mastered to achieve larger learning goals. By presenting several examples from our mathematics courses for prospective elementary teachers, we show how instructors can develop diagnostic competence by engaging in cycles of improvement. These cycles require diagnosing learning goals to create hypotheses about how to improve instruction, testing these hypotheses by gathering targeted data, and revising instruction based on relevant evidence. Conceived in this way, the diagnosis of learning goals is a competence teachers can develop as part of an evidence-based process for improving teaching.