Affective objectives and their importance in all content areas

Affective objectives are designed to engage the feelings and attitudes of students. They are present in such behaviors as choosing to listen rather than sleep; volunteering to research a question or to give an answer; explaining one's feelings about a reading passage, video, or piece of music; demonstrating determination in solving a problem; speaking with conviction; describing one's changing feelings while reading a novel; selecting a book to read that seems interesting; choosing to be unbiased in judging an argument (ironically, to suspend feelings as much as possible, but by choosing this, opting for a particular attitude towards learning), etc. These are all behaviors and attitudes we seek because we know they enhance learning. Learning is always greater when feelings as well as thoughts are involved.

Affective objectives include arguing a position; explaining why one feels more "comfortable" approaching the solving of a math problem one way rather than in other ways; describing one's feelings about a character in a novel; expressing feeling or emotion in a foreign language dialogue; and even comparing one's "gut" feeling about how to proceed with a science experiment with what turns out to be a workable approach.

We can also consider as affective objectives the study of values and feelings as presented in the content to be learned. I can ask students to compare the values of two political regimes or to explain what values most environmentalists have in common. If I then ask students how they feel about these values, whether they endorse them or reject them, whether they have sympathy or dislike, I am asking them to connecting the study of values with the students' own beliefs.

We ignore the affective "domain", which Bloom has made so famous, at our peril!

--Dr. James Lee, Saint Joseph's University