Chapter+10

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 * Chapter 10 **

= Affective Assessment    = 
 * Affective assessment is assessment dealing with interests, attitudes, appreciations, values, and emotional sets or biases

__ Why is it so important? __
 ==__Potential Affective Targets __==
 * **Negative attitudes about self and school will typically influence all of a child's subsequent education > truly able students, for example, who don't consider themselves worthy won't do well **
 * Because few teachers try to assess their students' affective status, most teachers don't know what their students' attitudes, interests, and values really are.
 * Few classroom teachers give explicit attention to influencing their students' attitudes and values. Systematic assessment of affect is pretty uncommen.
 * James Popham considers affective variables as far more important than cognitive variables.
 * **"We measure what we treasure"** > the presence of affective postinstruction measurements will incline you to include affectively focused activities in your instruction > **What's important enough to be assessed is likely to influence your instruction**
 * Periodic monitoring of your students' affective status can assist you in seeing what sorts of shifts in your instructional program might be needed.

__//Attitude//__
 * Choose only those affective consequences that would be close to universally approved
 *  Carefully consider the legitimacy of the targets you focus on, for example:
 * positive attitudes toward learning
 * positive attitudes toward self
 * positive attitudes toward self as learner
 * appropriate attitudes toward those who differ from us
 * Consider subject-specific attitudes

__//Interest//__
 * Subject specific interest > At the very least, students should be no **less** interested in the subject as a consequence of your teaching
 * Interest in reading
 * Interest in emerging technology

//__Values__// - Do not concern yourself with religious or political values! - Universally accepted values with an impact on learning:
 * Honesty
 * Integrity
 * Justice
 * Freedom

__Implementation of Attitudinal Assessment__

 * Must be easy to implement or it won't happen
 * Self-report inventories will give a good idea of students' affective status and are easy to implement
 * Examples of self-report inventories:
 * __Likert Inventories__
 * a series of statements to which students can register agreement/disagreement (as many as 10-20 items to a single affective dimension)
 * depending on the age of the students the text of these inventories needs to be adjusted to be more or less sophisticated
 * For building a Likert inventory see pages 222-223
 * Be sure your inventory's statements make sense in the real world (avoid statement like always, never, every day...)


 * __Multifocus Affective Inventories__
 * Attempt to capture a //number// of students' affective dispositions
 * Each affective dimension could be assessed with as few as two items (one positive statement and one negative statement)
 * Steps for creating a multifocus affective inventory:
 * 1) Select the affective variable to measure (educationally significant!)
 * 2) Determine how many item (statements) to allot per variable. Increase the number of items in multiples of two (positive & negative statements)
 * 3) Create a series of positive and negative statements related to each affective variable (scattered randomly throughout assessment)
 * 4) Determine number and phrasing of response options (strongly agree, true for me...)
 * 5) Create clear instructions, including one sample item, request for anonymous responses, reminder that there are no 'right or wrong' answers
 * **Be sure students know that their responses are anonymous! If students as much as suspect that you might be able to trace their answers they will not let themselves be completely honest!**
 * Points are awarded for agreement with positive and disagreement with negative statements
 * Example item: __Feelings about school__
 * I__n general I like school a lot:__ TRUE (3) - NOT SURE(2)- NOT TRUE(1)
 * __Overall I don't like school very much:__ NOT TRUE (3) - NOT SURE(2) - TRUE(1)
 * Highest score: 6 = student feels positive toward school
 * Middle range score: 4 = student feels neither too good nor too bad
 * Lowest score: 2 = student feels negative toward school

__Caviats__:  __**The Good News:**__
 * No individual resopnses can or should be extrapolated! This assessment tool is too imprecise to permit individual-focused inferences!
 * Only group focus affective inferences can and should be made!
 * Most teachers do not have even a foggy notion about how to promote affect instructionally > Typically they will need solid professional-development support to learn how to alter students' attitudes, values, and interests.
 * Even if affective assessment instruments are not used completely faithfully, the mere presence of this assessment will almost certainly highten a teacher's sensitivity toward promoting positive affective outcomes.
 * Questions:**
 * Are there areas of student life that cannot be assessed affectively?
 * Do you think students are inclined to be truthful?
 * What do you think the greatest benefit of affective assessment is? Is it worth it? Should we bother? Why? Why not?
 * What do you think is the optimal number of affective assessments? Could there be too many?

Base group 4 wikispaces 452 section 1