ENHANCING QUALITY IN EDUCATION THROUGH RESEARCH RESEARCHES ON AFFECTIVE (SOFT SKILLS) LEARNING By Mrs.K.Deepa M.A., M.Phil., M.Ed.

, Lecturer SRM School of Teacher Education and Research SRM University Kattankulathur Abstract There is now a widely held view that efforts should be made to actively bring research and teaching together. This is a response to many changes in education together with a number of research findings that have challenged the relationship between teaching and research. Research in Education has an established focus on the sociology and psychology of education and gives increased emphasis to current practical issues of direct interest to those in the teaching profession. One of the major issues at present in the field of education is growing interest in Quality. We are all interested in quality in education. The future of our country and the world depends on our children and college students receiving the best instruction. Using the framework of quality we can design roadmaps for continuous improvement. When educators understand what continuous improvement is all about, they gain confidence that they can shape and alter the nature of their institutions. Change is possible if research play a vital role! This paper emphasizes the importance of research in enhancing quality in education. More specifically it deals with the significance of research in Affective Learning which forms the base for quality education in the 21st century. This is an effort to illustrate that Affective Learning is as vital as Cognitive Learning and both goes hand- in- hand in many aspects.

INTRODUCTION During the 1950's, Benjamin bloom led a team of educational psychologists in the analysis of academic learning behaviors. The results of this team's research produced what is known today in the field of education, as Bloom's Taxonomy. This hierarchy of learning behaviors was categorized into three interrelated and overlapping learning domains; the cognitive (knowledge), affective (attitude), and psychomotor (skills). The Affective Learning Domain addresses a learner's emotions towards learning experiences. A learner's attitudes, interest, attention, awareness, and values are demonstrated by affective behaviors. These emotional behaviors which are organized in a hierarchical format are as follows: Receiving, Responding, Valuing, Organizing and Characterizing (Krathwohl, D., Bloom, B., & Masia, B., 1956). Affective learning inculcates the values and beliefs we place on the information we engage with. It refers to our attitudes and willingness to take part in new things, and ability to make decisions about how we operate and behave in a variety of circumstances. Attitudes are not directly observable, but the actions and behaviors to which they contribute may be observed (Bednar & Levie, 1993).Although there are some difficulties in measuring attitude formation and change, the affective domain is important in education. NEED FOR AFFECTIVE LEARNING (SOFT SKILLS) Soft skills are the nontechnical skills, abilities, and traits that workers need to function in a specific employment environment. They include four sets of workplace competencies: problemsolving and other cognitive skills, oral communication skills, personal qualities and work ethic, and interpersonal and teamwork skills (Leigh, et al., 1999). Soft skills play a vital role for professional success; they help one to excel in the workplace and their importance cannot be denied in this age of information and knowledge. Good soft skills -which are in fact scarce -- in the highly competitive corporate world, will help you stand out in a milieu of routine job seekers with mediocre skills and talent. Affective educational outcomes that focus on individual dispositions, willingness, preferences, and enjoyment must be acknowledged and integrated into curricula throughout institutions. Evidence that such outcomes are lacking, but required, in education can be found in the soft skill

shortage among employees in the workplace (Clark, 2005). Soft skills are important to productivity, employee satisfaction, a healthy workplace, and ultimately, economic success for society. They include self-awareness, analytical thinking, leadership skills, team-building skills, flexibility, acceptance of diversity, the ability to communicate effectively, creativity, problemsolving skills, listening skills, diplomacy and change-readiness. The affective domain is less predisposed to classification. While a considerable body of material existed with which to evaluate performance and achievement in the cognitive domain, only marginal work is available in the affective domain. Tests of cognitive knowledge can be marked right or wrong, but emotions exist on a continuum. Feelings are never wrong; peoples ways of expressing that emotion may be. Changed behaviour is slippery ground, and learning theories of attitude change are no longer as popular as they once were. Focus on reinforced behavior as the primary factor responsible for attitude development is now frowned upon. Early research on attitude change drew on Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, which posits that, when a person is persuaded to act in a way that is not congruent with a pre-existing attitude, he or she may change the attitude to reduce dissonance (Smith & Ragan, 1999). Teachers also learn that a largely cognitively-oriented classroom is more predictable and controllable than an emotionally-expressive one. They may assume that, by paying attention to cognitive outcomes, the affective ones are magically being furthered. But Krathwohl et al. discuss an assumption concerning the relationship between the cognitive and affective domains. It has been said that, if the cognitive objectives are developed, the development of the affective behaviours follows. INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN FOR ATTITUDE CHANGE Simonson and Maushak (2001) have drawn on findings from a number of studies to create a series of six guidelines for effective design of attitude instruction. These are:

make the instruction realistic, relevant, and technically stimulating present new information present persuasive messages in a credible manner elicit purposeful emotional involvement

involve the learner in planning, production or delivery of the message provide post-instruction discussion or critique opportunities

Smith and Ragan (1999) focus on the behavioral aspect of attitude learning and emphasize the importance of three key instructional approaches:

demonstration of the desired behavior by a respected role model practice of the desired behavior, often through role playing reinforcement of the desired behavior

THE HARD FACTS ABOUT SOFT SKILLS Research at DePaul University concluded that recruiters want business schools to pay more attention to people-oriented skills like leadership and communication. Students, however, frequently complain that those "soft skills" won't get them jobs, and they're pressuring their business schools to focus instead on functional or technical content, the researchers say. Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) has found that, while credentialing in the form of degrees and certificates is important, development of soft skillsskills that are more social than technicalwill be a crucial part of fostering a dynamic workforce. A study by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) confirms the importance of strong soft skills in the development of effective leadership.
Computerworld's 2007 hiring and skills survey reported that IT executives are

increasingly looking for staffs who demonstrate a broad range of soft skills in addition to their technical abilities.
When hiring administrative staffaccording to a 2007 survey conducted by Office

Team, HR.com, and the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP)sixty-seven percent of human resource (HR) managers would hire an applicant with strong soft skills whose technical abilities were lacking. However, only nine percent would hire someone who had strong technical expertise but weak interpersonal skills.

CONCLUSION The question remains: can professors who teach from the affective domain influence values, beliefs and attitudes? Although much research is still needed, there are effective instructional strategies to promote attitude formation and change. Effective attitude instruction should involve the learner emotionally, and demonstrate the required behaviors that is consistent with the desired attitude and when positively reinforced can bring about the desired changes. Finally, instruction that provides learners with an opportunity to express or act out the target attitude, and responds to that expression with positive reinforcement will move them towards changed behavior. Any instruction that includes these qualities is likely to result in the desired attitude formation or change. Undoubtedly, further research is required in the area of accomplishing and evaluating learning outcomes in the affective domain. Quality in education lies in giving need based education and producing skilled individuals who will be valuable for both himself and the society. Hence, education should be enriched in the lights of research which helps in finding out the requirements of the society. REFERENCES WEBSITES www.wise-online.com www.affect.media.mit.edu www.softskillsindia.com BOOKS Clark, M. S., & Fiske, S. T. (1982). Affect and cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Smith, P. & Ragan, T.J. (1999). Instructional design. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Bednar, A. & Levie, W.H. (1993). Attitude-change principles. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.