FORUM: Affective Learning. Reclaiming Affective Learning

• Published in: Communication education Vol. 64; no. 4; pp. 499 - 502
• Main Authors: Housley Gaffney, Amy L, Dannels, Deanna P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2015
• Subjects: Affective Objectives; Classroom Communication; Communication Research; Definitions; Learning
• ISSN: 0363-4523
• DOI: 10.1080/03634523.2015.1058488

The mission of "Communication Education" is to publish the best research on communication and learning. Researchers study the communication-learning interface in many ways, but a common approach is to explore how instructor and student communication can lead to better learning outcomes. Although scholars have long classified learning into three domains--cognitive, affective, and behavioral--it is not often that behavioral learning is investigated in instructional communication research. Thus, the focus of most of the research in instructional communication is on cognitive and affective learning. This forum explores the study of affective learning by addressing two critical questions that define the field's exploration of the topic: (1) What is affective learning?; and (2) How should we measure affective learning in instructional communication research? This forum initiates conversation on this topic. The essay presented is one of seven in this forum on the topic of affective learning. For decades, instructional communication research has conceptualized affective learning in terms of the extent to which students like content or subject matter, an approach that has generated some critique. In this essay, the authors return to education-based definitions of affective learning. [For the other essays in this forum: (1) FORUM: Affective Learning. Affective Learning: Evolving from Values and Planned Behaviors to Internalization and Pervasive Behavioral Change, see EJ1083005; (2) FORUM: Affective Learning. Pursuing and Measuring Affective Learning Objectives, see EJ1083008; (3) FORUM: Affective Learning. Students' Affective Learning as Affective Experience: Significance, Reconceptualization, and Future Directions, see EJ1083014; (4) FORUM: Affective Learning. The Instructional Communication Affective Learning Paradox, see EJ1082997; (5) FORUM: Affective Learning. Affective Learning from a Cognitive Neuroscientific Perspective, see EJ1082999; and (6) FORUM: Affective Learning. Reconsidering the Conceptualization and Operationalization of Affective Learning, see EJ1083010.]