Affect and Meeting the Needs of the Gifted Chemistry Learner: Providing Intellectual Challenge to Engage Students in Enjoyable Learning - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 134

considered in relation to the work of Perry ( 1970 ) on the intellectual and moral
development of college students.
Bloom s( 1968 ) taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain is

often used as a tool to consider the demand of learning activities (Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001 ), and teachers are aware of the importance of setting work requir-
ing

'

cognitive skills, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation—
especially when working with more advanced learners (Taber, 2007c ). The parallel
taxonomy of educational objectives in the affective domain (Krathwohl et al., 1968 )
is less commonly referred to. The five major categories in the taxonomy are
' receiving ' , ' responding ' , ' valuing ' , ' organisation ' and ' characterisation by a value
or value context

' higher-order '

, each of which is divided into subcategories.
The highest level of the typology was labelled as

'

characterisation by a value or

'

value complex . Characterisation here refers to how the individual can be

characterised, because they have an internalised set of values that consistently
informs their actions. This was divided into two sublevels. The first is called
'

'

an internal consistency to the system
of attitudes and values at any particular moment

generalised set which was said to provide

' '

to
behave in particular ways (Krathwohl et al., 1968 : 48). Bloom and colleagues
considered this to provide a

providing a predisposition

' ' '

basic orientation which enables the individual to
reduce and order the complex world about him [sic], and to act consistently and
effectively in it

'

(p. 48). The focus on complexity relates to an ability to make
judgements in consideration of

'

situations, issues, purposes and consequences

'
when it was not sufficient or appropriate to follow simple rules. Finally, the highest
sublevel or

'

concerns developing a consistent philosophy of life—
a worldview that would encompass all domains within its range of application.

characterisation

' '

2.3 The Development of a System of Personal Values

Arguably, Bloom s scheme for the affective domain is more difficult to

operationalise in teaching than the taxonomy in the cognitive domain. However,
it should be noted that the high-level cognitive skill of

'

involves making
judgements against some set of values or other, and such judgements will be more
consistent where the individual has developed their own coherent set of values
(i.e. the highest level of educational objectives in the affective domain), suggesting
strong links between these two domains.
Following Piaget ( 1970 /1972), cognitive development is often seen to lead to
formal operations that are commonly attained during adolescence. However, a
number of observers have argued that formal operations are not the end point of
cognitive development, which needs to proceed to allow people to cope with the
complexity of real-life scenarios where problems are often undetermined by avail-
able data and where it is not possible to adjudicate between competing perspectives
simply on logical grounds alone (Arlin, 1975 ; Kramer, 1983 ).

evaluation

' '