Teachers' learning goals for a mathematics lesson

Due to current policy, including a curriculum that is managed by objectives, it is common that Norwegian mathematics teachers specify a learning goal for each lesson they teach. This study aims to identify characteristics of such goals. To this end, we analysed 50 learning goals with the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. A main finding is that there is an emphasis on students’ understanding; however, the cognitive process categories Analyse, Evaluate, and Create were poorly represented in our data. Moreover, we asked the teachers to identify mathematical ideas (related to the learning goal) they would focus on in the lesson. In our data, the stated mathematical ideas were vague, and many teachers did not state any mathematical ideas at all. We discuss possible reasons for this.