Affective Learning Competencies

Overview

Affect describes a number of non-cognitive variables such as a person's attitude, interests, and values. Student affect is important and teachers can help their students acquire positive attitudes. According to Popham (2003), the reason why it is important to assess affect are:

1. educators should be interested in assessing affective variables because these variables are excellent predictors of students' future behavior;
2. teachers should assess affect to remind themselves that there's more to being a successful teacher than helping students obtain high scores on achievement tests;
3. information regarding students' affect can help teachers teach more effectively on a day-to-day basis

Tanner (2001) posits that aptitudes and attitudes are related to the academic achievement of learners. Information about learners' experiences with a subject or n activity is only part of what is needed as input in order to explain their performance. 

Importance of Affective Targets

Researches have established a clear link between affect and cognitive learning (Omrod, 2004). Students are more proficient in problem-solving if they enjoy what they do. Students who are in a good mood and emotionally involved are more likely to pay attention to information, remember it meaningfully and apply it.

Though the linkage of effect and learning of students has been well-established, there remains very little systematic assessment of affect that is applied in classroom instruction. Motivation and involvement of students in learning activities are affected by students' attitudes toward learning, respect for others, and concern for others. Though these factors are known to teachers, yet most teachers do not utilize any kind of formal affective assessment. Possible reasons are:

• school routines are organized based on subject areas, and
• assessment of affective targets is fraught with difficulties

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 also makes difficult to determine which affective targets are appropriate for all students. It is simply not easy to define attitudes, values, and interests.

Affective Traits & Learning Targets

Positive affective traits and skills are essential for:

• effective learning;
• being an involved and productive member of our society;
• preparing for occupational & vocational satisfaction and productivity (for 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

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

TRAIT	DESCRIPTION
Attitude	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 the intensity of involvement
Academic Self-Concept	Self-perception of competence in school and learning
Self-Esteem	Attitudes toward oneself; a 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 the ability to regulate emotional expression
Social Relationships	Nature of interpersonal interactions and functioning in a 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

Attitude Targets

McMillan (1980) defines attitude 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 reactions toward an object, situation, person, or group of objects, the 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 socioeconomic status.

Forsyth (1999) found out that attitudes consist of the following components:

• an affective component of positive or negative feelings
• a cognitive component describing worth or value (thoughts)
• a behavioral component indicating a willingness or desire to engage in particular actions

The affective component consists of the emotion or feeling associated with an object or a person. A strong and stable attitude is manifested when all three components are consistent. This means that if a student like Science (affective component), the student thinks it is valuable (cognitive component), and reads Science related materials at home (behavioral component), it translates 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, a certain student may not like English very much but thinks that English is important. The question is, what would be her attitude towards English? That would depend on what components of the attitude is being measured. If it is only affective component then the attitude would be negative; but if it the cognitive component, it would translate to a positive attitude.