Page 10 - Principles of instructional design

48 Principles of Instructional Design

observably distinct from Ps or /fs, provide convincing evidence that this kind
of capability has been learned.

Attitudes
Turning now to what is often called the affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom,
and Masia, 1964), we identify a class of learned capabilities called attitudes. All
of us possess attitudes of many sorts toward various things, persons, and
situations. The effect of an attitude is to amplify an individual's positive or
negative reaction toward some person, thing, or situation. The strength of
people's attitudes toward some item may be indicated by the frequency with
which they choose that item in a variety of circumstances. Thus, an individual
with a strong attitude toward helping other people will offer help in many
situations, whereas a person with a weaker attitude of this sort will tend to
restrict offers of help to fewer situations. The schools are often expected to
establish socially approved attitudes such as respect for other people,
cooperativeness, personal responsibility, as well as positive attitudes toward
knowledge and learning, and an attitude of self-efficacy. A student learns to have
preferences for various kinds of activities, preferring certain people to others,
showing an interest in certain events rather than others. One infers from a set of
such observations that the student has attitudes toward objects, persons, or
events that influence the choice of courses of action toward them. Naturally,
many such attitudes are acquired outside of the school, and there are many that
schools cannot appropriately consider relevant to their instructional function.
As one possibility, though, school instruction may have the objective of es-
tablishing positive attitudes toward subjects being studied (for example, Mager,
1968). Often, too, school learning is successful in modifying attitudes toward
activities that provide esthetic enjoyment. One of the examples of Table 3-1 is a
positive attitude toward reading a particular kind of fiction.
Considered as a human capability, an attitude is a persisting state that modi-
fies the indiviual's choices of action. A positive attitude toward listening to
music makes the student tend to choose such activity over others, when such
choices are possible. Of course, this does not mean he or she will always be
listening to music, under all circumstances. Rather, it means that when there is
an opportunity for leisure (as opposed to other pressing concerns) the probabil-
ity of a choice to listen to music is noticeably high. If one were able to observe
the student over an extended period of time, one would be able to note that the
choice of this activity was relatively frequent. From such a set of observations, it
could be concluded that the student had a positive attitude toward listening to
music.
In practice, of course, making such a set of observations about a single
student, not to mention a class of students, would be an exceedingly time-
consuming and, therefore, expensive undertaking. As a result, inferences about
the possession of attitudes are usually made on the basis of "self- reports." These