Part 2:
Teaching with ICT

a. Structuring Lessons

In the case study we are dealing with, the teacher has a fairly regular pattern to his sessions. He tends to start with a teacher-led introduction to the session, outlining the area for coverage in the session. In an hour-long lesson, he might restrict himself to just one single moral or religious focus. From the introduction, he will set pairs or small groups work to do, using either printed worksheets, a section of a CD-ROM or specific investigations on the World Wide Web. This work is structured, and he monitors progress around the class until he can get them to report back to the whole group on their progress, or summarise their progress in small groups to feed back in the next session.

Again, you might not work in exactly this way, but you probably do have a pattern that you favour as a teacher. Characterise this pattern to yourself now, and consider how the use of ICT as a resource might fit into it.

The teacher wants to use ICT over something like a four week period (out of a total of eight weeks for the area of work), spending two hours a week with it. First let's recall the main learning objectives the teacher has for his pupils in this area:

  • Explain the concept of a moral problem
  • Give examples of problems as they impinge upon individuals and societies
  • Describe the responses of at least three religious traditions to a variety of moral problems
  • Discuss approaches to the value of human life (including euthanasia, murder, abortion, war, self-protection, self-destruction) particularly in relation to:
    • Christianity
    • Islam
    • Buddhism

Below is a summary of how the three separate weeks are structured to use ICT to meet some of these objectives. You will see that they are proposed as three distinct stand-alone sets of work. This is because the teacher needs to be flexible in when he can gain access to the ICT, and needs to be able to move the sessions around in consultation with other users of ICT in his school.

Take a look at the summary and then produce your own account, and your own lesson plans, showing how you would use the ICT resources we have been discussing to do the same job on this area of work. You might wish to extend or contract the time, and to fit the plans, duration and work around your own experience of working with this or a similar area of work.

Case Study Lesson Structure
Four Weeks of ICT Use set into an Eight Week Programme - Decisions of Life and Living

Week 1 - Use a CD Encyclopędia to define morality and moral problems and provide examples of moral problems - 2 hours.

  • Class introduction and targeted questions - outline definition of morality.
  • Small group work (groups of three):
    • Bring back a definition of 'moral problem' with two examples.
    • Bring back two examples of behaviours that are morally wrong in one culture and not another.
    • Bring back two examples of behaviour that are considered morally wrong but not illegal - ideally more than one culture.
    • Bring back examples for each of the focus-religions of ways of describing behaviour as morally wrong.
    • Bring back examples of censures from the religions to the same behaviours - abortion, euthanasia, killing (self-defence), etc.
  • Small groups come back with information to form picture of relation between religion, society and morality.

Week 2 - Use a CD Encyclopędia and the Internet to distinguish between the three focus-religions and speculate on their responses to the problem of the value of human life - 2 hours.

  • Class introduction - whole class discussion on the differences between the three focus religions.
  • Worksheet based tasks on differences between religions for small group work:
    • Background information on the religion.
    • Current world-status of the religion, including locations of followers and associated cultures.
    • Moral guide-structure for the religions, including mode of expression.
    • Identify statements within the guide-structures relating to value of human life.
  • Small groups feed back with responses to the worksheets - whole class discussion of the three religions and their views of the value of human life.

Week 3 - Prepare notes from the Internet on the three focus-religions' responses to specific moral issues - War, Euthanasia, Suicide, Murder, Abortion - 2 hours.

  • Class introduction.
  • Small group work on tasks determined by questions:
    • Christian approaches to euthanasia and/or abortion, with reference to differences within Christianity.
    • Christian approaches to martyrdom.
    • Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths - impact on value of life.
    • Buddhism and samsara - the impact of belief in reincarnation.
    • Islam and the concept of Holy War - implications for value of life.
    • Islam, ijtihad and ijma as ways of reasoning about human life (only for the higher levels of the GCSE group).
  • Feed back finding of group work for discussion.

Week 4 - Use e-mail to send and receive communication to experts and peers on specific issues in the area of work - 2 hours.

  • Class introduction - set task of formulating message for e-mail.
  • Whole class or groups create e-mail messages (with or without PowerPoint presentations) in the form of a set of questions to the 'expert' or a set of statements for discussion for the peer group or interested party.
  • Sending of e-mails under supervision, with request for response time and address.
  • After sending of e-mails, all messages shared by group in preparation for receipt of replies in next session.
  • Subsequent sessions to build on response with or without ICT.

b. Managing Learning in the Classroom