A Review of the sources and Method of Goal-setting in Islamic Education

The purpose of goal setting in education is to set the educational goals at different levels in order to direct educational actions. Although achieving goals in the process of goal-setting is highly dependent on the certainty of how the goals are set, among the researches that have so far devoted themselves to the systematic presentation of educational goals, few cases can be found that explicitly and independently discuss about how to set goals. In fact, in these researches, it is not clear in detail what the sources of goal-settings are and what role they have in achieving the goals! Also, it is not clear how these sources were managed and then arranged at different levels of goals (ultimate, intermediate and operational)! Regarding this gap, the purpose of the current research is to investigate the sources and method of goal-setting in Islamic education and to answer the aforementioned two questions. This self-study research method is analytical. The results of this self-study research show that in the Islamic perspective, "revelation" is the only source for achieving educational goals, which can be used to achieve different levels of goals. Also, the process of achieving goals about the source of revelation is divided into two general stages: "exploration" and "arrangement". To explore goals, it is necessary to identify formats and styles of goal expression. Also, for arranging the goals, it is possible to classify the goals by considering the characteristics of different levels of goals, and then by analyzing the supreme goals, the connection of the goals of each level with other levels is clarified.