Teaching school science within the cognitive and affective domains
In classrooms, science is usually taught within the cognitive domain while the psychomotor learning domain is achieved through performing science experiments in the laboratory. Although students attend civic and moral education and pastoral care classes where values and life skills are often taught directly, learning experiences in most school subjects such as science are still centred on preparing for high stakes examinations. It is therefore not surprising that affective domain learning outcomes are often the least considered when teachers plan or conduct their science lessons. This paper is a report on three school-based trial lessons in which students from two Singapore secondary schools were taught science concepts and skills in the usual manner with follow-up reflective activities requiring them to draw from their learning experiences parallel scenarios in their daily lives. The students were taught chemistry topics like reactivity of potassium metal (taught to a secondary 4 normal technical class), sedimentation as a separation technique (taught to a secondary 3 express class), and reaction characteristics of weak and strong acids (taught to a secondary 2 express class). At the end of each lesson, students had to discuss, reflect and respond to an everyday event or scenario which has characteristics similar to the chemistry topic or skill they had just learnt. This cognitive-affective integrative teaching approach aims to help students surface important values, positive social habits or effective life skills. Although this is not a research project but an exemplary teaching practice, observations of students' reflective responses to the tasks and feedback on learning experiences frotn students and teachers show great potential for this teaching approach to be a possible way in helping raise the profile of affective learning objectives in school science lessons.