Assessment in the Affective Domain

Affective Domain

The affective domain is one of three domains in Bloom's Taxonomy, with the other two being the cognitive and psychomotor(Bloom, et al., 1956).

• The affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, 1973) includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes.

• Affective learning is demonstrated by behaviors indicating attitudes of awareness, interest, attention, concern, and responsibility, ability to listen and respond in interactions with others,

and ability to demonstrate those attitudinal characteristics or values which are appropriate to the test situation and the field of study

The affective domain is a part of a system that was published in 1965 for :

Identifying Understanding Addressing on how people learn.

• We shall concern with the second of these domains which is the affective domain.

The Affective domain describes learning objectives that emphasize a feeling tone, an emotion, or a degree of acceptance or rejection.

The taxonomy in the affective domain

Receiving

It is being aware of or sensitive to the existence of certain ideas, material, or phenomena and being willing to tolerate them. (To differentiate, To accept, To listen(for), To respond to)

Responding

Is committed in some small measure to the ideas, materials, or phenomena involved by actively responding to them.

(To comply with, To follow, To commend, To volunteer, To spend leisure time in, To acclaim)

Valuing

Is willing to be perceived by others as attaching importance to certain ideas, materials, or phenomenon.

(To increased measured proficiency, To relinquished, To subsidize, To support, To debate)

Organization

Is relating the value to those already held and bring it into a harmonious and internally consistent philosophy.

(To discuss, To theorize, To formulate, To balance, To examine)

Characterization

By value or value set is to act consistently in accordance with the values he or she has internalized.

(To resist, To manage, To resolve)

It is, admittedly, a far more difficult domain to objectively analyze and assess since affective objectives vary from simple attention to selected phenomena to complex but internally consistent qualities of character and conscience.

Noticed that it is far more difficult to state an objective in the affective domain because they often refer to the feelings and internal processes of the mind and body that cannot be tested and measured using traditional methods.

• As teachers, we are also interested in students’ attitudes towards learning topics such as science, math and etc.

We want to find teaching methods that encourage students and draw them in. Affective topics in educational literature include attitudes, motivation, communication styles, learning styles, use of technology in the classroom and non verbal communications.

As teachers, we need to be careful about our actions that may negatively impact on students’ attitudes which go straight into the affective domain.

For instance, facial expression that reveal sarcasm(Harsh) , body movements that betray distrust and dislike, should all be avoided.

Affective Learning Competencies

Instructional objectives are specific, measurable, observable student behaviors.

Objectives are the foundation upon which you can build lessons and assessments that you can prove meet your overall lesson goals.

Think of objectives as tools you use to make sure you reach your goals. They are the arrows you shoot towards your target.

The purpose of the objectives is to ensure that learning is focused clearly enough that both students and teacher know what is going on, and so learning can be objectively measured.

Behavioral Verbs Appropriate for the Affective Domain

Receiving :• Accept• Attend• Develop• Recognize

Responding :• Complete• Comply• Cooperate• Obey• Respond

Valuing :• Accept• Defend• Devote• Pursue• Seek

Organization:• Codify• Display• Order• Organize• Systematize

Characterization :• Internalize• Verify

Attitudes

Are defined as a mental predisposition to act that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor and disfavor.

Attitudes are also attached to mental categories.

Mental orientations towards concepts are generally referred to as values.

Attitudes are compromised of 4 components:

Cognitions

Are our beliefs, Theories, Expectancies, Cause and Effect beliefs, and Perceptions relative to the focal object.

This concept is not the same as “Feelings” but just a statement of beliefs and expectations which vary from one individual context to the next.

Affect

The affective component refers to our feeling with respect to the focal object such as fear, liking, or anger.

For instance, the color “Blue” evokes different feelings for different individuals: some like the color blue but others not. Some associate the color blue with “loneliness” while others associate it with “calm and peace”.

Behavioral Intentions

Behavioral intentions are our goals, aspirations, and our expected response to the attitude object.

Evaluation

Are often considered the central component of attitudes. Evaluations consist of the imputations of some degree of goodness and badness to an attitude toward an object.

Why study attitudes?

Because it can influence the way we act and think in the social communities we belong.

For example: When your mathematics classes are recited, students with negative attitude towards mathematics tend to play less attention and occupy their minds with something else.

Motivation

Is a reason or set of reasons for engaging in a particular behavior intrinsically or extrinsically.

Intrinsic motivation

Occurs when a people are internally motivated to do something because it either brings them pleasure, they think it is important.

Extrinsic motivation

Comes into play when a student is compelled to do something or act a certain a way because of factors external to him or her.

Self-efficacy

Is an impression that one is capable of performing in a manner or attaining goals.

It is a belief that one has the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations.

It is important to understand the distinction between self esteem and self efficacy.

Self esteem relates to a one person’s sense of self worth, whereas self efficacy relate’s to a person’s sense of

Development of Assessment Tools

Assessment tools in the affective domain, in particular, those which are used to assess attitudes, interests, motivations, and self-efficacy.

Self report

It is the most common measurement tool in the affective domain.

It essentially requires an individual to provide an account of his/her attitude or feelings toward a concept or idea or people.

Rating Scales

Is a set of categories designed to elicit information about a quantitative attribute in social science

Common examples are the likert scale and 1-10 scales for which a person selects the number which is considered to reflect the perceived quality of a product.

Semantic Differential Scales

The Semantic Differential (SD) tries to assess an individual’s reaction to specific words, ideas or concepts in terms of ratings on bipolar scales defined with contrasting adjectives at each end.

The SD has been used as a measure in a wide variety of projects.

Osgood., et al., (1957) report exploratory studies in which the SD was used to assess attitude.

Thurstone Scale

Louis Thurstone is considered the “The father of attitude measurement”.

He address the issue on how favorable an individual is with regard to a given issue.

He developed an attitude continuum to determine the position of favorability on the issue.

In 1944, Guttman suggested that the attitude should be measured by multidimensional scales, as opposed to unidimensional scales such as those developed by thurstone and likert.

Guttman pointed out that there should be a mulitdimentional view of the attitude construct.

He developed the Guttman scaling

Checklists

The most common and perhaps the easiest instrument in the affective domain is to construct the checklist.

Steps in the construction of checklist

Enumerate all the attributes and characteristics you wish to observe.

Arrange these attributes as a “shopping list” of characteristics

Ask the students to mark those attributes which are present and leave blank those which are not