SHIFTING OUR FOCUS: HELPING STUDENTS IMPROVE THEIR LEARNING IN THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

Blooms taxonomy includes three learning domains: cognitive, kinetic and affective. With the explosion of information and the need for a highly knowledgeable and skilled workforce, higher education has done an admirable job focusing on the cognitive and kinetic learning domains. In order to provide emotionally intelligent workers, however, education needs to focus more on the affective domain. This is particularly true for students who are attracted to the helping professions such as human services, social work, psychology and medicine. The affective domain focuses on students’ values, attitudes, beliefs, and emotional engagement (Cazzel and Rodriquez 2011). In order to be effective helpers, students must be capable of self-reflection and self-understanding. We need to shift education from what students need to know, and focus more on what they need to become (Valiga, 2014). There are three critical components in providing affective learning experiences: creation of an emotional learning environment, implementation of affective learning activities and development of valid and reliable outcome instruments. This presentation will discuss the implementation of these three components of affective learning in the Human Services Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Intended participants include faculty and administrators from various helping disciplines. At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to describe specific strategies for creating emotional learning environments, construct a plan for affective engagement of their students and discuss evaluation methods.

References:
[1] Cazzell, M. & Rodriquez, A. (2011). Qualitative analysis of student beliefs and attitudes after an objective structured clinical evaluation: Implications for affective domain learning in undergraduate nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 50(12), 711-714. DOI: 10.3928/01484834-201111017-04
[2] Valiga, T.M. (2014). Attending to affective domain learning: Essential to prepare the kind of graduates the public needs. Journal of Nursing Education, 53(5), 247. DOI: 10.3928/0148484834-20140422-10