Education Week 4 assignment

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Chapter 10

Affective Assessment

Chief Chapter Outcome

An understanding of the potential instructional dividends of affective assessment and what’s necessary for teachers to draw valid inferences about their students’ affect—namely, the use of anonymity-cloaked, self-report inventories leading to defensible inferences about groups of students, not individuals

Learning Objectives

10.1 Determine the characteristics of affective assessment that result in teachers’ ability to draw inferences about student groups’ affect.

10.2 For affective variables apt to be of interest to teachers, describe how to build and evaluate a multifocus affective inventory.

Affective variables, most educators concede, are important. Students’ attitudes toward learning, for example, play a major role in how much learning those stu- dents subsequently pursue. The values students have regarding truthfulness and integrity shape their daily conduct. And students’ self-esteem, of course, influ- ences almost everything students do. There’s little doubt that the affective status of students should concern all educators.

In truth, however, few classroom teachers give explicit attention to influenc- ing their students’ attitudes and values. Even fewer classroom teachers truly try to assess the affective status of their students. Certainly, a teacher may observe students’ sour demeanors and conclude that they’re “out of sorts” or the class is “a mite depressed,” but how many times have you heard about a teacher who tried to gather systematic evidence regarding students’ attitudes and interests? Regrettably, systematic assessment of affect is quite uncommon.

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This chapter will address the issue of affective assessment by providing you with general insights regarding the assessment of students’ attitudes, inter- ests, and values. Thereafter, the chapter will supply you with some practical, step-by-step procedures for gauging students’ status regarding several education- ally important affective variables.

Why Assess Affect? One question you might be asking yourself is, why assess attitudes at all? Many teachers, particularly those who teach older students, believe that their only educational mission is to increase students’ knowledge and skills. Affect, such teachers believe, simply doesn’t fall into their proper sphere of influ- ence. However, students who learn to perform mathematics like magicians, yet abhor mathematics, certainly aren’t apt to apply the mathematics they’ve learned. Students who can compose outstanding essays, but believe they are “really rotten writers,” typically won’t spend much time eagerly churning out essays.

The Importance of Affect I’d like to get my own bias regarding this issue out on the table, so you don’t think I’m trying to sneakily influence you. I believe affective variables are often more significant than cognitive variables. How many times, for example, have you seen people who weren’t all that intellectually “gifted,” yet still succeed because they were highly motivated and hard-working? Conversely, how many times have you seen truly able people simply veer away from challenges because they did not consider themselves challenge-worthy? Day in and day out, we see the enormous impact that people’s affective status has on their behavior. Affect is every bit as important as cognitive ability.

Have you ever seen a group of kindergarten students troop off to school, loaded with enthusiasm and gobs of gumption, only to encounter those same students a few years later and see that a fair number were both disenchanted with school and definitely down on themselves? Well, I have. And what’s going on with such children is surely taking place in the affective realm. When most kindergartners start school, they are excited about school and confident. However, after failing to be successful for a year or two, many of those formerly upbeat chil- dren carry around decisively lower self-concepts. They’ve tried and been found wanting. Such negative attitudes about self and school typically influence the entirety of a child’s subsequent education. Yet, because too few teachers try to assess their students’ affective status, many teachers simply don’t know what their students’ attitudes, interests, and values really are. This situation needs to change—and what you learn about affective assessment in this chapter could truly trigger such changes.

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Spurring Affectively Focused Instruction Even if there were no such thing as externally imposed “educational account- ability” whereby students’ performances on high-stakes tests serve as indicators of educational effectiveness, what’s on achievement tests would still influence the stuff teachers teach. When I was a high school teacher, I knew what kinds of items I had on my own final exams. (That is, I knew in the second year of teaching, after I’d whipped out my first-year final exams only minutes before my students needed to take those exams.) Because I wanted my students to do well on my final exams, I made reasonably sure I spent at least some instructional time on the content covered by those final examinations.

It’s the same with affective assessment. Let’s say you’ve installed a straight- forward pretest–posttest evaluation design to assess changes in your students’ responses to an affective inventory regarding whether they are interested in the subject(s) you’re teaching. Your recognition that there is to be a formal pretest– posttest assessment of students’ subject-matter interest will, as surely as school buses run late, influence you to try providing instruction so your students become more positive about the subject(s) you’re teaching.

In other words, the presence of affective post-instruction measurement will incline you to include affectively focused activities in your instruction. In a sense, you’re saying to yourself—and anyone else you care to have understand your instructional planning—that affective outcomes are important enough for you to formally assess them. You can be assured that what’s important enough to be

Decision time Where Went Wonder?

Hiro Sasaki has decided to get a more accurate reading of his kindergarten students’ attitudes toward school. Although he has worked with kindergartners for the past 4 years, only recently has Hiro become convinced of the importance of student affect.

Because he is dealing with very young children, most of whom can’t read when they arrive at Mission Elementary School, Hiro uses an orally administered, anonymously completed inventory for which he reads a question aloud to the students and they are to respond by circling either a smiling face or a frowning face. Students respond to one question, and then another, after Hiro tells them to “Answer next to the bird,” “Answer by the star,” and so on.

At the end of the first week of school, students’ responses to Hiro’s inventory indicated that they really liked school. In fact, 100 percent of the children responded that they couldn’t wait to find out what new things they would learn at school each day! However, 3 months later, a readministration of the same inventory showed that students’ attitudes toward school seemed to have taken a gnarly nosedive. Well over half of his kindergartners indicated that they no longer looked forward to coming to school. Almost 75 percent, in fact, indicated that they were often bored in class. Hiro was understandably alarmed.

If you were Hiro, what would you decide to do?

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assessed, even if it’s measured in your classroom and nowhere else in the world, is likely to influence your instruction.

It has been said that we measure what we treasure. Well, if we really think affec- tive outcomes are worth classroom time promoting them, we darn well ought to measure them.

Monitoring Students’ Status In addition to serving as an end-of-instruction target, affective-assessment devices, if administered regularly, help teachers determine whether modifications in their instructional program are warranted. For example, let’s say you’re a physics teacher and you want to get a fix on how enthused your students are about con- tinuing their study of physics when they get to college. Ideally, you’d like a fair number of your students to get mildly ecstatic over the raptures of future physics coursework. Suppose that, each month, you employ a brief self-report attitudinal inventory focused on the likelihood of students’ pursuing future physics instruc- tion. For illustrative purposes, let’s assume that in mid-September, 60 percent of your students registered an interest in taking college physics courses and that in late October, about 65 percent indicated such an interest. In late November, how- ever, interest in future physics courses plummeted—with only 25 percent of your students signifying any interest in college physics. This is a clear message to you that something went on in October or November to turn off your budding Nobel laureates. A review of your instructional program during that period, and some serious effort on your part to generate more interest in postsecondary physics, would seem warranted. As you can see, periodic monitoring of your students’ affective status can help you determine what sorts of shifts, if any, in your instruc- tional program might be needed.

In review, there are several reasons why classroom teachers should devote at least a segment of their assessment program to the measurement of students’ affect. If you don’t believe your students’ attitudes, interests, and values are important, of course, you’ll not agree. But if you do think student affect is signifi- cant, you’ll want to learn what kinds of affective variables to assess and how to assess them. That’s coming up shortly.

The Other Side of the Argument Before turning to the nuts and bolts of affective assessment, it should be noted that not all citizens share the announced view regarding the importance of affective assessment and instruction. Particularly during the past decade or so, we have seen the emergence of vocal individuals who have taken strong positions against public schools’ offering anything other than traditional academic ( cognitive) education. Usually representing religious or conservative constituencies, these critics have argued that it is the job of the family and church to promote values

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Which affective Variables Should Be assessed? 255

in children and that any attempt by the schools to systematically modify stu- dents’ attitudes or values should cease. Indeed, during 2021 and 2022, a good many school boards in the United States erupted over the appropriateness of their districts’ schools taking positions with respect to national, under-debate moral issues.

Most proponents of affectively focused instruction and assessment agree with these critics that if any attention to affective outcomes is to be given, it must be focused only on those affective consequences that would be close to universally approved. For example, the promotion of students’ positive attitudes toward learning is an affective aspiration that almost everyone would support. Similarly, there are not many people who wouldn’t want the schools to nurture students’ self-esteem. Yet most citizens would hate to see public school educators dab- bling with any controversial attitudes or values—those that a vast majority of parents wouldn’t want their children to possess. (Interestingly, during the last few years we have seen ethical clashes on school boards over issues that, in previous years, seemed to reflect nearly unanimous support from citizens. The arrival of the COVID pandemic certainly triggered a diversity of school-related sentiments by those leading our educational communities.)

If you decide to devote some of your classroom assessment and instruction time to affective targets, you’ll clearly need to consider carefully the legitimacy of the targets you select. And even if you do so, you should recognize that there will be some people who may disapprove of such affective education, regardless of the care with which you select your affective curricular aims. Thus, if you tread the affective trail, prepare yourself to defend the legitimacy of your curricular choices.

Which Affective Variables Should Be Assessed? A Closer Look at Affect Before discussing the sorts of variables that you, as a classroom teacher, might wish to assess, let’s spend just a moment looking at the nature of affect itself. The reason why such affective variables as students’ attitudes, interests, and values are important to us is that those variables typically influence students’ future behavior. The chief reason why we want to promote positive attitudes toward learning is that students who have positive attitudes toward learning today will be inclined to pursue learning in the future.

The affective status of students lets us see how students are predisposed to behave subsequently. If we find that students believe healthy bodies are impor- tant, those students will be predisposed to maintain their own bodily health in the future. If we find that students have positive attitudes toward persons from other

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ethnic groups, then in the future such students will be predisposed to behave appropriately toward persons from other ethnic groups. As seen in Figure 10.1, current affective status predicts future behavior.

Do attitudes predict future behavior perfectly? Of course not. But suppose there are 100 third-graders who display very negative attitudes toward violence as a way of settling disputes, and there are 100 third-graders who believe vio- lence is an altogether suitable way of resolving disputes. In the future, there will probably be fewer violent dispute-resolution behaviors from the first group of 100 third-graders than from the second. Affective assessment, therefore, allows teachers to get a far better fix on the future behavioral dispositions of their stu- dents than they could achieve without affective assessment. That’s why affective assessment is so important.

As you know, schools have historically focused on cognitive variables. And that’s probably the way it’s always going to be. Thus, if you are interested in giving some attention to affect in your own classroom, you’ll need to select your affective foci judiciously. That’s what we’ll deal with next. We’ll look at attitudes first and then consider interests and values.

Potential Attitudinal Targets There are all sorts of possible attitudinal targets for a teacher’s instruction. Here are a few of the attitudes most commonly endorsed by teachers as reasonable attitudinal targets:

• Positive attitudes toward learning. Students should regard the act of learning positively. Students who are positive today about learning will tend to be tomorrow’s learners.

• Positive attitudes toward self. Self-esteem is the attitude on which most peo- ple’s personal worlds turn. Although children’s self-esteem is probably influ- enced more by parents and nonschool events than by teachers, what happens in the classroom can have a significant impact on children’s self-esteem.

• Positive attitudes toward self as a learner. Self-esteem as a learner is an affective variable over which educators have substantial influence. If students believe they are capable of learning, they typically tend to learn.

• Appropriate attitudes toward those who differ from us. The more tolerant and accepting students are toward members of other ethnic, gender, national,

Predicts Future BehaviorCurrent Affective

Status

Figure 10.1 the relationship Between Current affect and Future Behavior Wherein an Individual’s affective Status predicts that Individual’s Future Behavior

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Which affective Variables Should Be assessed? 257

racial, or religious groups, the more likely those students will behave prop- erly toward such individuals in the future.

There are numerous other subject-specific sorts of attitudes which teachers will wish to stress. For example, many teachers who deal with language arts will want to enhance students’ heightened confidence as writers—that is, students’ more positive attitudes toward their own composition capabilities. Science teach- ers will want to foster their students’ curiosity. Health education teachers will wish to promote students’ accurate perceptions of their vulnerability to health risks such as sexually transmitted diseases or COVID’s numerous variations. Depend- ing on your own instructional responsibilities, you’ll often discover that there are usually several attitudinal assessment contenders you’ll want to consider.

Potential Interest Targets Students’ interests represent another set of potential affective targets. Clearly, if you’re a high school chemistry teacher, you’d like at least some of your students to develop an interest in chemistry. Similarly, teachers of U.S. government would prefer that their students become interested in governmental affairs rather than regarding such topics as repugnant. Here, then, are a few illustrations of the kinds of interest targets that teachers might consider for possible assessment:

• Subject-related interests. Students should regard the subject matter taught (for example, mathematics) as more interesting at the end of instruction than they did when instruction began. At the very least, students should be no less inter- ested in the subject being taught as a consequence of their teacher’s instruction.

• Interest in reading. Because of the enormous impact that students’ reading prowess has on their subsequent lives, we’d like students to be interested in reading and, indeed, to enjoy it. Children who read because of their interest will—almost whether they want to or not—become good readers.

• Interest in emerging technology. As the world becomes increasingly depen- dent on technological advances, students who are interested in these sorts of technological improvements are more apt to learn about computers and, as a consequence, be able to utilize such technological tools.

To get a fix on possible interest-focused affective targets that might be suitable for assessment in your particular teaching situation, simply give a good, hard think to the things you’d like to see your students, as a consequence of what goes on in your classroom, become more interested in. It’s just that straightforward.

Potential Value Targets There are all sorts of values to which people subscribe that the schools should have nothing to do with. Most educators agree that political values and reli- gious values, for example, should not be dealt with instructionally in the schools. Whether students turn out to be liberals or conservatives is really

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none of a teacher’s business. And, historically, there’s been a long tradition in the United States of separating church and state. Teachers, therefore, certainly shouldn’t be advocating acceptance of particular religions or rejection of oth- ers. Well, then, what sorts of values are sufficiently meritorious and noncon- troversial that they could serve as targets for classroom attention? Here are a few to consider:

• Honesty. Students should learn to value honesty in their dealings with others.

• Integrity. Students should firmly adhere to their own code of values—for example, moral or artistic values.

• Justice. Students should subscribe to the view that all citizens should be the recipients of equal justice from governmental law-enforcement agencies.

• Freedom. Students should believe that democratic nations must provide the maximum level of stipulated freedoms to their citizens.

Although these kinds of values may seem to be little more than lofty, flag-waving endorsements of goodness, you may still wish to consider them and similar values for potential affective assessment in your own classroom. If there really are significant values you would like your students to embrace, and if those values fall properly in the sphere of what schools should be about, then the pos- sibility of including such values in a classroom-assessment program may have real appeal for you.

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Don’t try to assess too many affective variables. You’d be surprised how quickly you can become overwhelmed with the time required to gather affec- tively oriented data, and the time needed to make sense of the data you collect. This is another “less is more” setting in which you should try to get a fix on only a few of the affective dimensions you regard as most important for your students.

Here’s an issue you’ll need to consider if you decide to assess your students’ affect with regard to one or more of the sorts of variables just described. Put sim- ply, it calls for an answer to the following question: Should you let your students know—early on—what affective targets you have selected for them? When we think about cognitive curricular aims, it is universally agreed that there is a posi- tive impact on learning when—early on—the teacher informs students about the nature of the intended learning outcomes. However, with regard to affective cur- ricular aims, the picture is less clear. If students know, in advance, what kinds of affective variables are being sought, will this knowledge have a positive or a negative impact on students’ acquisition of the affect being sought? The answer to this question almost always depends on the particular affective aim being fostered and on the students involved. Each teacher must answer this question for each affective target being sought.

How Should Affect Be Assessed in Classrooms? The assessment of affect can be carried out at varying levels of complexity and sophistication. To illustrate, in psychological experiments designed to get a fix on children’s honesty, researchers have utilized trained accomplices who contrive elaborate situations in which a child can or cannot cheat; then the researchers observe the child’s behavior through one-way mirrors in order to draw infer- ences about the child’s tendencies to be honest or dishonest in situations where the attractiveness of the temptations vary. As you know, few teachers have the time or inclination to engage in very elaborate assessment of their students’ affec- tive status, although one suspects that those teachers would know how to use one-way mirrors advantageously.

As a practical matter, the classroom assessment of student affect must be relatively easy to pull off, or it simply isn’t going to happen. Teachers are often too busy to carry out the galaxy of responsibilities they already face each day. Accordingly, this chapter will set out for you a single, readily accomplishable pro- cedure to assess your students’ attitudes and values. If you wish to consider more elaborate and time-demanding ways of measuring your students’ affect, there are several excellent volumes cited in the References section at the end of this chapter. The classics by Anderson and Bourke (2000) and by Webb and colleagues (1981) are particularly thought-provoking.

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Self-Report Assessment You can get a decent fix on students’ affective status by asking them to complete self-report inventories. If you set up the assessment situation so students can respond in a truly anonymous fashion, the data derived from self-report instru- ments can really be useful to you. Just as importantly, the use of straightforward self-report devices won’t be so onerous that you become disenchanted with such measurement. Anderson and Bourke (2000) provide a compelling argument in favor of self-report affective measurement by educators.

Likert Inventories Because of its ready applicability to a variety of affective-assessment targets, the approach to attitudinal measurement introduced many years ago by Rensis Lik- ert (1903–1981) is the most widely used today (Likert, 1932). You’ve probably responded to Likert inventories many times in your life. They consist of a series of statements in response to which you register your agreement or disagreement. For example, you are given a statement such as “Reading this text about classroom assessment represents the flat-out, finest professional experience of my career.” You then choose from a set of options to decide whether you agree or disagree with the statement. The usual options, at least for adults, are strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree, and strongly disagree. (Most likely, you would have opted for the strongly agree response to the previous illustrative statement about this book’s impact on you.)

Clearly, depending on the age of the students you’re teaching, you’ll need to make adjustments in the statements used and in the number and/or phrasing of the response options. For example, with very young children you might need to use brief statements containing very simple words. You might even have to read the statements aloud. Older students might be able to handle the five-choice agreement scale just described, but for younger students you’ll most likely want to drop down to three response options (for instance, agree, don’t know, and dis- agree) or even two response options (perhaps yes and no). You’ll be the best judge of the language level to be used with the students you teach. In general, err in the direction of less-demanding rather than more-demanding language. Incidentally, you could probably win a few faculty-lounge trivia contests by quizzing your colleagues about Likert’s first name. Face it, Rensis is not a widely used moniker!

The essence of this sort of measurement, of course, boils down to the way students who complete an inventory respond to a collection of negative and posi- tive statements about the same affective variable. This being so, the statements in any affective inventory must be created with considerable care. To illustrate, you should never be so positive or so negative that no student will ever agree (or disagree) with a statement. Take a look at the two statements about school given here and then decide which statement would elicit a greater range of agreement in students’ responses.

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• Every day in every way, school is always the most enjoyable part of my day. (Strongly Agree, Agree, Not Sure, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)

• Even though I occasionally find school disagreeable, most of the time I enjoy it. (Strongly Agree, Agree, Not Sure, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)

The initial statement is so “goody-goody” that few students are apt to agree with it. In contrast, the second statement has enough qualifiers (“occasionally” and “most of the time”) so that there will most likely be students who will agree with it and also students who will disagree with it. You need to be certain your inventory’s statements are constructed so that they are neither too positive nor too negative.

Even though Likert-type inventories have been around for more than three quarters of a century (Likert, 1932), traditional Likert-type scales are rarely recom- mended these days to assess students’ affect. As you now see, a Likert inventory is focused on a single affective variable. Thus, Likert inventories require a substantial amount of inventory-development energy from the teacher, and most teachers are interested in several, rather than only one, affective variable. Accordingly, teachers usually want to employ assessment devices that can simultaneously get at several affective variables, not just one. Let’s consider how to build the kind of affective inventory that will have the most utility for you in your own classroom. As you will see, the assessment strategy being used in this procedure is essentially the same as the one used in a traditional Likert-like inventory, but it is focused on more than a solitary affective variable.

Multifocus Affective Inventories A multifocus affective inventory is an assessment device that attempts to collect information about several affective dispositions of students at the same time. Such inventories must, therefore, reduce the number of statements (items) deal- ing with a particular affective variable. So, whereas a traditional Likert inventory might devote 10–20 items to a single affective dimension, a multifocus affective inventory might contain items measuring only 5 or 6 affective dimensions and yet assess each one of those with just a few items.

The trade-off is obvious. Will two items dealing with, for example, a stu- dent’s “interest in science” yield inferences as accurate as a 10-item inventory devoted only to that same affective dimension? Of course not. The key question, however, is the following: For whatever assessment purpose is at hand, does a teacher really require 10 items on an inventory in order to arrive at a sufficiently valid inference regarding a classroom full of students’ interest in history? Typi- cally, the answer is no.

Remember, all educational measurement devices are much less precise than educators and noneducators alike typically think. Affective assessment is no exception. This issue boils down to the following question: If you’re try- ing to get a fix on the affective status of an entire class of students, what’s the

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minimum number of items (statements) you’ll be willing to rely on? Having dealt with this issue in my own classes more than a few times, for me the answer turns out to be two. That’s right; I think I can garner sufficient insights from my students’ responses to two affect-related items—one stated positively and one stated negatively—to come up with an actionable inference about my students’ affect.

If you regard two items per affective focus as too skimpy, then you might bump that number up to four items per affective focus. Doing so, of course, will either (1) reduce the number of affective dimensions you can address in an inven- tory or (2) make your inventory so long that students, having seen the numerous upcoming responses they must supply, will race rapidly through such a lengthy inventory and, thereby, reduce the thoughtfulness of their responses to all of the inventory’s items. You’ll get a better idea about how to create a multifocus affec- tive inventory if you’re supplied with a step-by-step construction procedure— along with an illustrative inventory of this type.

Building a Multifocus Affective Inventory Here, then, is a five-step process for creating multifocus affective inventories suit- able for classroom use.

1. Select the affective variables to measure. In recognition that you will be devot- ing only a small number of items to each affective variable you choose, you’ll need to identify the educationally significant attitudes, interests, or values about which you will ask students to respond.

2. Determine how many items to allocate to each affective variable. You must include an equal number of positive and negative statements for each affective vari- able you choose. For openers, start with a minimum of two items per vari- able. Then, if you decide you need to add more items per variable, increase the number of items in multiples of two. For instance, with two items per affective variable, you would use one positively phrased statement and one negatively phrased statement. For four items per affective variable, you would use two positive statements and two negative statements. In a given affective inventory, incidentally, there is no need to devote an identical number of items to each affective variable being assessed. So you might attempt to measure several variables with two items per variable but allocate four items to other variables being measured in the same inventory. The choice regarding num- bers of items you’ll need hinges on your judgment regarding the minimum number of items necessary to yield reasonably accurate inferences about a student group’s affective status with respect to a specific affective variable.

3. Create a series of positive and negative statements related to each affective vari- able. The statements in a multifocus affective inventory are similar to those used in Likert-type inventories. Yet, because you are attempting to gauge

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your students’ affective dispositions with only a few items, even greater care should be taken to craft the statements so they are apt to elicit differential responses from students. All of these statements (items) should be scattered randomly throughout the inventory—that is, they should not be placed in any sort of identifiable groups related to a particular affective dimension.

4. Determine the number and phrasing of students’ response options. At this point you need to determine whether you’ll use three, four, or five response options for students to register agreement or disagreement with the inventory’s state- ments. You’ll also need to decide whether you’re using the traditional Likert responses (such as “strongly agree”) or some sort of alternative responses (such as “true for me”).

5. Create clear directions for the inventory and an appropriate presentation format. Directions for affective inventories should be given more attention than is usually allotted by those who develop typical classroom achievement tests. Students are often unfamiliar with these sorts of affective-assessment devices and, therefore, need to understand what they’re being asked to do. Be certain to include (a) lucid directions about how to respond; (b) at least one sample item; (c) a request for students to supply anonymous, honest responses; and (d) a reminder that there are no right or wrong answers to the inventory’s items.

Please refer to the illustrative multifocus affective inventory presented in Figure 10.2. This inventory was developed for use with students in grades 4 through 6 and was intended to allow teachers to get a fix on students’ sentiments regarding three subject areas (science, mathematics, and social studies), as well as three important skills students need to acquire (reading, writing, and making oral presentations). In addition, the inventory seeks students’ responses regard- ing school in general. In all, then, the inventory in Figure 10.2 tries to tap seven affective variables by using two items per variable.

Spend just a few moments looking at the items in the Figure 10.2 inventory. Note, for instance, that each positively phrased statement regarding a particular variable is balanced by a counterpart statement that’s phrased negatively. To illus- trate, Statement 5 is a negative statement about giving oral reports, but Statement 11 is a positive statement regarding that same skill. Note also that the two state- ments for each variable need not be mirror-image contradictions, such as “I like school” versus “I don’t like school.”

Multifocus affective inventories are scored in the same way Likert inventories are scored: Points are awarded for students’ agreement with positive statements and also for students’ disagreement with negative statements. For example, let’s say there were five level-of-agreement options available, ranging from strong agreement to strong disagreement in an inventory using only two items per affected variable. You would assign a maximum of five points per item (for strong agreement with a positive item or strong disagreement with a negative item) and

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Response (one per statement)

Statements True Not true I’m not for me. for me. sure.

1. In general, I like school a lot. n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n

2. I like to learn about scientific things. 3. I can write good reports and stories. 4. I don’t like to read. 5. I don’t like to speak in front of the class. 6. I think that doing mathematics is fun. 7. I like when we learn about social studies. 8. I don’t want to grow up to be a scientist. 9. I really don’t like to write very much.

10. I like to read books when I have the time. 11. I usually enjoy speaking in front of other students. 12. I don’t like to do mathematics problems. 13. When we do social studies in school, I don’t like it. 14. Overall, I don’t enjoy school very much.

SCHOOL AND ME

Directions: Please indicate how much the statements in this inventory are true for you. Some of the statements are positive and some are negative. Decide whether each statement is true for you. There are no right or wrong answers, so answer honestly. Do not write your name on the inventory. Only make X marks.

Here is a sample:

Response (one per statement)

True Not true I’m not for me. for me. sure.

I like to go to the movies. n n n When you are finished, a student will collect your inventory and place it and all other completed inventories in a sealed envelope that will be taken by the student directly to the principal’s office. Thank you for your help.

✗

Figure 10.2 an Illustrative Multifocus affective Inventory for Students in Grades 4–6

a minimum of one point per item (for strong agreement with a negative item or strong disagreement with a positive item). Thus, focusing on a pair of items deal- ing with, for instance, students’ interest in science, the scores on this two-item pair could range from a high of 10 to a low of 2.

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Self-report assessment 265

Perhaps you are uncomfortable about arriving at inferences for an entire class of students based on only two items. But the purpose of this sort of assessment is to give you insights regarding your students’ affect. If the inference you come up with–based on only a pair of items–is way out of whack with your own best judg- ment about your students’ affective leanings, then treat the two-item data with a slug of suspicion. You are always the decision-maker in your class. Insights based even on two-item inventories—administered to a whole group of students—can often prove useful to you.

The Importance of Genuine Anonymity For you to draw accurate inferences about your students’ affective status based on their responses to self-report inventories, it is clearly necessary for students to respond truthfully to your affective inventories. Unfortunately, many students tend to provide what are referred to as socially desirable responses to affective self-report devices. In other words, many students are inclined to respond in the way they think society (in this case, you) wants them to respond. Students are particularly apt to provide socially desirable responses if they believe the teacher can accurately trace their responses back to the individual response- giver. Consequently, to increase the likelihood that students will respond hon- estly to your affective inventories, it is imperative that you not only make all students’ responses anonymous, but also employ as many procedures as are practicable to ensure that most students regard their responses as truly untraceable.

Among the more simple but effective anonymity-enhancement procedures that you might want to consider are these:

1. Directions. Make sure the directions for your affective inventories stress the importance of honest answers and indicate that students are not to put their names on their inventories.

2. Response restrictions. Set up your inventories so that the only form of stu- dent response is to be check marks, circling of preferred answers, or the like. Because students believe the teacher may figure out who supplied which inventory by recognizing students’ handwriting, don’t allow any handwrit- ing at all on affective inventories. If you are desperate to give students an opportunity to supply written comments, then provide your students with totally separate forms on which they can make written comments—also anonymous.

3. Collection. Install a procedure whereby students deposit their completed inventories in a collection box or have a student (not one thought to be your “pet” students) collect the completed inventories. Announce before students start to fill out the inventories that one of these collection methods will be employed.

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266 Chapter 10 affective assessment

As you can see, you must try to make sure your students really don’t think there’s any way to trace their responses back to them. Even these precautions don’t guarantee that students will respond truthfully. However, well-conceived anonymity-enhancement techniques meaningfully increase the odds that students will respond honestly.

Another tactic that can, in some instances, result in more truthful responses from students is to make it less obviously discernible what the genuine mission of a self-report inventory is. So, for example, a self-report survey might contain a dozen items to be completed by a student, but half of those items (or more) might be focused on other dimensions altogether. Remember, what you wish to arrive at are accurate inferences regarding a group’s affect. Carefully conceived off-target “camouflage” items can often engender more accurate responses from students regarding affective inventories. Truthfully, it seems strange to create a self-report inventory containing, say, 10 items, when one has an affective interest in students’ responses to only a few of those 10 items. But, skillfully constructed, such inventories work!

In recent years, we have often seen attempts made to secure students’ responses to affectively oriented inventories via anonymous, computer- collected online inventories. Such inventories, given the magic of computers, can be truly anonymous—that is, a student’s responses cannot be traced back to the student. What is worrisome, however, is whether students who fill out a computer-delivered inventory believe their responses are truly anonymous. The more likely it is that students regard their electronic responses as traceable back to them, the greater will be the inaccurate, social desirability of their answers.

When to Assess Affect When should classroom teachers assess their students’ affective status? Well, for openers, it seems important to set up at least a pre-instruction and a post-instruction measure of students’ attitudes, interests, and/or values. Thus, for elementary teachers teaching students in self-contained classrooms, an affective assessment at the start of the school year and another at its close will allow teachers to discern any meaningful changes in students’ affect. Ideally, however, teachers can engage in occasional “affective dip-sticking” to monitor students’ affect. For example, every couple of months, a teacher might measure students’ self-esteem as learners as well as their attitudes toward learning. If these occasional assessments suggest that inappropriate affective changes are occurring, the teacher may wish to modify affect-related aspects of the instruc- tional program.

In the next section of the chapter, you’ll discover that you can often sample your students’ affective status rather than measuring all students’ affective status. Thus, some of the suggested affective dip-sticking might be carried out with only a portion of your students.

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What Kinds of Inferences are at Stake in affective assessment? 267

What Kinds of Inferences Are at Stake in Affective Assessment? When teachers use cognitively oriented tests, they typically make inferences—that is, interpretations about individual students. If, for instance, Harvey Haley earns a high score on a mathematics test, the teacher makes an inference about Harvey’s possession of certain mathematics skills and knowledge. Teachers need to make inferences about individual students in order to make decisions about how to provide suitable instruction for those students.

Teachers also aggregate students’ individual scores on achievement tests to arrive at group-focused inferences. For example, if most students in a history class performed poorly on a start-of-the-term achievement pretest, yet most stu- dents earned top scores on a comparable posttest administered near the term’s conclusion, the teacher would conclude that the students, as a group, had learned substantially more about history.

It’s different with affect. Whereas cognitive tests (and, in most cases, psycho- motor tests) are measures of students’ optimum performance, affective inventories

parent talk “You’re messing with my child’s head,” was the first comment you heard from Mrs. Tatla, Paul’s mother, when she telephoned you at school during your after-school planning period. Mrs. Tatla then continued by saying she had heard from Paul that you were getting students to fill out “attitude tests” that try to find out “whether kids have the right attitudes.” Mrs. Tatla concluded by asking, “How dare you delve into Paul’s values and attitudes! Isn’t this something his dad and I should be influencing?”

If I were you, here’s how I’d respond to Mrs. Tatla:

“I agree completely with you, Mrs. Tatla, about whose right it is to influence Paul’s values and attitudes. That responsibility is yours and Mr. Tatla’s. But I have a hunch you may not have a clear picture of what I’m trying to do in Paul’s class. Let me explain.

“As you may know, children at Paul’s age often lose interest in certain subjects, especially

mathematics and science. What I’ve been trying to do is determine ways I can help improve or sustain my students’ interest in science and mathematics. I’ve been administering anonymous attitude inventories related to math and science on a pretest and posttest basis—that is, in the fall and in the spring. But I’m not using the results of those anonymous inventories to influence the attitudes or values of Paul or any other child. What I’m trying to do is figure out how my own teaching can engender more interest, from the entire class, in science and mathematics.

“I would never try to influence a value or attitude that falls within your family’s purview. But I’m sure you’d like Paul, and the other students in his class, to regard science and mathematics positively, not negatively. Whether the children eventually pursue careers related to science or mathematics will, of course, be up to them and their families.”

Now, how would you respond to Mrs. Tatla?

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268 Chapter 10 affective assessment

strive to measure students’ typical performance. Remember that when students complete most affective devices, those results don’t count toward the students’ grades, so self-report assessment offers students a wonderful opportunity to dis- tort their responses. Thus, there’s a strong likelihood that at least some students won’t respond honestly. Consequently, inferences about the affective status of individual students (based on a student’s responses to an affective inventory) are risky.

Besides, instructional decisions about individual students based on affective-assessment devices are rare. If Harry Helms knows history well, but happens to hate it, few teachers will give Harry a low grade in history based on his disdain for the subject.

In contrast, however, teachers often make instructional decisions about what goes on in class based on aggregated affective data. Assuming there will be a small number of students who supply inaccurate responses, it is still reasonable to assume that the total collectivity of students’ responses will permit meaningful group-focused inferences. And those are the kinds of inferences you should be mak- ing when you use affective-assessment instruments. Because affective inventories must be administered anonymously, you’ve surely recognized that getting a fix on a particular student’s affective status is literally impossible. Anonymity is, after all, anonymity.

However, there’s another good reason for arriving at only group-focused affective inferences. Even if you were to use all sorts of anonymity-enhancement procedures when you administer any affective inventory, some students will still not respond honestly. Certain students will be fearful of offending you in any way, even though shrouded by the shield of anonymity, and thus will respond more positively than they would if they were being completely truth- ful. Interestingly, however, there are also some students who will use their anonymity cloaks as an opportunity to “get even” with you for your real or imagined shortcomings. Such students will then toss more negativity your way than they really feel. Will these too-positive and too-negative responses cancel each other out perfectly? Of course not. But they will do at least some canceling out and, as a consequence, should allow you to put somewhat greater confi- dence in your students’ average response as a reflection of the entire group’s affective status.

Affective-assessment devices are simply too crude to permit individual-focused inferences. However, you ought to be able to make some very solid judgments about how your students, as a group, are affectively disposed. This is why, in some cases, you can collect affective data from only, say, half of your class and yet still make a fairly accurate inference about the group based on responses from that 50-percent sample. Sample-based, en route affective assessment of your students, especially as a way of coming up with dip-stick inferences about that group of students, really works quite well.

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altering Students’ affect: a Nontrivial Challenge 269

Altering Students’ Affect: A Nontrivial Challenge This chapter has been devoted almost exclusively to the assessment of students’ affective dispositions, that is, the measurement of students’ attitudes, interests, and values. It was contended in the chapter that an individual’s affective status can play a prominent role in that individual’s behaviors. However, modifying students’ affect is unlike a teacher’s traditional efforts to bring about improve- ment in students’ cognitive capabilities by attempting to bolster such capabilities, and then—during or after such instruction—measuring how well those students have been taught. In the case of altering students’ cognitive knowledge and skills, we typically strive to describe what we want students to learn, and the clearer we are about what those learning targets are, the more likely it is that students will master those well-understood objectives.

When teachers decide to promote one or more affective aims, however, the essentials of the instructional game change dramatically. For instance, if a teacher is trying to get students to master a sought-for skill such as how to determine a multi-digit’s square root, then most teachers are familiar with one or more

But What Does this have to Do with teaching? Few teachers don’t believe, at some level, that student affect is important. Most teachers realize that if students learn to detest schooling, it’s unlikely those students will wind up near the top of any academic sweepstakes. Most chemistry teachers want their students to groove on chemistry. Most math teachers want their students to get mildly ecstatic over the theorem formulated at the Pythagorean School of Mathematics some 2500 years ago. Yet, although most teachers recognize that students’ interests, attitudes, and values are important, few teachers deliberately strive to promote appropriate affect in their students.

One of the reasons for this neglect of affect is that students’ affective dispositions often get lost in the curricular trails that today’s teachers must travel. There are simply so many skills and so much knowledge that society wants today’s students to master. And the current accountability pressures for teachers to boost students’ test scores have

made it even less likely that teachers will have time to promote positive student affect. It’s easy to see how affect gets overlooked, even by teachers who recognize its importance. And this is when affective assessment arrives to save the day. Even if a teacher uses only one self-report inventory at the start of a term, and another at its conclusion, the very presence of this assessment instrument will almost certainly incline the teacher to think about the degree to which any classroom activities are being directed toward the promotion of appropriate affective outcomes.

Affective-assessment instruments, even a 10-item self-report inventory, will sensitize the teacher to affect’s importance. And such sensitized teachers will typically devote at least some effort to promoting the kinds of student attitudes, interests, and values that—far more, perhaps, than the cognitive content we cram into their heads—will surely influence their lives.

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270 Chapter 10 affective assessment

straightforward ways of promoting students’ attainment of that skill. To illus- trate, a teacher might (1) familiarize students with the instructional outcome being sought, (2) provide students with explanations of how the skill being sought functions, (3) promote students’ mastery of any enabling subskills that must be mastered en route, and (4) provide students with practice in carrying out the mathematical skill being sought. Although variations in such an instructional approach are surely possible, at least most teachers can come up with similar plans for promoting students’ mastery of cognitive outcomes. Yet, as indicated above, when promoting students’ affectively focused objectives, teachers’ tasks become decidedly more elusive.

Remember, when teachers attempt to assess students’ status with regard to the attainment of a cognitive outcome, there is often ample along-the-way assess- ment of students’ status. However, almost all of our current ways of getting at students’ affective status are based on a variety of students’ self-reports. Yet, in order for those reports to yield valid inferences—the self-reports from students must be anonymous. So, when we collect affective-related evidence to get a fix on a student group’s affective leanings, we therewith abandon any hope of arriving at evidence-based insights regarding an individual student’s affective status. As indicated above, altering students’ affect is most certainly a nontrivial challenge for educators.

One way for a teacher to proceed with efforts to identify instructional strate- gies that might promote students’ acquisition of worthwhile affective outcomes is to collaborate with a small group of colleagues to identify activities that might yield valid evidence of whatever affective attribute is being sought. This group of collaborating “affect assessors” might try to agree on a small number of affective dimensions that will be under consideration—perhaps two to four such affective variables—and then try to agree on what kind of interventions on a teacher’s part might bring about some desirable affective alterations in the students being taught, For example, many educators believe that a variable of considerable inter- est at almost any stage of a student’s schooling is Motivation to Learn, that is, a student’s inclination to tackle with enthusiasm the instructional options available to the student. Our small group of fictitious evidence collectors might choose a certain grade/age level or grade range, then—as crisply as possible— isolate any assessable ways in which students might accurately reveal their dispositions regarding the affective variable under consideration. Hard thinking is required for such deliberations, and only those potential sorts of evidence for which there is essentially unanimity should be selected as significant affect-reflective variables.

Ideally, during these assessment deliberations, there might be at least one measurement tactic that—in most deliberators—would yield defensible evidence of students’ affective status. Realistically, the best result that the group might come up with would be some evidence that might reflect a group’s status rather than an individual student’s status. Well, distressingly, that’s often as good as it gets. However, if a teacher has been able to collect group-focused evidence of a group of students’ affective status, this will still be better than no data at all

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What Do Classroom teachers really Need to Know about affective assessment? 271

regarding an important agreed-upon sort of evidence regarding affect. Often, it’s better for educators to operate on the basis, though incomplete, of the evidence they can actually gather rather than plowing ahead with no evidence at all.

What Do Classroom Teachers Really Need to Know About Affective Assessment? The most important thing you need to know about affective assessment is that if you don’t measure your students’ affective status in a systematic fashion, you’re far less likely to emphasize affect instructionally. Moreover, without systematic affective assessment, you’re not apt to obtain a very decent fix on the affective consequences, possibly unintentional, that you’re having on your students.

If you do decide to engage in some affective measurement in your own classes, you’ll be much better off if you rely on straightforward self-report instruments (Likert-like inventories or multifocus affective inventories) rather than trying to employ some exotic affective-measurement strategies that are time-consuming and yield interpretations of arguable validity. You also need to know that affective-assessment devices are too imprecise to allow you to make inferences about individual students. Group-focused inferences are as far as you should go in the affective realm.

There’s one other thing teachers ought to recognize about the assessment of affect—namely, that most teachers do not possess even a foggy notion about how to promote affect instructionally. If teachers actually decide to measure important student affect, they’ll typically need some solid professional-development support to learn how to modify students’ attitudes, values, and interests. There are a number of instructional techniques for doing so, but most teachers are unaware of those affective-focused instructional procedures. Here’s where a professional learning community—that is, a group of educators who meet periodically to deal with top- ics such as “affective instructional techniques”—would be especially useful.

Looking back, then, at the description of affective assessment as it might be carried out by a typical classroom teacher, it is possible to isolate three key features that can lead toward more valid interpretations of students’ affective sta- tus. Those three features are reliance on (1) self-report inventories to be completed by students under conditions of (2) actual and perceived anonymity leading to (3) group-focused inferences rather than individual inferences about students’ current affective status. If teachers can satisfy all three of these procedural requirements, then the resultant inferences about students’ affect will have greater likelihood of being valid. Given the impact that assessing students’ affect is likely to have on what and how a teacher teaches, the instructional dividends of affective assess- ment were underscored. The chapter concluded with a reminder that the validity

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272 Chapter 10 affective assessment

of inferences drawn from affective assessment depends directly on a teacher’s forming group-focused inferences about students’ affect using self-report inven- tories to which students respond with real and perceived anonymity.

Social emotional learning (SEL) is sometimes lumped into educators’ conver- sations about assessing affect, although it often involves different aspects of learn- ers’ affect. In some quarters, interest in assessments measuring social emotional learning has grown rapidly in the past few years. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and RAND have developed comprehen- sive lists of SEL assessments. These assessments take a variety of forms which often include inventories (rating scales) and self-report as seen in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Oft-encountered affective-assessment Forms

Assessment Form Advantages Disadvantages

Likert inventory: students complete questionnaires rating their preferences

– Easy to create and administer – Students complete

– Typically focuses on only one affective variable

– Student may provide socially desirable responses

– If done on computer, may not be seen as anonymous

Self-report: students complete questionnaires indicating their preferences

– Easy to create and administer – Students complete

– Student may provide socially desirable responses

– If done on computer, may not be seen as anonymous

Multifocus inventory: students complete questionnaires rating their preferences

– Measures multiple variables – Requires few items per

variable – Students complete

– Student may provide socially desirable responses

– If done on computer, may not be seen as anonymous

Chapter Summary This chapter began with an unabashed autho- rial endorsement of the instructional impor- tance of affect and, as a consequence, the importance of assessing students’ affective sta- tus. It was suggested that the use of affective assessment in classrooms would incline teach- ers to address affective goals instructionally. It was also argued that if teachers monitor their students’ affective status, instructional modi- fications can be made whenever inappropriate or insufficient affective shifts in students are occurring. Affective variables were described as important predictors of individuals’ future behaviors because people’s affective status reveals their behavioral predispositions. It was

also pointed out, however, that there are vocal groups whose members oppose instructional attention to affect.

Regarding the kinds of affective variables to assess in one’s classroom, a series of poten- tial attitudinal, interest, and value foci were pre- sented. Teachers were urged to select only a few highly meaningful affective variables, rather than so many as to overwhelm students.

Self-report assessment procedures were sug- gested as the most practical way to gather affective data in classrooms. Multifocus affective invento- ries were recommended over Likert inventories on the practical ground that Likert inventories assess only a single affective dimension. This is because

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references 273

teachers are usually interested in more than one affective variable. A five-step process for construct- ing multifocus affective inventories was described. Anonymity was identified as an indispensable component of appropriate affective assessment. Several anonymity-enhancement procedures were presented. It was also suggested that affective assessments be made prior to and at the conclu- sion of instruction, as well as in the form of occa- sional affective “dip-sticking.” The difficulties of

both assessing for a group of students’ affective status—and the promotion of students’ acquisi- tion of sought-for affective changes—was also considered.

The nature of assessment-based affective inferences was also explored. It was argued the imprecision of affective-assessment devices should incline teachers to make group-focused inferences rather than inferences about individ- ual students.

References Anderson, L. W., & Bourke, S. F. (2000). Assessing

affective characteristics in the schools (2nd ed.). Erlbaum.

Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Airasian, P. W. (2000). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Pearson.

Andrà, C., Brunetto, D., & Martignone, F. (2021). Theorizing and measuring affect in mathematics teaching and learning: Insights from the 25th International Conference on Mathematical Views. Springer Publishing.

Assessment Work Group. (2019). Student social and emotional competence assessment: The current state of the field and a vision for its future. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.

Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center. (2021, April 23). Why children’s dispositions should matter to all teachers. ECLKC. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://eclkc.ohs.acf. hhs.gov/school-readiness/article/whychildrens- dispositions-should-matter-allteachers

Khaerudin, K., Munadi, S., & Supianto, S. (2020, July). Affective assessment using social media, Universal Journal of Educational Research, 87: 2921– 2928. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.080720

Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes, Archives of Psychology, 140: 1–55.

Measuring SEL. (2022). SEL assessment guide. CASEL. https://measuringsel.casel.org/ resources/

Oyebola, J. (2014). Assessing the affective behaviours in learners, Journal of Education and Practice, 5(16): 8–15. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/234635811.pdf

RAND. (2022). RAND Education Assessment Finder. RAND. https://www.rand.org/ education-and-labor/projects/assessments. html

Rivers, S. E., Hagelskamp, C., & Brackett, M. A. (2013). Understanding and assessing the social-emotional attributes of classrooms. In J. H. McMillan (Ed.), SAGE Handbook of research on classroom assessment (pp. 347–366). SAGE Publications.

Webb, E. J., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D., Sechreat, L., & Grove, J. B. (1981). Nonreactive measures in the social sciences (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin.

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274 Chapter 10 affective assessment

A Testing Takeaway

Assessing Students’ Affect—Because Dispositions Shape Conduct* W. James Popham, University of California, Los Angeles

Historically, our schools have focused their instructional efforts on promoting students’ cognitive outcomes, such as the mastery of intellectual skills or bodies of knowledge. Regrettably, little attention has been given to students’ acquisition of appropriate attitudes, interests, or values. Yet these affective variables play a powerful role in students’ school success and, later, in their life success. Many educators believe that, in the long term, the affective consequences of schooling are more important for students than cognitively focused learning.

The reason why affective variables are so significant is that they predispose students to act in certain ways. Students who become genuinely interested in science during high school chemistry courses often maintain such interests for years. And a child who learns to truly love reading in elementary school will frequently become a life-long reader.

Why is it, then, that we see so little affectively focused instruction in our schools? Well, one reason is that educators must be wary of influencing values or attitudes that are clearly the province of the home—not the school. Educators should promote only those affective dimensions that are universally, or almost universally, approved.

A second obstacle to affectively oriented instruction is that many educators are unfamiliar with how to effectively measure students’ affect. Teachers who are considering assessing their students’ affect should definitely learn about the basic nuts and bolts of such assessment. Here are three overriding ground rules governing the assessment of students’ affect:

• Assess regularly. Because affective dispositions acquired in school can profoundly influ- ence students’ success in school and far beyond, a small number of key affective variables should be regularly assessed—and then addressed instructionally.

• Use anonymously completed self-report inventories. When students respond to an affective inventory’s items, anonymity enhances the honesty of responses. Thus, complete anonym- ity, real and perceived, is an absolute must.

• Make group-focused, not individual-student, inferences. Valid gro up-focused inferences about a student group’s affective status can be invaluable to teachers in choosing affect-related instructional activities. Inferences about an individual student’s affect, however, are not apt to be valid.

Teachers, individually or in concert with colleagues, should learn more about the measurement of students’ affect, as well as how to defensibly promote students’ affective dispositions. Then, having selected such targets as promoting positive attitudes toward the importance of student effort, or negative attitudes regarding bullying, teachers should cautiously move forward in determining students’ affect, influencing such affect, and then evaluating the success of those instructional efforts.

*From Chapter 10 of Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know, 10th ed., by W. James popham. Copyright 2022 by pearson, which hereby grants permission for the reproduction and distribution of this Testing Takeaway, with proper attribution, for the intent of increasing assessment literacy. a digitally shareable version is available from https://www.pearson.com/store/en-us/pearsonplus/login.

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