Effectiveness of teaching goal setting on Self-Directed Learning of students

The aim of this research was survey effectiveness of teaching goal setting on self-directed learning. The statistical society of this research contained all eighth grade students of high school (the first period) of Semnan in the 2014-2015 academic year that among them for example 40 students with the lowest scores on self-directed learning have been chosen and they randomly and equally were put in two experiment and control groups. At first, a pre-test was performed on both groups; and then goal setting was taught to the experiment group during 9 sessions. Intervention wasn't done for control group. In this research, the pretest-posttest pattern was used with control group. Data was collected by Fisher, King, and Tagoe self-directed learning questionnaire; and after that they were evaluated with multivariate covariance test. The results showed that goal setting has a meaningful effect on improving self-directed learning. Based on the obtained results, use of teaching goal setting for promotion of self-directed learning is recommended.