Cognitive and Affective Domains in the Light of the Holy Quran: An Analytical Discussion of Educational Process in Pakistan

Abstract

Educating the persons is a complex but very sophisticated process, which may be formal, informal, or non-formal. Whatever the form it takes, the main goal is the development of the personality of the person, which seems a simple statement but has a multifaceted orientation. The educationists have tried to identify and organize clearly these aspects so that the academicians, teachers, and curriculum developers have the vision in designing and implementing the educational activities for the teaching-learning process. Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives is one of these frameworks and has got more attraction of the educationists. It consists of three domains-cognitive, psychomotor and affective. In this article, besides the brief discussion on the nature of these domains, a relationship of cognitive and affective learning outcomes under the guidance of the Holy Quran is explained. The Holy Quran puts man under the obligation of internalizing the beliefs and reflecting these through his character to become a righteous man. It is observed that the main focus in educational institutions is on the cognitive dimension of learning and the least concern is on the affective domain that focuses on character building. That is why, serious questions are posed on the attitudes of students that deny rules and value systems in daily life practices as observed in the campuses like a violation of traffic rules, not taking care of cleanliness and poor interpersonal interaction. Interpretive document analysis was adopted under the phenomenological approach to conducting this research. Also, a survey based on interviews was also conducted for additional data to support the analysis.