Assessment in the Affective Domain

Summary:

Affective Domain - describes that learning objectives that emphasize a feeling or tone, emotion or a degree of acceptance or rejection.

LEVELS OF AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

Level	Definition	Terms used
Receiving	Being aware of or attending to something in the environment.	Differentiate, listen, attend, develop, recognize,accept
Responding	Showing some new behaviors as well as experience	Volunteer, complete, comply. Cooperate, discuss, examine, obey, respond, follow
Valuing	Showing some definite involvement or commitment	Accept, support, defend, devote, pursue, seek, debate
Organization	Integrating a new value into one's general set of values	Codify, discriminate, display, order, organize, systematize, weight, discuss, theorize,formulate, balance, examine
Characterization by value	Acting consistently with the new value.	Internalize, verify, resolve, to resist, to manage, to revise, to require

Affective Learning Competencies - often stated in the form of instructional objectives.

Instructional Objectives - specific, measurable, short-term, observable student behaviors.

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

                    -tools used to make sure goals are attained.

FOCAL POINTS:

Attitudes - a mental predisposition to act that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of disfavor.

                - attached to mental categories.

                -  influence the way a person acts and think in a sopcial communities we                        belong.

Four Components of Attitude:

1. Cognitions - beliefs, theories, expectations, cause-and-effect beliefs, perception related to the focal point. Statement of beliefs and expectations which vary from one individual to the next.

2.     Affect - refers to feelings with respect to the focal point objects: fear, liking, anger.

3.  Behavioral Intentions - our goals, aspirations, and our expected responses to the attitude object.

4.     Evaluation - central component of attitude.  

Motivation - a reason or set of reasons for engaging in a particular behavior. The reasons includes basic needs, objects, goal, state of being, ideal that is desirable.

Theories of Motivation:

• Abraham Maslow's Heirarchy of Human Needs Theory- is the most widely discussed theory of motivation.

              - Human needs influence behavior

• Frederick Herzberg's theory: the two factor theory, the Motivation-hygiene Theory which concludes that certain factors in the workplace result in job satisfaction, while others do not. 

          Motivators- Challenging work, recognition, responsibility which give positive                                      satisfaction

           Hygiene factor- status, job security, salary and fringe benefits

Clayton Aldefer expanded Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He formulated the ERG Theory (existence, relatedness and growth).

Two Kinds of Motivation:

1. Intrinsic Motivation - brings pleasure or make people feel what they are learning is morally significant.

2. Extrinsic Motivation - which comes when a student compelled to do something because of factors external to him.

Self-efficacy - is an impression that one is capable of performing in a certain manner or attaining certain goals.

Self-efficacy vs. Self-esteem

                     Efficacy - relates to a person's perception of their ability to reach a goal.

                     Esteem - relates to a person's self-worth.

Development of Assessment Tools/Standard Assessment Tools

1)    Self-report - most commonly used, essentially requires an individual to provide an account of his attitude or feelings toward a concept or idea or people.

2)    Rating Skills - refers to a set of categories designed to a elicit information about a quantitative attribute in a social science.

3)    Semantic Differential (SD) Scales - tries to assess an individuals reaction to a specific words, ideas or concepts in terms of ratings on bipolar scales defined with constructing adjectives at each other.

4)    Thurstone Scale - Thurstone is considered as the father of attitude measurement and addressed the issue of how favorable an individual is with regards to a given issue.

5)    Lickert Scale - Lickert developed the method of summated ratings for Lickert Scale which is widely used. This requires an individual to tick in a box to report whether they "strongly agree", "agree" or "disagree".

6)    Checklists - are the most common and perhaps the easiest instruments in the affective domain.

Reflection:

Affective domain identify the understanding and addressing how people learn. It emphasizes feeling tone, emotion, or the degree of acceptance or rejection. This is how education takes place in the heart of the learners. It supplies feelings of satisfaction of the learners towards the lessons he/ she is learning. The more the students internalize the lesson, the more the lessons becomes valuable.

Not all the students inside a school are learning. Some are just attending because they don’t have the choice. This area is important for a teacher so that they can easily find out if the lessons are being internalize or not.

As a future educator, it is a challenge for me to make my lessons meaningful and valuable to students. This Affective domain is really useful to know how to motivate students to value their learnings.