AFFECTIVE LEARNING COMPETENCIES

1. Importance of Affective Targets

Researches have established the clear link between affect and cognitive learning (Ormrod, 2004).
Student are more proficient in problem-solving if they enjoy what they do. Students who are in good
mood and emotionally involved are more likely to pay attention to do information, remember it
meaningfully and apply it. Too much anxiety obstructs learning, and greater motivation is necessary
for maximum performance. A more positive environment fosters good student engagement and
learning than in a classroom with negative climate (fraser, 1994)

Though the linkage of affect and learning of students has been well-established, there remains
very little systematic assessment of affect that is applied in classroom instruction. (McMillan,
Workman and Myran 1998; Conklin, 1992). Motivation and involvement of students in learning
activities are affected by students’ attitude toward learning, respect for others, and concern for
others. Though there factors are known to teachers, yet most teachers do not utilize any kind of
formal affective assessment. Possible reasons are: (1) school routines are organized based on
subject areas; and (2) assessment of affective targets is fraught with difficulties. (McMillan, 2007)

Cognitive subject matter targets are agreed on as desirable for all students. This places affect in
a position of importance but still secondary to cognitive learning. It is also makes difficult to
determine which affective targets are appropriate for all students. It is simply not easy to define
attitudes, values, and interests.

The second possible reason is that many potential sources of error in measuring affective traits often
result in low reliability. Motivation is of primary concern. Students need to take such assessments
seriously to provide accurate results, but still many may restrain from giving honest answer if the
responses are not treated with anonymity and confidentiality. It would be easier to fake responses
to self-report instruments if the results are to be used for grading or some other purpose. Students
may want to please the teachers with positive responses .Other possible source of error is that some
affective traits are easily influenced by momentary or temporary moods. This is true for younger
students who may report more negative affect after a bad day or session. Teachers’ bias may also
contribute significantly on what may be recorded or perceived.

Though a lot of demotivating instances were mentioned in the previous paragraphs ,these
discouraging instances should not hinder the assessment of the students’ affect. Positive affective
traits and skills are essential for;

 Effective learning
 Being an involved and productive member of our society
 Preparing for occupational and vocational satisfaction and productivity (example: work
habits, willingness to learn, interpersonal skills)
 Maximizing the motivation to learn at present and in the future
  Preventing students from dropping out of school

Various ways by which teachers can signal to students that clearly defined positive affect is
important that just simply systematically assessing it. It begins with identifying appropriate
affect targets. In the next paragraph this action will be explained more.

2. Affective Traits and Learning Targets

The word affective refers to a variety of traits and dispositions that are different from knowledge,
reasoning, and skills [Hohn, 1995]. Technically, this term means the emotions or feelings that one
has toward someone or something. Nevertheless, attitude, values, self-concept, citizenship, and
other traits are usually considered to be non-cognitive, include more than emotions or feelings.
Most kinds of students affect involve both emotion and cognitive beliefs.
Shown in the table below are the different affective traits and its corresponding description;

TRAIT DESCRIPTION
Attitudes Predisposition to respond favorably or
unfavorably to specified
situations,concepts,objects,institutions,or
persons
Interests Personal preference for certain kinds of activities

Values Importance, worth, or usefulness of modes or

conduct and end states of existence
Opinions Beliefs about specific occurrences and situations
Preferences Desire to select one object over another
Motivation Desire and willingness to be engaged in behavior
including intensity of involvement
Academic Self-Concept Self-perception of competence in school and
learning
Self-Esteem Attitudes toward oneself; degree of self-
respect,worthiness,or desirability of self-concept
Locus of Control Self-perception of whether success and failure is
controlled by the student or by external
influences.
Emotional Development Growth,change ,and awareness of emotions and
ability to regulate emotional expression
Social Relationships Nature of interpersonal interactions and
functioning in group setting
Altruism Willingness and propensity to help others
Moral Development Attainment of ethical principles that guide
decision-making and behavior
Classroom Development Nature of feeling tones and interpersonal
relationship in a class
In the succeeding parts of this chapter, some of these affective traits will be discussed in line
with setting of affective targets or outcomes .These traits have been studied and found out to be
contributory factors in student learning.
 2.1Attitude Targets
McMillan [1980] defines attitudes as internal states that influence what students are likely to
do. The internal state can in some degree determine positive or negative or favorable or
unfavorable reaction toward an object, situation, person, or group of objects, general
environment, or group of persons. It does not refer to behaviors, what a student knows, right
or wrong in a moral or ethical sense, or characteristics such as race, age or socio-economic
status. In learning situation, attitude is contingent on subjects, teachers, other students,
homework, and other objects or persons. Most often, one can identify the positive or negative
attitudes that a person intends to foster or at least keep track of because these attitudes are
related to current and future behavior. Some of these attitude are listed in the below;

A Positive Attitude Toward A Negative Attitude Toward

Learning Cheating
Math, Science, English, and other subjects Drug use
Assignments Bullying
Classroom rules Cutting classes
Teachers Dropping out
In researches conducted by social psychologists, they found that attitudes consist of three
components or contributing factors (Forsyth, 1999);

1. An affective component of positive or negative feelings.

2. A cognitive component describing worth or value
3. A behavioral component indicating a willingness or desire to engage in particular actions.
The affective component consists of the emotion or feeling associated with or value.

The affective component consists of the emotion or feeling associated with an object or a
person. When the teacher describes students as liking math or enjoying art, the teacher is focusing on
the affective component. The cognitive component is an evaluative belief. In school, students can think
history is useless and science valuable. The behavioral component is actually responding in a positive
way. This means that, if a student like science, the student thinks it is valuable, and reads science related
materials at home, it translated that the student has a very strong positive attitude. On the other hand,
it is likely that for many students, these components will contradict one another. For example, Juana
may not like English very much but thinks that English is important. The question is, what would her
attitude be, in general sense, toward English? That would depend on what components of the attitude
are being measured. If it is only affective component then the attitude would be negative; but if it is the
cognitive component, it would translate to a positive attitude.

This trifocal conceptualization has significant implications for identifying attitude targets. Does
the assessment need to focus on feelings, thoughts, or behavior? If the learning target for example is
“students will have a positive attitude toward school” then the assessment need to be consistent with
the assessment. But, if the target is “students will like coming to school,” then it would suffice that the
assessment focus only on the affective component.

2.2Value Targets

Generally, values refer either to end states of existence or to modes of conduct that are
desirable or sought. End states of existence refer to conditions and aspects of oneself and the
kind of world that a person wants such as safe life, world peace, freedom, happiness, social
acceptance, and wisdom. And modes of conduct are manifested in what a person believe is
appropriate and needed in everyday existence such as being honest, cheerful, ambitious,
loving, responsible and helpful. Each of these values can be placed into categories consistent
with different areas of person’s lives. Hence, the aspects of moral, political, social, aesthetic,
economic, technological, and religious values.

McMillian (2007) suggest that in setting value targets, it is necessary to stick to non-
controversial and those that are clearly related to academic learning and school and
department of education goals. Some values that are commendable and non-controversial are
described in the table below:

Value Sample Value Target

Honestly Students should learn to value honest in their dealing with others.
Integrity Students should firmly observe their own code of values.
Justice Students should support the view that all citizens should be the recipients
of equal justice from government law enforcement agencies.
Freedom Students should believe that democratic countries must provide the
maximum level of freedom to their citizens.

McMillan (2007) and Popham (2005) suggested other non-conventional values like kindness,
generosity, perseverance, loyalty, respect, courage, compassion, and tolerance. Both of them
believed that there should be a limit to the number of affective traits targeted and assessed. It
is better to do an excellent job assessing a few important traits than to try to assess many
traits.

2.3Motivation Targets

In educations, motivation can be defined as the extent to which students are involved in trying
to learn. (McMillan 2007) This includes the student’s initiation of learning, the intensity of
effort exerted, students’ commitment, and the students’ persistence. In other words,
 motivation is the determined engagement in learning in order to gain mastery of knowledge
or skills; students take learning seriously and give importance to opportunities to learn.

Research on motivation can be organized according to the Expectancy X Value

Framework (Brophy, 2004; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). The model implies that motivation is
determined by students’ expectations, their beliefs about whether they are likely to be
successful, and the relevance of the outcome. Expectations refers to the self-efficacy of the
student. Self-efficacy is the student’s self-perception of his or her capability to perform
successfully. Values are self-perception of the importance of the performance. That is, the
students see the relevance of the activity. For example, the students evaluate the activity they
engage in if it is enjoyable or satisfying; Will it meet some social and psychological need?; Will
it help the student meet an important goal? Students who believed that they have the
capability to be successful and that the activity they engage in themselves are important for
them and relevant, they will be highly motivated to learn. Even if they value the outcome, and
yet the students believe that they don’t have the capability to attain success, their motivation
will be weak. Similarly, there are many students capable but are unmotivated because the
activity that they are asked to do holds no importance for these students.

Like attitudes, motivation is too ambiguous to use the general definition as an outcome
because it is difficult to pinpoint the source of lack of effort and involvement. McMillan (2007)
suggests that motivation targets should focus on self-efficacy and value, distinct by academic
subject and type of learning. Below are some examples of motivation targets.
 Students will believe that they are capable of learning how to write simple computer
programs using Java.
 Students will believe that it is important to know how to write simple computer
programs using Java.

In assessing motivation, it is important to consider why students are learning, the reasons
students’ give for their actions. When students do something or engage themselves in
activities because they find the activities interesting, enjoyable, or challenging, they are
intrinsically motivated. While extrinsic motivation is doing something because it leads to a
reward or punishment. Likewise, it has been shown that students who are motivated by a
need to understand and master the task (mastery orientation) show more positive
behavior and thinking as compared to those who are doing something for the result or
outcome (performance operation). Student who are mastery orientation are more
engaged, have in general, inclination to generate solutions to difficulties, and generate
more positive credits to success and failure (success attributed to ability and moderate
effort; failure to lack of effort).

2.4Academic Self-Concept Targets

 Extensive literature on self-concepts and self-esteem are available for references. Most
educators refer to these characteristics when dealing with students who have problems with
school and learning (e.g., ‘’Juan has a low self-concepts,” “Juana has a low opinion of herself”). It
is accepted that these that these beliefs are important even when controversy over whether
self-concept and self-esteem proceed or result from academic learning. Some level of positive
self-efficacy is needed for achievement (McMillan, 2007). It is likely that the said aspect of self-
concept is formed, at least in part, when children experience meaningful success with moderate
efforts.

In setting targets, it is helpful to remember that self-concept and self-esteem are

multidimensional (marsh & Craven, 1997). There is bodily self, an athletic self, a mathematical
self, a social self, and others. Each person has a self-description in each area, that form one’s
self-concept or self-image. Moreover, individuals have a sense of self-regard, self-affirmation,
and self-worth in each area (self-esteem). Hence, a student can have a self-concept that he is
tall and thin, but feel very comfortable with it and accept the description. On the contrary there
can be another student who has the same self-concept but feel inferior or inadequate, thus,
have a low self-esteem.

In assessing the academic self-concept, universal self-concept, and self-esteem targets

must be avoided including self-description and an evaluation of that description. General self-
concept measured through attitudes and motivations is not beneficial since general self-concept
are from areas not directly related to academic learning. Through specifying academic self-
concept or self-concept in academic ability a more valid indication of what students think of
themselves as learners will be known. Targets that are specific to subject areas will yield to a
more useful information draw the line between descriptions of themselves and if they like those
descriptions. For cases of more serious mental or emotional problems, a general measure may
be needed, however, it Is the best to leave those kind of assessments for such cases to school
psychologist or counselor.

2.5Social Relationship targets

A complex set of interaction skills, including identification of appropriate response to social
indicatons, defines social relationships. The table below contains examples of the nature of social
relationships that can be used as targets.

Peer relations Friendship

Cooperation Collaboration
Taking a stand Conflict resolution
Functional in groups Assertiveness
Prosocial behavior Empathy
*Behaviors that are intended to help others

The examples cited in the table are most relevant in basic education, specifically in the
elementary level as these social traits are needed skills in their academic achievement. And at
 the secondary level, social traits that enhances interpersonal abilities are becoming more
important as the school work with the business community to assess the need, specifically
those needs pertaining to skills necessary to be successful in the workplace. Moreover, social
interactions is the key element of knowledge construction, active learning, and deep
understanding (Borich & Tombari, 2004). As long as there are interactions that happen,
students need to make necessary adjustments in their thinking and actions so as to
accommodate others’ viewpoints, to defend their ideas to others, and to share their opinions.
These exercises encourage a deep understanding and keep student involved. In addition,
interaction can help promote good reasoning, and problem-solving skills through observation
and engagement in such activities.
Presented in the table below are some examples of social relationship areas and
corresponding targets.

Social Relationship Target concern Example

Peer Showing interest in others Students will share their
Relationship Listening to peers ideas in a small group
Sharing to a group discussion
Contributing to group
activities
Cooperative Sharing Students will demonstrate
Skill Listening that they are able to
Volunteering ideas and negotiate with others and
suggestions compromise.
Supporting and accepting
others’
Taking turns
Criticizing constructively

Collaborative skills needed to work in small groups may include four components
namely: (1) basic interaction; (2) getting along; (3) coaching; and (4) fulfilling particular roles
(Borich & Tombari, 2004; Hoy & Greg, 1994).

A general target regarding “improved social relationships” or “improved collaboration

skills” does not provide specifics to focus instruction and assessment.

2.6Classroom Environment Targets

In every classroom there is a unique climate that is felt at every point in time. Some manifest a
comfortable atmosphere, others have relaxed and productive ambiance. As a result, there are
classes that are happy and content while others are serious and tensed due to the effect of
the classroom climate. It follows that students behave differently as dictated also by the
classroom climate, some shows warm and supportive class while others register as cold and
 rejecting. All these situations are what is known as classroom environment, classroom climate,
or classroom culture.

As affective target, learning should seek to establish student feelings, relationships, and
beliefs that promote positive classroom environment.

Characteristics Description
Affiliation The extent to which student like and accept
each other.
Involvement The extent to which students are interested
in and engaged in learning.
Task Orientation The extent to which classroom activities are
focused on the completion of academic tasks.
Cohesiveness The extent to which students share norms
and expectations.
Competition The emphasis on competition between
students.
Favoritism Whether each student enjoys the same
privileges.
Influence The extent to which each student influences
classroom decisions
Friction The extent to which students bicker with one
another.
Formality The emphasis on imposing rules.
Communication The extent to which communication among
students and with teacher is honest and
authentic
Warmth The extent to which students care about each
and show concern.

One of the relevant inputs to improve the classroom environment is to compare

students’ perspectives with those of teachers’ perspectives as far as classroom ambiance. For
example, the students perceive that there is a need to establish a more positive classroom
environment while on the other hand, the teachers see that the classroom environment is
more positive. The difference on the perceptions of the students and the teachers with
respect to the level of possibility of the classroom environment is a good source of
information to identify what areas to improve in the classroom environment so as to maximize
student learning.

3. Affective Domain of the Taxonomy of Education Objectives

In 1964, David R. Krathwohl, together his coleagues, extended Bloom’s Taxonomy of

Educational Objectives by publishing the second taxonomy of objectives, this time giving
emphasis on the affective domain. Krathwohl and his collaborators attempted to
subdivide the affective realm into relatively distinct division. Five different levels of
effective objectives were described in the affective taxonomy. These levels are
described in the following table.

Level Description Example

Receiving Concerned with student’s Students does
(attending) sensitivity to the existence of mathematics activities for
certain phenomena and grade.
stimuli, that is, with student’s
willingness to receive or to
attend to this stimuli.
It is categorized in three
subdivisions that shows the
different levels of attending
to phenomena:
1. Awareness of the
phenomena
2. Willingness to receive
the phenomena
3. Controlled or
selected attention to
phenomena
Responding Concerned with responses Students gives special
that go beyond merely attention to the discussion
attending to phenomena. of mathematics lessons to
Students are sufficiently be able to answer the
motivated that they are not activities.
just “willing to attend” but
are actively attending.
Valuing Reflects the student’s holding Student actively and
of a particular importance or consistently participates in
value. Students display the discussion and
behavior with sufficient interestingly answers all
consistency in appropriate the activities in
situations that are perceived mathematics.
as holding this value.
 Level Description Example
Organizing Students successively Student integrates the
internalize values; they lesson learned in math
encounter situations in with science.
which more than one value
is relevant. This requires
the necessity of organizing
their values into a system
such that certain values
exercise greater control.
Characterizing by a value or Internalization has taken Student applies the lessons
value complex place in an individual value learned in mathematics in
hierarchy to the extent that daily activities such buying,
he or she can be cooking, and others
characterized as holding a
particular value or set of
values.

The aforementioned affective taxonomy serves as a valuable part of assessment

of affect. Through them, standard or level of affect that is part of the target is
determined. In addition, it also provides good suggestions for using students behaviors
as indicators of affect at each of the levels.