How Educators Make Goals: Achievement vs Quality of Life

How many of you have experienced this?

A team of teachers came together to discuss what the school’s goals should be for the next year. A few teachers started by referring to student data around test scores, attendance and discipline referrals and said that the group should focus on how the students could perform better. Other teachers objected to looking at the data. They said that the relationships with students were more important to focus on, arguing that they should be able to set goals around students gaining confidence and engaging more in school rather than just looking at test results. The meeting came to an abrupt halt as the group could not convince each other of what the focus should be.

Both groups have great goals, but they are coming from 2 distinct perspectives influenced by culture. The Hofstede dimension of Achievement provides a spectrum of communities that orient around performance typically in a competitive environment or orient around quality of life in a mostly cooperative environment. Neither is better or worse—it is how a community has established messages around performance and cooperation.

So why does this matter in education? This influences how teachers see the role of education. Teachers may see education as the vehicle for becoming high performing citizens. Students’ performance will help them get into valuable post-secondary programs, internships, or jobs. Other teachers may see education as the place where students can feel at home, where relationships should be built, and that should be prioritized over student performance. These views are not mutually exclusive, but people may lean into one side of the spectrum more than the other. One can see how a scenario like I’ve conveyed above could easily happen and requires some clear understanding of your personal placement on this cultural spectrum and dialogue on how a group needs to make space for these cultural values on achievement.