Dr. Olga Denac
UNIVERSITY OF MARIBOR
Faculty of Education
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Crete, 22-25 September 2004
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AFFECTIVE ASPECTS IN THE PLANUNG
OF THE GOALS OF ESTHETIC EDUCATION
ABSTRACT: The paper deals with the cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects of the goals of esthetic education in the theory and practice of pre-school and elementary school education. It points out the urge to account for the affective aspect in the formation of the goals of esthetic education.
With this research, in which we also included pre-school teachers and those teaching the first grades of elementary school, we wished to produce an empirical study of the problems and particularities which emerge through direct planning of the educational goals of the cognitive, affective and the psychomotor domains and to determine the one which is predominant in the forming of the goals of education in music, arts and dance.
The results of the research have shown that the predominant aspect or domain in the formation of educational goals, as far as the teachers were concerned, is the cognitive aspect before the affective and psychomotor ones. The teachers are on the one hand aware of the importance and the expedience of the affective and psychomotor aspects in the forming of goals in the field of esthetic education, yet they have not been considered to such an extent in practice.
In the planning of the educational process of esthetic education it is necessary to consider the basic fields of the personalities we wish to develop through planned educational efforts; the cognitive, affective and psycho-motor areas of the child's personality. The division of a person's personality into separate fields is not a new invention, since it had already been familiar to Ancient Greece and is in use even today. A specific activity only seldom develops just one field of the personality, yet through planned educational work we frequently wish to focus attention to a sole particular part of the personality. There have been many attempts to classify the goals of esthetic education and to create a systematic framework as the basis for the planning of an educational process and the control of educational results from the point of view of the basic fields of the personality. They werw based on general taxonomies which had been developed for the cognitive field (Bloom, 1956; Anderson, Krathwohl, 2001), the affective field (Krathwohl, 1964) and for the psycho-motor field (Dave, 1968).
A closer look into the didactics of esthetic education reveals that the majority of the formational goals derive from the cognitive area. The educational process is limited to the acquiring of knowledge, with which we influence the cognitive area of the child's personality, yet it neglects or insufficiently develops the abilities to feel and to experience, i.e. the affective aspect of the child's personality.
Research
In accordance with the above mentioned assumptions we carried out a research in which we included preschool teachers (n=140) and first grade teachers of elementary school (n=140). The aim of the first phase of the research was to establish the predominant aspect in the direct planning (or the formation of the goals) of education in music, arts, and dancing. The second phase of the research was devoted to determining the opinions and problems which emerge in the direct planning of cognitive, affective and psychomotor goals.
The first phase of data collecting covered the collecting educational, i.e. teachers preparations in the field of music education, and that in arts and dance, which had been made in March by preschool teachers and those of the first grade of elementary school. The second phase of data collecting (after the preparations had been delivered) consistend of an opinion poll carried out among preschool teachers and those teaching the first grade of elementary school.
Interpretation of the results of the research
The first phase of the research included the classification of the goals copied from the preparations according to the predominant aspect in the individual goal, which was based on the taxonomies defined by Bloom, Krathwohl and Dave.
The results have shown that in the educators' and teachers' forming of the educational goals, the cognitive aspect is prior to the affective and psycho-motor ones.
A comparison between the results shows that preschool teachers devote much more attention to affective goals than school teachers, which can be concluded from the number of goals formed and the variety of contents. However both preschool teachers and school teachers have laid least stress on psychomotor goals.
The results of the second phase were gained by means of a questionnaire. Most of the preschool teachers and school teachers are of the opinion that in planning their goals they devote most attention to affective goals, then to cognitive ones and the least to psychomotor ones. Statistically relevant differences between preschool teachers and school teachers reveal that the school teachers devote much more attention to cognitive goals than pre-school teachers.
If we compare the results of the first and the second phase of the research, we see that the results do not correspond: in the planning of the direct educational process both groups of teachers devote less attention to the affective goals than they claim they do. They are evidently aware of the importance and expedience of the affective aspect in the forming of goals, even though they do not plan it in practice. From the results regarding psychomotor goals we might conclude that a balanced relationship exists between the small number of psychomotor goals formed in the preparations and the scarce attention paid to these goals by the preschool and school teachers.
Conclusion
In the light of the current demands of esthetic education, i.e. the importance of accounting for the senses, the taxonomy gains a considerable amount of significance in the affective domain. Thus we might conclude that the classification of the goals of esthetic education into the cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects becomes welcome or even urgent, particularly in cases where the affective and the psychomotor aspect had been neglected.
The empirical findings of this research make us aware of the fact that the planning and the direct realization of the educational process is directed towards the realization of cognitive goals, in the first grade of elementary school more than at the pre-school age. The modern school is inclined toward the development of topic-specific knowledge and capacities based on intellectual actions, and tends to neglect other dimensions of the child's (or student's) personality (emotions, senses,...), which are so very important in the child's preschool and school period.
LITERATURE
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Addison Wesley Longman, New York.
Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Taxonomie of Educational Objectives. The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. David McKay Company, Inc.,New York.
Dave, R. H. (1968). Eine Taxonomie Paedagogischer Ziele und ihre Beziehung zur Leistungsmessung. Weinheim, Berlin , Basel.
Gruehn, S. (1995). Vereinbarkeit kognitiver und nichtkognitiver Ziele im Unterricht. Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogik, 4.
Krathwohl, D.R., Bloom, B.S., Masia, B.B. (1964). Taxonomie of Educational Objectives. The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook II: Affective Domain. David McKay Company, Inc.,New York.
Mollenhauer, K. (1990). Die vergessene Dimension des Aesthetischen in der Erziehungs-und Bildungs- theorie. Kunst und Paedagogik. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt.