Online Class Reflections The Three Domains of Learning

In the power point Curriculum Training Module Two by Mark Feder, he mentions the three domains of the learning, “cognitive”-the technical aspect of the lesson and “affective” feeling and the third is the “psycho-motor” stage. He explains that in order to learn how to bike, you need all three domains, and this can be applied to teaching a foreign language.  I must admit learning a foreign language has always been a waterloo for me. But I think in my past language classes I only reached the cognitive and psycho-motor stage and have no memory that my teacher helped me in the affective stage. I don’t remember my language teachers giving me words of confidence and motivation, in fact my French language teacher in Miriam even told me that my brother (who was also his student) was  better than me and my Mandarin language teacher was too focused on testing us every week that I decided to drop out of class . This paradigm of the three domains made me understand the role of a facilitator, because as a facilitator you encourage students to learn on their own and practice their cognitive as opposed to a teacher that merely provides the cognitive skills and practice the psycho motor of students. In traditional teaching, the affective stage is greatly overlooked which is an irony, since in the business sector; the role of motivation and encouraging employees is one great factor for a successful work performance and organizational success. For me it’s a very good thing that our higher education unit (HEU) has adopted an out comes based learning approach which emphasized the psychomotor skills of “DOING”, but I hope that it will also adopt an AFFECTIVE approach too since I noticed motivation and encouragement is not yet embedded in the current syllabus that I am adopting as a teacher. But as a teacher, I do make it a point to touch on the affective domain. I encourage and motivate my students because I am aware that in the four functions of management (Planning, influencing, organizing and controlling), motivation and encouragement is in the realm of influencing or leadership.  An organization cannot be effectively managed without the function of influencing, and human behavior studies have shown that encouraging employees and motivating them properly can make or break an organization.