Curriculum Focus - CE, PSHE & RE
Citizenship Education, Personal Social and Health Education and Religous
Education deal directly with values, from differing perspectives.
This section offers a toolkit for integrating the school community's
core values into focused curriculum time.
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| Contents: |
- In Brief - The main point
in a couple of sentences
- Key Ideas - a list of the main
points
- 'How To' Guide - simple guidelines
for practice
- Resources - a collection
of useful, evaluated resources
- Further Reflection - relevant
research, papers and articles that inform the ideas
in this section
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In Brief
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Citizenship education is dynamic, interactive and engages
with real life issues
Learning that focuses on core values in the curriculum
requires a dynamic and dialogical approach to teaching,
which honours the experiences and narratives that
teachers and learners bring to the classroom. It
will invite personal change and growth based on
the development of reflective self awareness.
Citizenship education is:
- dynamic and interactive
- encouraging personal enquiry and challenge
- utilising the teacher's and learners' own life
experience and current knowledge
- reflective and building self-awareness
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Story is an essential tool for values education
Both individuals and communities construct stories as a
primary means of understanding and negotiating their lives.
Key characteristics of stories can be summarised as follows:
- the use of story in making sense of human experience
- the construction of meaning and purpose for
our lives
- stories giving us reason for action
- stories are built on an underlying structure
of beliefs and commitments
- the use and abuse of story in building community
identity
- the importance of our own story in rendering
self-identity
- hearing the stories of others is a means of
negotiating truth and right
- hearing the stories of others is a means of
negotiating the values that others hold
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There are different ways of 'knowing' that
are important for values education
Human communities develop knowledge in different ways.
Scientific knowledge is perhaps the most valued
form of knowledge in western society, but it is
not the only 'way of knowing' that shapes social
life. Narratives are a particularly important means
through which we seek the
truth about human behaviour. So narrative ways of
knowing contribute significantly to what communities
value and hold to be true, and to personal and social
development over time.
These are ways of knowing that are fuelled by the desire
to be fully human, to reach one's full potential, to have
an impact on the world. Any contemporary issue to be addressed
in values education - whether it is to do with genetically
modified foods, drug abuse or race riots - can be viewed
from these different perspectives.
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Social systems are systems of trust
As social animals, human beings are committed to
strategies of co-operation. On a purely pragmatic
basis co-operation can be conceptualised simply
as a means of obtaining goods that would not be
accessible to the individual alone. The tension
implicit in this understanding of ourselves as 'individuals
in relationship' may be a fundamental driver of
human cultural development.
Without trust, personal, social and political relationships
will break down. Trust is built through our earliest relationships
and can be a fragile commodity requiring careful nuture.
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Power, motivation and emancipation are central themes for
values education
All communities establish some form of power hierarchy which
helps to resolve the tension between the individual and
the communal. How those power structures are neogiated and
held is a critical theme for values education.
Healthy social and political systems allow and value the
voice of the marginalised. Political development and micro-policital
development occurs by means of a fundamental tension between
upholding the social order and allowing challenge and change.
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The search for success is a key driver of human activity
One fundamental driver of human behaviour is the search for
success, but a special characteristic of the human condition
is to be able to ask questions about what success really
is.
How an individual or a community defines success will indicate
what it is that is really valued. It will give some indication
of their ultimate concerns and spirituality.
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'How To' Guide
In summary
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Problematising an issue for
values education
Contemporary issues to be addressed within your schemes
of work or programmes of study can be considered in the
light of four themes:
- the core values which you think are relevant to an understanding
of this issues
- what do you think are the 'power issues' at stake here?
- how might trust be necessary to reach a solution?
- what might be the hall mark of success for the lives
of those involved?
and the three stories being told in the media about
this issue:
- the scientific story
- the political stories being told, including the personal
stories of people involved and the other interests being
represented
- the business or economic stories being told
Use this
page to see how a PGCE tutor has applied these themes and
stories to the issue of Fishing in the North Sea.
You could use this
interactive template to record your thoughts
on a contemporary issue addressed in one of the
DfES Citizenship Schemes of Work units.
Useful questions for encouraging thinking about
citizenship can be found in Planning
an enquiry into a topical issue (Appendix 8
of the Teacher's Guide to the QCA/DFES SOW for KS3).
Information about the Teacher's Guide itself is
available on the Government's
Standards website.
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Narrative enquiry
This exercise is designed to help you imagine the
multiple stories which are involved in any one particular
issue for values education.
Take a recent high profile event reported in the
news or an issue addressed in CE, PSHE or RE. It
can be a positive event, like a sporting event,
or an event of conflict.
Firstly brainstorm a list of (imaginary) people invovled
in that event, including insiders and outsiders, commentators,
victims and supporters.
Then imagine you are each of these people.
Imagine what it might feel like to experience the
event from their perspective - imagine the feelings
and the beliefs that person may experience.
Then see if you can tell the story from the perspective
of that person. Write a short paragraph which tells the
story of the event from that persons perspective.
How different are those stories? Where there is
conflict resulting from different stories, what
do you think might be a way to resolve that
conflict? Does this link up to any of your school
community's core values? Where does forgiveness
and reconciliation come in?
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Listening to the voice of
the other
It is often difficult to listen to the experiences
of another person and to simply accept their thoughts
and feelings, rather than to try to re-define what
they say, or to tell them what they ought to think
and feel. This is especially true when those experiences
are painful ones, which challenge us personally or
challenge our social systems in some way.
This exercise requires you to find a friend or a colleague
you trust. Ask them to tell you about something good that
has happened to them recently. When they have finished,
see if you can reflect back to them what they said. Include
the feelings, the thoughts and the actions they described.
Ask them how accurately you were able to listen!
Try this again with your colleague telling you about something
painful, if there is sufficient trust between you to do
this.
Next time you have to listen to the voice of a student
in a situation of conflict, see if you can accurately reflect
back to them their thoughts and feelings before you get
on to examining consequences and outcomes.
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Resources
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Lesson plans database
A series of lesson plans which explore ways to introduce
the themes of story, trust, power and success as a means
of developing citizenship education. Although these have
not spefically been designed to match the Citizenship
SOW untis at KS3, the links are identified.
These lesson plans come with most of the information
resources you need for each lesson.
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| Lesson
plans - Citizenship
We offer 25 lesson plans for year groups 7-11 covering
themes such as Fair Trade, How society works (co-operation
and trust), Cultural difference, The impact of the media.
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| Lesson plans
- RE
We offer eight lesson plans for year groups 7, 8 and
11 covering themes such as Christian Ethics, Prayer.
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| Lesson plans
- PSHE
We offer three lesson plans for year group 9 dealing
with the theme of stereo typing.
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DFES Citizenship education website
www.dfes.gov.uk/citizenship is a gateway to resources
for citizenship education for teachers, students, parents
and governors.
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DFES Standards website
These links are to the QCA's citizenship Schemes of Work
units found on the DFES Standards Site:
NB some of the most useful documents such as the Teachers'
Guides and Exemplar Units are available in both Microsoft
Word format (ie editable but requiring Microsoft Word
97 or later) or PDF format (ie non editable and requiring
the free Adobe Acrobat Reader).
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Online Citizenship Lessons
A range of sample citizenship lessons for discrete lessons
at KS3 and KS4, through subjects and topical lessons based
on headline events. Available from www.learn.co.uk/citizenship/lessons.asp
Advice on writing a citizenship lesson plan that demonstrates
a clear plan with aims and objectives and developmental
structure is available from www.learn.co.uk/citizenship/managing/citizenshiplessonplan.doc
(nb this is a Microsoft Word document)
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Books
The links below are to selected references which are
especially valuable. Each link will open a record in the
BeCaL Bibliography and provide details of the reference.
Teaching
Citizenship in the Secondary School
Arthur, James; Wright, Daniel (2001)
Citizenship
through Secondary History
Arthur, J., Davies, I., Wrenn, A., Haydn, T., and Kerr,
D. (2001)
Citizenship
Through Secondary Geography
Lambert, David; Machon, Paul (Eds) (2001)
Learning
to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School
Gearon, Liam (2003)
Active
Citizenship in Schools
Potter, John (2002)
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