Using Reader Response Strategy and Affective Learning Domain in Teaching Literature to Enhance Critical Thinking

Reading comprehension has been a perennial problem for Filipino students which was reflected in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and in San Bartolome Integrated High School’s Secondary Reading Inventory (SRI) which showed that 281 out of 920 students were at the frustration level of reading. The strategy used by the teacher and reading interest of the students affect students’ learning. This experimental study aimed to find out the effect of Reader Response Strategy in teaching literature and affective learning domain on the level of critical thinking competence among grade 11 senior high school students at San Bartolome Integrated High School for school year 2019-2020. Forty (40) randomly selected grade 11 students served as respondents. Researcher-made 40-item pre-test and posttest on critical thinking competence, and as affective learning inventory were used as instruments. The respondents perceived that the first three levels of affective learning domain namely receiving, responding and valuing are evident in them. They are unsure of their perception of their organizing domain. They do not perceive characterizing is in their system. The respondents showed improvement in three out of four critical thinking competencies namely defining, classifying and drawing conclusions after exposure to Reader Response Strategy. However, there was no improvement in the respondents’ skills in finding relationships. There is no significant relationship between the respondents’ critical thinking competencies and their affective learning domain. It is recommended that Reader Response Strategy may be adopted for a longer period of time to ensure positive results in learners’ overall reading comprehension skills.


Introduction
Rosenblatt's Reader Response Theory as cited by Larson (2009) posits that readers attain meaning from text by means of making connections with the text. It is a top-down framework, readers get meaning from texts through interactions with them and recognizes that each reader will have a different understanding of the literary works they have read. This by no means, allows the reader to carelessly interpret the text without basis. As  point out that readers must provide evidence from the text in order to substantiate their responses to a text. This combination of the reader's response as established from the text can help in the interpretation of the meaning of words in a literary text. Using such evidence ensures learners focus on the main textual aspects, such as the plot, theme, setting, conflicts, etc.
Response-based pedagogy leans toward aesthetic reading rather than efferent reading. Efferent reading is used to learn new knowledge or how to carry out a task which makes it unnecessary to have several interpretations . In contrast, aesthetic reading allows for the meaningful development of reading and writing integration in literature projects that may involve readers engaging with texts and relating them to their own experiences and perspectives (Iskhak et al., 2020). According to Louie (2005) as cited by Woodruff and Griffin (2017), the use of diverse literature promotes the growth of empathic responses from readers because they can relate to these characters on a personal level and can visualize themselves being put in similar situations as the protagonists of such literary works. Because additional viewpoints are exposed, discussing a text with other readers is essential to developing a more thoughtful connection to a work of literature.
Reader response strategy provides multifaceted advantages like encouraging aesthetic experience, giving opportunities to raise students' voice, and increasing their interest and motivation in reading and literacy achievement (Baful & Derequito, 2022). It also engages the learners' cognitive and affective facets that are shown through their responses in their classroom participation (Iskhak, 2015). The effectiveness of reader response strategy to pedagogically meet students' requirements and interests in enjoying reading texts in the target language has been questioned, proven, and underlined in pertinent studies such as Carlisle (2000), Iskhak (2020) and Spirovska (2019). However, there are still few studies that highlight the connection of cognitive (critical thinking) and affective aspect related to using reader response strategy in teaching literature. This will provide educators and language teachers with theoretical advantages to enhance the quality of their instruction.
This study aimed to find out the effect of Reader Response Strategy in teaching literature and affective learning domain on the critical thinking competence among grade 11 senior high school students at San Bartolome Integrated High School for the school year 2019-2020.

Reader Response Strategy
This study is anchored on Reader Response Theory. According to Rosenblatt as cited by Hutton (2018), this theory posits that the transaction between the reader and texts (reading) is predisposed to the reader's schema and past experiences. It has its origins in Post-Structuralism in the late 20th Century which proposes an approach to textual analysis in which the reader replaces the author as the main source of meaning of the literary text. The reader's background knowledge, past life experiences, culture, attitudes and belief system are interwoven to that of the author's written text to create a subjective meaning.
Reader response places great importance of the role of reader in the interpretation of texts.
In this, the idea that a literary work has only one or fixed meaning is not accepted. Readers construct their own meaning from how they understood the text through a series of responses, making each response unique (Larson, 2009). According to Iskhak (2015), reader response strategies can give students varied experiences in the learning process because it provides an avenue for students' self-expression, thus, ameliorating their motivation and interest in reading and writing. He also posited that reader response strategy can involve both the readers' cognitive and affective learning that are manifested in their responses in the classroom activity.
A study by Iskhak (2015) was undertaken with the aim to probe the effects of writing reader response journals (RRJ) on the quality of students' responses to the literary texts given to them.
The research was based on Rosenblatt's Reader Response Theory, literacy ideologies, and sociocultural standpoints. It is assumed in this study that critical and aesthetic reading-writing which are constructed collaboratively are what make up readers' response to literature. A group with a class of 22 including teacher trainees, taking Literature Criticism as their subject, from a private education college in Ciamis, Indonesia was employed in the study. The study found that using the 64 | International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, Volume 3 Issue 4 reader response journal had an effect on the improvement of respondents' achievements and their quality aesthetic experiences reflecting other reader response strategies. Peralta-Nash and Dutch (2000) illustrated how two fourth grade teachers modified the concept of literature study using a reader response approach to their bilingual learners (Brabham & Villaume, 2000). It was revealed that the learners took ownership of their own learning by taking charge of the discussion, demonstrating accountability in the amount of their participation in the process and thus, increasing the amount of enjoyment in reading texts.

Affective Learning Domain
In education, there are three domains in learning that educators use as bases to create lessons to achieve learning outcomes. They are cognitive or thinking (Bloom), affective or emotion/feeling (Krathwohl), and psychomotor or physical/kinaesthetic (Harrow). Among the three domains, the cognitive domain is the most studied, followed by the psychomotor while the affective domain is the least studied domain. This is due to the fact that it is easier to assess the cognitive aspect or what we know and the behavioural aspect or actions than the affective (Micklich, 2012). When the affective components are used in teaching-learning process, students may acquire higher interest in and connection to the content. This, will in turn lead to students being more motivated to learn and value what they learn (van der Hoeven Kraft et al., 2011). Kuboja (2016) investigated teachers' perception of the integration of affective domain to attain holistic learning community-based high schools in Arusha, Tanzania. It was revealed that teachers have demonstrated awareness of the affective domain and its learning objectives but lacks the knowledge in how to integrate it in the curriculum.  Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain as cited by Grauer (2014), offers a categorization for addressing affective objectives in education. It is one of the three areas of Bloom's Taxonomy along with cognitive and psychomotor domain. The affective domain involves concepts such as values, feelings, emotions, motivations and attitudes (Krathwohl & Anderson, 2001). The affective domain has a very important role in education. People learn quickly when they feel safe, relaxed, included, and interested. They refuse to learn when they feel threatened, anxious, excluded, or fail to see the purpose of learning.
This study postulates that measuring one's affective learning domain levels in terms of receiving, responding, valuing, organizing and characterization and by utilizing readers' background knowledge, beliefs and perspectives in their responses through reader's response strategy, learners' critical thinking competence such as defining, classifying, finding relationships and drawing conclusions will be enhanced. Therefore, studying literature will be more exciting, personal and meaningful, resulting to an improved critical thinking competence.

Critical Thinking Skills
Since readers are encouraged to use their personal experiences in interpreting the texts, reader response promotes the idea that different readers will have varied interpretations. It also requires readers to look for deeper meanings, thus, developing their critical thinking skills (Graves  Pope and Round (2015) using Roald Dahl's Matilda studied the connection between readers' present awareness about heroes and their perception of heroism. 150 students from seven to 11 age groups were asked to use their prior knowledge to think critically and draw a concept on what constitute a hero and then employ this knowledge to their understanding of the heroine. The research used group discussion, ethnographic research, and individual student questionnaires to get an idea of how the students react to the protagonist's actions and her heroic tendencies and the concept of heroism as a whole.
In study conducted by Leung (2002) it was revealed that a reader's personal information such as age, ethnic identity, gender and life experiences contribute to their capacity to think critically about the text they have read. Meanwhile, Park (2012) claimed that reader response strategy not only encourages finding pleasure in reading a text, but also helps the learners become critical readers by decoding the purpose of the author. Likewise, it was revealed that reading critically equates to understanding and questioning oneself and others.
In summary of all the studies cited, the researcher aspires to look at how reader response strategy in teaching literature and affective learning domain of learners contribute to their critical thinking competence.

Research Design
As an experimental design, this study used pre-test and post-test. According to Tierney (2008), a research in experimental design is employed for obtaining information about causal relationships where the study assesses the correlation between one variable and another. In this design, one element is manipulated by the researcher to see whether it has any impact upon another.
The element being manipulated by the researcher is the independent variable, on the other hand the change or outcome resulting from the implementation of the independent variable is the dependent variable. One group of respondents took the pretest in critical thinking competency to gauge their level of skills. They were then treated to Reader Response Strategy in their literature class. After nine classes, the respondents took the posttest in critical thinking skills and the

3.2.Respondents of the Study
This research used two sections of Grade 11 students at San Bartolome Integrated High School where 40 respondents were randomly selected. It was conducted during the fourth quarter of the school year 2019-2020. Random sampling technique was used in this study. The respondents came from Grade 11 level who were treated to Reader Response Strategy.

Research Procedure
The researcher sought the permission to conduct the study through a letter of request addressed to the principal of San Bartolome Integrated High School in the Division of San Pablo City. The study was divided into three phases: the pre-implementation, implementation, and the post-implementation.
The pre-implementation phase included the development and validation of the tests used in the study: the pre and post tests on critical thinking competence, and the Affective Learning Inventory Tool. The contents of lesson plans consisted of reading selections taken from 21 st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World for senior high. However, the test questions, were researcher-made and focused on four (4) critical thinking competencies namely defining, classifying, finding relationships and drawing conclusions.
In the implementation phase, the respondents were treated to Reader Response Strategy using Literature Circles. The class was divided into groups consisting of six members each. Each member has a specified role such as biographer, summarizer, character investigator, plot analyst, setting illustrator and literary luminary. Firstly, the teacher explained first the procedure and reminded each one of their tasks based on their assigned role. The teacher asked the learners to read the literary text and answer the worksheets provided for them based on their assigned roles.
This procedure lasted for about an hour. Respondents underwent the Literature Circles for three weeks in their literature class. The implementation phase transpired for nine (9) meetings with one hundred (100) minutes for each.
In the post-implementation phase, the respondents took the posttest and Affective Learning Inventory. The results were then statistically analyzed.

3.4.Research Instruments
The instruments used for this study were: Affective Learning Inventory, pre-test and posttests and the researcher-made lesson plans using Reader Response Strategy. The Affective Learning Inventory based on Krathwohl's affective domain taxonomy is a researcher-made survey tool consisting of twenty-five (25) items with questions gauging the respondents' affective learning levels which includes receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and characterization. It underwent content validation by the school guidance counselor and test on reliability which was carried out in another school with the same grade level and strand. The pre-test and post-test each consisted of forty (40) items with questions gauging respondents' critical thinking skills such as defining, classifying, finding relationships and drawing conclusions. The pretest and post-test underwent content validation by a master teacher, head teacher and subject coordinator in English.
The test on reliability which was carried out in another school with the same grade level and strand.
The researcher-made lesson plans were validated by the English coordinator of San Bartolome Integrated High School.

Statistical Treatment of Data
To facilitate the analysis and interpretation of data, the following statistical treatments were used. The mean was utilized to interpret their scores in the Affective Learning Inventory. To test the difference among the results of the pre-test and post-test administered to the respondents after their exposure to Reader Response Strategy, T-test was used. To test the relationship between Critical Thinking Competence and Affective Learning Domain of respondents, Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used.

Findings and Discussion
Receiving is the first level in the Affective Learning Domain. It pertains to the individual's willingness to be aware of an instructional event. In learning literature, the respondents marked the indicators related to characters in the text as the highest. Indicators 1 and 5 were both perceived as 'Very True of Me.' This can be attributed to the fact that affective domain deals mainly with feelings, emotions and attitudes of a person, hence it is likely that learners will be most interested in the characters they read along with their emotions, motivations, attitudes and decisions.  Valuing is the demonstration of commitment to certain behaviors or values. The results illustrate that the respondents perceive indicators related to discussions about the character's actions and their justifications, and the most remarkable parts of the literature, resonate with them.
Consistently, whenever the discussion is centered around characters, their actions and motivations, respondents are more responsive and have more inputs. In discussing the literary selection, I am Malala where the main character was shot by the Taliban because of her active stance in educating women but continued her fight despite nearly being killed, respondents empathized with her and expressed their commitment to continue their own education for several reasons. One reason being that they believed education is a weapon against ignorance and poverty. Other reason stated for their belief is education equalizes people despite gender, economic and racial differences. The respondents, likewise, perceive studying the author's background to explain the values encountered in the text is true of them. So, respondents' inclination to focus on characters' actions and author's values are evident. On the contrary, respondents are neutral in their perception of them sharing with others about values which can be integrated to daily life. One respondent claimed that, despite believing into something good does not mean being ready to put it into action, hence, they opt not to share those values they believe with other people unless they are sure that they can really practice it in their own everyday life.
In organization, individuals show internalization of a value system. The learners deemed all the indicators as Neutral. This means they are undecided on their perception of their ability to internalize the values they have encountered. Thus, they perceived that they are not sure if they are able to relate the values to themselves and apply them to solve real life problems. For instance, while discussing the literary selection To This Day which deals with the issue of bullying, respondents stated they believed bullying per se is wrong but admitted that once in a while, they catch themselves bullying other people in some forms. Example of this is when they call their classmates names such as Negra for having a dark complexion, Taba for being overweight, and Palito for being thin. They claimed they have always called their classmates those names without any malice but only for humor. But then, when they reflected on it, they know it is still a form of bullying. However, they are so used to name-calling that most of the time, they do it despite knowing that it is wrong.
In characterization, learners consistently demonstrate action relating to the values they have learned. The respondents perceive that the indicators pertaining to their actions related to the values they encountered were untrue to them. They perceive that with regards to the values, they do not display patterns of behaviour, influence others, discriminate pros and cons, question their own behavior and serve others. In the duration of the classes, the respondents exhibited strong opinions about the values presented to them by the characters, but they admit they are not sure if they can do the same. In discussing the literary selection, No Stones Left Unturned which deals with social and political injustice committed to marginalized sectors of society, respondents were hesitant to answer the question if they can do the same thing as the protagonist of the selection who is a reporter fighting the authorities who violate human rights.
As shown in table 2, the first three domains namely Receiving, Responding and Valuing were perceived by the respondents to be evident in them. Meanwhile respondents perceived their Organizing domain as neutral. On the other hand, they do not perceive Characterizing is in their system. This result supports the findings of Boyd et al. (2006). They stated that as with every 72 | International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, Volume 3 Issue 4 classroom situation, it is expected that most students are likely to participate in the lower levels (Receiving and Responding). On the other hand, respondents struggle to exhibit the higher levels of affective domain (Valuing, Organizing and Characterization) because these require actions, and most respondents are not committed enough to act on values.   allow them to recognize problems and analyze. However, they lack the skills in making inferences and distinguishing similarities and differences.  Table 4 shows the posttest scores of the students. In Defining, 52.5% attained Proficient level, 25% was at Approaching Proficiency level and 22.5% attained Advanced level. These levels indicate that learners already have sufficient skills to demonstrate their ability to gather facts, identify problems and unique characteristics and they can work on their own in performing the task. No respondents were recorded in the Developing and Beginning levels which means respondents who did not possess the skills in this competency were able to develop their skills and use it to answer the questions correctly without guidance from the teacher. Comparing the result from the pretest, wherein 20% of the respondents were at the Developing level and 5% were at the Beginning level.
The author to text and reader to text components of Reader Response helped respondents to utilize their skills in gathering facts, finding unique characteristics recognizing problems and tasks. The same goes for Drawing Conclusion, whereas 47.5% was at the Proficient level, 35% at the Approaching Proficiency and 17.5% at the advanced level. This means that majority of the respondents have shown improvement from the pretest's results of 37.7% in Developing level and 62.5% in the Beginning level. Notice that in the posttest, no respondent was recorded in the Developing and Beginning levels which means respondents who did not possess the skills in evaluating, making inferences and identifying cause and effect have shown improvement after being exposed to Reader Response.
The reader to text and personal experiences to text components of Reader Response Strategy involved using their skills in identifying cause and effect, making distinctions, inferencing and evaluating. Likewise, the respondents fared well in Classifying. 47.5% attained Proficiency level, 25% was at the Advanced level and 25% was at Approaching Proficiency level. Albeit, marginal, 1 respondent was recorded in the Beginning level which comprised 2.5% of the population. No respondent was recorded in the Developing level. This is a significant improvement from the pretest's scores wherein 70% of the respondents were at the Developing level and 30% were at the Beginning level.
The reader to text and personal experiences to text components of Reader Response Strategy helped respondents use their skills in distinguishing similarities and differences, grouping and categorizing, comparing, and making either/or distinctions. It is somewhat different In Finding Relationships. The results are more scattered in the different levels compared to the other three competencies. 2.5% attained Advanced level. There was no recorded data in the Advanced level in the pretest. Some respondents have developed their abilities in relating parts and whole, analyzing, seeing patterns, synthesizing and using deductive and inductive reasoning to their full extent and can perform tasks independently. A decreased in the percentage of those who attained Proficient level was seen from the pretest's 20% to the posttest's 15%. This may be due to the reason that respondents who were once at the Proficient level have progressed to the Advanced level. More than half of the respondents (67.5%) attained Approaching Proficiency level. This is an improvement from the pretest result of 45% who attained Approaching Proficiency level. It implies more respondents have shown improvement in their ability to find relationship with little to no guidance from the teacher. The biggest improvement is in the Developing level wherein only 12% was recorded in the posttest as compared to the pretest's 32.5%. The same data (2.5%) is recorded at the Beginning level in both pretest and posttest. This means that the same number of students did not show improvement in finding relationships.
The reader to text and personal experiences to text components of Reader Response Strategy enabled respondents to use their skills in relating parts and wholes, seeing patterns, analyzing, synthesizing, recognizing sequences and order, and using inductive and deductive reasoning.  It is concluded that there is no significant relationship between the respondents' Affective Learning Domain and Critical Thinking Competence, p < 0.050. Respondents' critical thinking competence is not related to their affective learning domain. This can be seen in their improvement in developing their skills in critical thinking after being exposed to Reader Response Strategy but, did not show improvement in their affective learning domain. Most of the respondents were already at the Advanced and Proficient/Approaching Proficiency in their critical thinking competence but their perception of their affective learning domain is low with only the first two levels (Receiving and Responding) being evident in them. This is corroborated by Lynch et al. (2009). They claimed that cognitive and affective domains deal with very different facets of a learner's education (Bombio & Del Rosario, 2022).

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Both the cognitive and affective domains are the same in which their first two levels are considered the easiest to attain. Despite the overlap of cognitive and affective domains especially in the lower levels, they stressed that as you go beyond level 3 of the affective domain (Valuing), it completely deviates from the cognitive categories. As one progresses in the affective domain levels, describing it becomes far from the terms related to the cognitive domain. Clearly, having knowledge about something is not the same as internalization of the value associated with it, as well as demonstrating it through action.

Conclusion
The pre-test scores in Critical Thinking Competence indicate that the respondents already fared well in Defining. Respondents exhibited an average score in Finding Relationships with. However, the respondents performed poorly in Classifying and Drawing Conclusions. The results of the post evaluation indicate that respondents showed an increased in their level of critical thinking after exposure to Reader Response Strategy. There was also increased in the percentage of respondents who attained Advance level and a sharp decreased in the percentage of respondents who attained Beginning level. The respondents perceived that the first three levels of affective learning domain (receiving, responding and valuing) are evident in them. However, they are unsure of their perception of their organizing domain. They do not perceive characterizing is in their system. The respondents showed improvement in three out of the four critical thinking competencies (defining, classifying and drawing conclusions) after exposure to Reader Response Strategy. However, there was no improvement in the respondents' skills in Finding Relationships.
The results showed that there is no significant relationship between the respondents' critical thinking competencies and their affective learning domain.
The study recommends that Reader Response Strategy may be adopted for a longer period to ensure positive results in learners' overall reading comprehension skills which includes literal, inferential and critical thinking. Teachers in other subject areas such as History, Values Education and English and Filipino Reading classes may use Reader Response Strategy provided they adapt the content to the activities to find out if the strategy is effective in other learning areas.