Importance of Affective Assessments

When one thinks of educational assessment, one often thinks

of cognitive measures. We teach students important
concepts, how to problem solve, and how to think critically.
Then we create tests to determine whether the
students can do or know those things. In this blog, Ive written
a lot about how to go about doing that. Ive discussed validity,
reliability, and item writing guidelines.

Today, Id like to write about the importance of affective

measures. What are affective measures? These are
assessments that focus on students attitudes, interests, and
values. For instance, an assessment that measures how
students view themselves as learners would be an example of
an affective assessment instrument.

Dr. Popham (2006) has a bias towards affective measures.

He argues that affective measures are equally, if not more,
important as cognitive measures. Whereas cognitive
assessments measure what students can do, affective
assessments measure what students will do in the future.
When teachers measure childrens attitudes toward the
democratic process, we gain insights into how they will likely
act toward the democratic system when they grow up.
Knowing this is equally important, if not more than, to knowing
whether the students can name and describe the three
branches of government in the U.S.

One this count, I agree with Dr. Popham. Affective measures

are and should be important in education.

Detractors of affective measurement argue that teachers

should not be measuring (and therefore influencing) a
students values. For example, they dont want teachers to be
influencing a students political or religious views. I agree with
that. As Dr. Popham points out, there are universal values that
we should and can agree to teach our students. For example,
we can and should promote a students positive attitude
towards learning. Also, we can promote and nurture a
students interest in a specific subject. We can assess and
promote values such as integrity, justice, and honesty. So,
there are many attitudes, interests, or values that we can
agree to assess.

The best and easiest way to assess these affective measures

is to use self-reports. Ask students to report their degree of
agreement with statements using a Likert scale. (I might write
more about how to develop a Likert scale in the future. Let me
know if you would like to see that as a blog post.) One of the
key things to remember when assessing affect using self-
reports is that we are assessing the attitudes, interests, and
values of the group, not of an individual student. So, tell
students that their responses will be anonymous. Use
procedures to ensure anonymity; this will reduce the students
tendency to respond in a socially desirable way. Minimizing
this tendency will increase the validity of any inferences that
we make from the results.

A Naiku, we believe in the power and usefulness of affective

measurements in education. We believe that teachers not
only should know each individual student through
assessment, teachers also need to know their students as a
group. We need to know how they feel about or view certain
interests and values. Knowing this information will make a
teacher more informed, and ultimately, a better and more
effective teacher.

On the Naiku system, you can easily create affective

assessments. We dont require that an assessment be a
cognitive test. Go ahead; try to create an affective
assessment. If you already have some and have used them to
great benefit, please consider sharing them with other
teachers on Naiku.
The term affect generally refers to emotions and feelings and is thought to
encompass broader qualities that include temperaments, personality, attitudes, and
values; these qualities are thought to influence personal interests, likes, perceptions
and other qualities. The term is not well defined and often used inconsistently
within the behavioral science literature. The term often is used to contrast two
other broad and commonly-used terms: cognition, and physical-motor. Although
the term may lack specificity and clarity of meaning, the qualities encompassed by
it are critical to a complete and accurate understanding of human behavior.
Moreover, attempts to agree upon common terminology to describe instruments
and methods that assess affective qualities have not been successful. Although one
might think the use of the term test might be suitable, this term often is reserved for
use in describing specific methods of assessment that allow one to directly observe
the actual performance of persons under standardized conditions. Many of the
methods used to assess affective qualities may not provide either direct
observations or standardized conditions. Thus, broader terms including self-report,
survey, questionnaire, and checklist often are used to describe commonly used
methods of affective assessment.
Assessment of students affective variables such as these two presents unique
challenges. For example, to assess affect productively, teachers must elicit honest
responses from students. Teachers want to know how students really feel. But in an
environment in which students have learned to give teachers the right answers
(that is, the answers students believe the teacher wants to hear) there is a danger
that students will tend to supply socially desirable responses. Obviously, such
responses can be misleading. To prevent this, affective inventories such as those
offered in the appendix must be administered under conditions of absolute
anonymity. Not only do students make all responses to an affective inventory
anonymously, but those students must really believe their anonymous responses
are untraceable. Only then can teachers hope for honest expressions of students
sentiments. This requirement for anonymity carries with it important implications for
how the inventories can be used. Unlike the assessment of students cognitive
achievement, in which teachers arrive at an assessment-based inference about
each students level of achievement, affective assessment permits teachers to
make only group-based inferences about students affect. Yet, by calculating an
average per-student response from an entire class of students, a sufficiently
accurate group-focused inference can be made to guide the teacher of that class.
Some students, of course, even though providing only anonymous responses, will
still supply excessively positive responses because they believe their teacher will
want them to answer in that way. Yet, there are also some students who will supply
excessively negative responses becauseshrouded by a cloak of anonymitythey
believe this is an opportunity to get even with the teacher. Thus, the average of
all students responses to an anonymous self-report inventory typically supplies a
sufficiently accurate estimate (for a teachers decision-making) regarding the
affective status of an entire class.
WHAT IS AFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT?

Assessment seemed so simple when I first began this journey in education. It didnt seem at
all complicated; teachers mark assignments, test, projects, reports, etc. either right, wrong
or with the comment could you expand on this please. This, of course, was based on what
my schooling was like way back in the eighties and nineties. Since delving into the subject, I
have begun the process of analyzing how my teachers assessed my work and how
teachers today are doing it. Education has made a dramatic change from being subject
centred only, to student oriented. This has change their views on assessment as well. If the
process by which teaching students has changed, then the assessment must be re-
evaluated, as well, in order to ensure the goals, objectives and standards are being met.
This brings up the issue of affective assessment. What does it truly mean? For me, affective
assessment is the ability for a teacher to take the material being taught, developing a unit
plan, subsequently the lesson plans, and developing a scheme or a strategy that
encompasses material that is being taught, the academic level of students in the class and
creating an assessment strategy that

1) encourages students to want to learn or strive for understanding,

2) develops, in students, the self-discipline required to work successfully,

3) ensures the material being taught is assess effectively for understanding, completeness
or comprehension,

4) is an effective means by which to assess a given objective, and

5) nurtures a desire for the student to continue in their process of learning either in the
subject at hand or in other areas of their academic or personal life.

As mentioned above, this strategy is a package deal. It is impossible for teachers to

separate learning and assessment. This is the partial answer to the question; how is
affective assessment related to teaching and learning? In order for assessment to be
relevant and reliable, it must be based on the material being covered, the students and their
needs and what is considered to be success in mastery of the subject material and skills.
How we assess these successes is part of planning the process by which we teach. Since
students learn in many different ways, it can be expected they can be successful in testing
based on their learning styles. An example of this would be of a student who learns
effectively by manipulating and working hands on. A written exam, testing how that student
would repeat the process may not be affective in actually assessing their comprehension. A
better way may be to have to student repeat the actions, in a hands on test. Developing
separate assessment strategies for all the students in the class for a given project would not
be a very wise choice. Teachers today find their time is limited as it is. Creating 26
assessments for 26 students would require a lot of time and energy. Instead, I would
recommend adjusting how you assess students based on the projects they are doing and
using many forms of assessment throughout the semester. If assessment is done all the
time using only one form, students may not gain the valuable information they need in order
to improve in their work.

Business education seems to be a subject that has been based on write or wrong answers.
Through my learning process of assessment and the understanding of affective
assessment, I have realized the potential that is available for students to gain the cross-
curricular support. Assessment does not have to be based only on right or wrong. Nurturing
a students English skills through response journals, letter preparation, case studies and
group work can develop some of the necessary skills required to work in a business
environment today. As the students are investigating business issues, they are developing a
greater sense of social comprehension and global awareness. These are only two
examples of how the horizontal curriculum can be addressed. With cognitive, affective and
psychomotor domains needing to be met, collaboration with colleauges who teach your
students in other subjects can help to ensure your teaching strategies are affective in
encouraging students learning process in other areas.
Competency-based learning is generally seen as an alternative to more traditional
educational approaches in which students may or may not acquire proficiency in a given
course or academic subject before they earn course credit, get promoted to the next
grade level, or graduate. For example, high school students typically earn academic
credit by passing a course, but a passing grade may be an A or it may be a D,
suggesting that the awarded credit is based on a spectrum of learning expectations
with some students learning more and others learning lessrather than on the same
consistent standards being applied to all students equally. And since grades may be
calculated differently from school to school or teacher to teacher, and they may be
based on divergent learning expectations (i.e., some courses might be harder and
others easier), it may be possible for students to pass their courses, earn the required
number of credits, and receive a diploma without acquiring important knowledge and
skills. In extreme cases, for example, students may be awarded a high school diploma
but still be unable to read, write, or do math at a basic level. A competency-based
diploma would be a diploma awarded to students only after they have met expected
learning standards.

While the goal of competency-based learning is to ensure that more students learn what
they are expected to learn, the approach can also provide educators with more detailed
or fine-grained information about student learning progress, which can help them more
precisely identify academic strengths and weakness, as well as the specific concepts
and skills students have not yet mastered. Since academic progress is often tracked
and reported by learning standard in competency-based courses and schools,
educators and parents often know more precisely what specific knowledge and skills
students have acquired or may be struggling with. For example, instead of receiving a
letter grade on an assignment or test, each of which may address a variety of
standards, students are graded on specific learning standards, each of which describes
the knowledge and skills students are expected to acquire.

When schools transition to a competency-based system, it can entail significant

changes in how a school operates and how it teaches students, affecting everything
from the schools educational philosophy and culture to its methods of instruction,
testing, grading, reporting, promotion, and graduation. For example, report cards may
be entirely redesigned, and schools may use different grading scales and systems, such
as replacing letter grades with brief descriptive statementse.g., phrases such
as does not meet, partially meets, meets the standard, and exceeds the
standard are commonly used in competency-based schools (although systems vary
widely in design, purpose, and terminology). Schools may also use different methods of
instruction and assessment to determine whether students have achieved competency,
including strategies such as demonstrations of learning, learning
pathways, personal learning plans, portfolios, rubrics, and capstone projects, to
name just a few.

What Is Competency-Based Learning?

Competency-based learning is an approach to education that focuses on the

students demonstration of desired learning outcomes as central to the learning
process. It is concerned chiefly with a students progression through curriculum
at their own pace, depth, etc. As competencies are proven, students continue to
progress.

Like most things education-related, there is disagreement of what competency-

based learning actually means, what its defining traits are, and how it should
ideally be used or function. It is traditionally thought of in terms of skills and
vocation, but it can be entirely academic as well.

A key characteristic of competency-based learning is its focus on mastery. In

other learning models, students are exposed to contentwhether skills or
conceptsover time, and success is measured summatively. In a competency-
based learning system, students are not allowed to continue until they have
demonstrated mastery of the identified competencies (i.e., the desired learning
outcomes to be demonstrated). In this way, competency-based learning is
closely tied to mastery learning.

It is similar to outcomes-based learning in that said outcomesin this case,

called competenciesare identified beforehand, and students are frequently
assessed. In this way, competency-based learning can be thought of as a form of
outcomes-based learning.

How good or bad it is depends on the ecology it is embedded in. In a system

with deep and diverse support systems, robust assessment forms, and clear and
manageable learning outcomes that are accessible to all learners, competency-
based learning can be an effective model, potentially reducing inefficiency
(including time spent learning) and increasing pedagogical precision and student
achievement.

Its strengths lie in its flexibility, as learners are able to move at their own pace.
This supports students with diverse knowledge backgrounds, literacy levels, and
other related aptitudes. Its challenges should sound familiar to most educators,
including the difficulty in identifyingand agreeing uponthe most important
competencies, how to best assess them, and how to support learners that
struggle.

On paper, technology adds a new wrinkle to competency-based learning, as it

provides students with access to content to develop said competencies. If every
student can access the same content the teacher does, there is less of a need for
the class to move together, and students are able to prove their understanding
on more personal and authentic terms.