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ACCESSING STUDENT AFFECT: STRATEGIES AND CONCERNS

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ACCESSING STUDENT AFFECT: STRATEGIES AND CONCERNS

Author: Andrea McDonough & David Clarke

Publication Year: 1994

Abstract

While mathematics curriculum developers have attended carefully to issues of content
coverage and even to models of cognition, the same attention has not been accorded to
student affect. The planning of instructional and assessment practice seldom includes
consideration of such factors as student motivation, confidence, satisfaction, or self esteem.
It should be stated at the outset that we do not endorse the partitioning of human
behaviour into affective and cognitive as mutually exclusive categories. For the purpose
of the present discussion, however, we find the term "affect" useful to describe those
behaviours conventionally associated with emotive response.
This paper adopts the position that it is essential that curricula attend to student
affect in an explicit and structured way. Strategies, developed for research purposes,
offer the possibility of accessing student affect in classroom situations. The use of these
strategies raises all of the familiar issues of construct and content validity, and, most
importantly, the contemporary concern with consequential validity. The use of the term
"access" in the title to this paper is intended to foreshadow the need to distinguish
between "measurement" and ''portrayal''. We find the term "measurement" to have
unfortunate uni-dimensional connotations, and for the purposes of this paper would like
to advocate the use by researchers and teachers of the term ''portrayal'' in relation to the
process of data collection regarding student affect. Approaches to the portrayal of student
affect are discussed and illustrated by reference to the results of studies employing
instruments with the capacity to access student affect.

Type: Research Paper

ANDREA MCDONOUGH & DAVID CLARKE
ACCESSING STUDENT AFFECT: STRATEGIES AND CONCERNS

Short Communications & Round Tables

The following documents are essential to read and complete when considering submitting a short communication or round table to the MERGA conference (available in the Submission section of this website).

MERGA Paper Template – to be used to write the abstracts which are then submitted to the MERGA conference website
MERGA Publication Agreement – to be submitted on the MERGA conference website at the time of the abstract submission

Submissions not exceeding one page are required for short communications and round tables. The submissions must be prepared using the conference template, and can include essential references. They will be reviewed by the Editorial Team and, if accepted, will be published in the conference proceedings as one-page abstracts (not as papers). Presenters are invited to prepare a paper for distribution at the conference, but these papers will not be included in the proceedings.

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MERGA Paper Template – to be used to write the papers which are then submitted to the MERGA conference website
MERGA Publication Agreement – to be submitted on the MERGA conference website at the time of the paper submission

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a statement of the problem/issue and a discussion of its significance;
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MERGA Paper Template (to be used to write the papers which are then submitted to the MERGA conference website)
MERGA Publication Agreement (to be submitted on the MERGA conference website at the time of the paper submission)

Presentation of groups of published papers related by theme in the form of a research symposium is encouraged. The symposium forum will be particularly suitable for presentations relating to a single large project or presentations that explore topical themes from different and/or related perspectives. Special Interest Groups [SIGs] are encouraged to consider the symposium option as a means for sharing and discussing current research.

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