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Choosing activities for the lesson they cannot find it, which is no service to them or to society, and which can have deeply damaging repercussions. Earlier I was irreverent enough to suggest that the time allowed to teach a skill is in inverse relation to its importance. Sound opinion forming is necessary both for a stable society and to enable individuals to steer their own lives. As a consequence of its overwhelming importance, it is usual for no time to be allowed for the overt teaching of this skill! Were you taught it? If not, do you wish you had been? As we saw in Chapter 17 on discussion, if there is a disagreement, try to isolate the reason for this. Is it due to differences of fact, belief or values? Take a look at the diagram below. To challenge Jo’s argument, one must remove either one of the three legs supporting Jo’s argument, or the reasoning from these foundations. If one leg fails the stool falls. If the connection between the legs and the opinion fails, again the stool falls. Share this three-legged stool approach with your students, getting them to present their arguments in this visual way on wall posters, presentations and handouts. Facts, evidence, etc. e.g. air travel releases lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. Opinions e.g. Jo believes there should be tax on aero-fuel Values, desires, goals, etc. e.g. protecting the environment is more important than freedom to travel Beliefs, general principles, science, etc. e.g. CO2 emission creates global warming Taxing fuel will reduce air travel Examining disagreement with the three-legged stool Hypothesis testing Venn diagrams are helpful in testing hypotheses such as: 1 To what extent did the Treaty of Versailles cause the Second World War? 2 Prisons do work. 433 Putting it all together In the first case, the circle on the left could be the Treaty of Versailles, the circle on the right the causes of the Second World War. The overlap, V, represents causes of the War due to the Treaty. This verifies the hypothesis. F1 is aspects of the Treaty that did not cause the War. F2 is causes of the War not due to the Treaty. With ‘Prisons do work’, the circle on the left describes the nature of prisons, and the right-hand circle describes what it means to ‘work’. The extent to which prisons work is shown by the overlap. The hypothesis is verified by this overlap ‘V’. Aspects of prisons that don’t work is F1. Aspects of ‘working’ not provided by prisons is F2. Both these falsify the hypothesis. The diagram helps direct thinking towards any evidence that confirms, but also any evidence that denies the hypothesis – great for assertive-questioning-style class discussion, based on an interactive whiteboard diagram. Further reading De Bono, E. (1978) Teaching Thinking, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Jepson, R. W. (1948) Clear Thinking: An Elementary Course of Preparation for Citi-zenship, London: Longman. Marzano, R. J. with Marzano, S. and Pickering, D. J. (2003) Classroom Management that Works, Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Nisbet, J. and Schucksmith, J. (1986) Learning Strategies, London: Routledge. Petty, G. (2006) Evidence Based Teaching, Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes. Thouless, R. (1990) Straight and Crooked Thinking, London: Edward Arnold. 434 39 Choosing activities to achieve affective objectives Every teacher is involved in achieving affective objectives. Bloom’s taxonomy (see Chapter 37) effectively splits the affective domain into two parts. The first of these involves encouraging students to attend and to show interest in their studies – for example, to develop an interest in scientific experimentation. Developing in students a positive attitude to study has been a major preoccupation throughout this book; relevant factors, such as teacher enthusiasm, motivation, reinforcement, human interest, student relevance and relevance to the real world all play their part, and have been dealt with elsewhere. The other half of Bloom’s affective domain concerns raising awareness in learners, and changing or developing their beliefs, attitudes and feelings. Typical objectives might be: • To develop a positive attitude to non-smoking. • To value a multicultural society. • To appreciate the importance of fibre in a healthy diet. In the caring professions the affective domain is very evident, and this objective would be typical: To empathise with newly admitted patients, and recognise the therapeutic value of making them feel comfortable in their new surroundings. Such objectives require more than knowledge of facts: they require value or impor-tance to be given to these facts. It is one thing to learn that fibre is important in diet; it is quite another to begin to eat it! The learning described by such objectives can be seen as opinion forming. If the learners develop a sufficiently high opinion of the benefits of dietary fibre, they will change their eating habits accordingly. Values, attitudes and beliefs can all be seen as personal opinions, so affective learning can be seen as a high-order cognitive skill: that of personal opinion forming. Have you a feeling of unease about changing attitudes and opinions? I hope so. It raises a fundamental ethical question. What topics has a teacher the right to be persuasive about? Perhaps only issues where informed opinion has arrived at a virtual consensus. Opinions associated with matters such as health (e.g. diet) or safety (e.g. use of a lathe) might well fall into this category; but opinions on many political or moral issues (e.g. full employment or abortion) would not. It is part of the teacher’s professional duty to remain neutral in areas of political, religious, moral and commercial controversy. Persuasion in these areas is a gross violation of professional ethics. 435 Putting it all together For some topics, then, the teacher will be encouraging learners to adopt a particu-lar accepted opinion (persuasion, or convergent opinion-forming); and for other topics, the learners will be expected to make up their own mind on the matter – this is divergent opinion forming, and has been considered in the previous chapter. Persuasion (convergent opinion forming) So how are learners to develop or change their values, attitudes or beliefs? This requires them to clarify, adapt or change their opinion – and perhaps, as a result, their preferred behaviour. Once again, the skill of opinion forming is involved. The following approach is based on a model by Kathleen Reardon (and others). It suggests that messages likely to be persuasive may be founded on three factors: image, consistency and effectiveness (let’s call it the ‘ICE’ model). Imagine, for example, that you are attempting to develop a positive attitude to non-smoking in your students. The students will consider: Image. ‘Does the new opinion or behaviour fit in with my image, e.g. with family, friends and peers? Does it fit in with my image of myself?’ In the case of smoking, questions which students need to address would be: Will I lose or gain credibility with friends, acquaintances and family if I do/ don’t smoke? Do I value the image of being a smoker? Am I happy to think of myself as a nicotine addict? Consistency. ‘Is the belief or behaviour consistent with my other beliefs and behav-iours?’ Smoking-related questions might be: How can I smoke if I believe in keeping fit? Effectiveness. ‘How does the belief or behaviour affect any of my long- or short-term goals), e.g. does it bring about any desired ends?’ Possible questions here: If I don’t smoke, how much money will I save? Will I find it harder or easier to get a girl/boyfriend? Will I be better at football? Will I get cancer later in life? Which of these ICE categories is most influential will depend on the individual and the issue, so teachers should address all three in most cases. In any case, there is considerable overlap between them. It is common but fatal for teachers to ignore ‘image’ and ‘effectiveness’ when dealing, for instance, with social issues such as sexism, racism, etc. Thinking in terms of the ICE model helps to generate ques-tions for group or class discussion. Suppose, for example, you intended to develop a positive attitude towards safety at work on the building site. What questions would the ICE model throw up? Think this through for yourself. (Some suggestions appear in the box on page 438.) Coping strategies Some researchers believe that learners need to rehearse mental and verbal responses if they are to feel comfortable with a new opinion or attitude. They need to develop 436 coping strategies to deal with a new belief, or they will revert to former attitudes. Choosing activities to achieve affective objectives What would I do if I heard a friend make a racist remark? How could I refuse a cigarette offered by a friend? Role-play is often used to good effect here, and devising coping strategies in small-group discussions is an excellent group activity. It is almost always best for the students themselves to be involved as much as possible in the development of these coping strategies. They know best what would be likely to work, and will be more committed to their own ideas than to yours. It might be useful to add S for ‘strategies’ to the ICE mnemonic, to make ‘ICES’. Activities to develop affective objectives The activities and teaching methods used to explore values, attitudes and behav-iour must involve the emotions as well as reason, and must offer an opportunity for corrected practice in opinion forming. Commonly used methods are shown in the following box: Teaching methods commonly used to achieve affective objectives The most effective overall strategy is guided discovery, as described in Chapter 29. Useful activities include: class discussion assertive questioning style (Chapter 24); small-group discussion; attitude questionnaires (such as that in Chapter 10 of this book); group work; games, simulations and role-play; debates; and surveys of students and others. Active experiential methods are particularly powerful – though sometimes difficult to arrange. Activities involving learner experiences, human-interest stories (be they in video or in written form) and activities which involve empathy and identifica-tion with particular characters are also powerful. For example, you could read out a short story in which a schoolgirl, Julie, refuses a cigarette but eventu-ally accepts it when it is offered repeatedly. Then you could ask the students: ‘Has something like this ever happened to you?’ ‘What do you think Julie was thinking?’ ‘What would you have done?’ … All the teaching methods mentioned above were considered in detail in Part 2 of this book. Changing attitudes takes time and patience, especially when changing ingrained, long-held views. Do not expect overnight success; opinions change a little at a time, usually when the persuader is not present. A dietician persuading a pensioner to change from white to wholemeal bread, or a social studies teacher confronting a pupil’s racist views, cannot expect instant results. During discussions, listen rather than talk; watch out for verbal and non-verbal signals of attitudes and feelings, and follow these feelings up. As ever, try to see things from the learner’s point of view. How do they think? Why are these perceptions important to them? Why do they think this way? 437 ... - tailieumienphi.vn
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