Kimberly Leddo
ED 448/548: Science Lesson Plan/Information Literacy
4-3-2013
Shechtman, Z. and Leichtentritt, J. (2004). Affective teaching: a method to enhance
classroom management. European Journal of Teacher Education, 27 (3), 323335.
Shechtman and Leichtentritt (2004) wrote an article about a different method to
improve classroom management. In their method, they use a model of teaching
containing three levels. The first two levels of information and conceptualization are
normally part of a teaching plan. The third level is what’s different. The third level deals
with attitudes, feelings, beliefs, emotions, and affect. This third level was added to
increase the students’ personal and emotional involvement. This makes the content more
interesting, relevant, and challenging. It was expected that this would cause less
disciplinary problems, and students would be more supportive of each other. Shechtman
and Leichtentritt researched 52 different special education classrooms with 52 different
female, student teachers.
In the research by Shechtman and Leichtentritt (2004), the two variables used
were “cognitive teaching” and “affective teaching.” Cognitive teaching was a regular
level of teaching that used the first two levels of information and conceptualization.
Affective teaching added in that third level of bringing in students’ personal lives. The
differences between the two methods were based on misbehavior and positive behavior.
The result of the study was that students showed less bad behavior in the affective
teaching strategy. Positive behavior was increased during the affective lesson as opposed
to the cognitive teaching.
I used some of the information in this article while writing my science lesson plan
to implement some of this affective teaching strategy. This study was actually done on
special education classes, but I liked the idea of connecting the lesson to the children on a
personal level. In the beginning of my lesson, I did a word splash, using the students’
prior knowledge of light bulbs. I think this relates to this article because it is getting the
students to think about their own personal knowledge of the topic. I noticed while
teaching, the students were excited to volunteer during this section of the lesson. They
wanted me to know what they know. While they were telling me their words, some of
them would also tell me the story of how they knew that. I got some volunteers to help
me with trying to light the bulb. I believe this is affective teaching because the students
are actually getting to do some of the work themselves. I chose students who normally
don’t pay attention well. They responded very well to this. At one point, we couldn’t get
the bulb to light. So, we had to try a different bulb. When we got the new bulb, I brought
up new volunteers. This kept the students more interested. While I was talking about the
parts of the bulb, I walked around and showed each student the different parts. They were
very interested in this. I believe that was affective, because it showed that I cared enough
about each student to come to them. At the end of the lesson, I thanked the students for
helping me, and we talked about some of the light bulb experiments the students had been
doing at home since they started this unit. As the closing activity, I had them draw a light
bulb in their science notebooks. I told them to be creative and colorful with it. I wanted
them to make them unique to themselves. They also had to label it, so that reinforced the
lesson.
Shechtman, Z. and Leichtentritt, J. (2004). Affective teaching: a method to enhance
classroom management. European Journal of Teacher Education, 27 (3), 323335.