Our teaching philosophy is focused on increasing knowledge retention to increase student engagement and classroom performance.  To accomplish this, a goal mastery perspective is central to our teaching philosophy and is implement consistently during our tutoring sessions.  As noted by researchers at Michigan State University, When oriented to mastery goals, students purpose or goal in an achievement setting is to develop their competence.  They seek to extend their mastery and understanding. We implement this vision by challenging students to master knowledge-based goals, not outcome-based goals.  That is, rather than setting a goal to use the quadratic formula to solve a specific homework problem, we encourage the student to understand the derivation of the quadratic formula, the knowledge of which will help them to solve any quadratic-based problem.

The benefits of such a change in perspective are numerous and well-defined by www.selfdeterminedlife.com:

“Unlike performance goals, which focus on outcomes, mastery goals (also known as mastery-oriented goals) are about the journey and the learning process itself. It's about becoming the best you can be in a specific domain. The focus is on yourself and your own improvement, rather than on an external target.”

That is, if a student can be encouraged to realign their goals to focus on understanding and not specific performance goals, both their intrinsic motivation and desire to learn will increase, leading to increased performance. The benefits of an intrinsic goal mastery perspective over an explicit outcome goal perspective are well-known.

At Coachometry, we therefore reinforce the need to understand important concepts that can be applied to a variety of problems.  During our sessions, we ensure that the student understands the theoretical concepts involved in every problem that we cover.  Before moving to another problem, we will review the concept with the student to confirm their knowledge and understanding of the material.  In so doing, we maximize both student retention and assessment performance.   This concept-based approach is linked to the purpose of the mathematical exercises and provides the key to the extra motivation a student needs to succeed. - selfdetermindedlife.com

Our vision is therefore to help students master the concepts and ideas they need to more fully understand critical course material and to help them maximize their potential.   We look forward to sharing our vision with you.