Programme 1: Rights and Responsibilities

Question 2

How do young people best learn about rights and responsibilities?

Looking at this question will help colleagues think more deeply about the fact that citizenship is learnt as well as taught. This means that apart from deciding what needs to be taught we need to be clear about what students are learning about citizenship from experiences in the wider school community as well as the classroom.

i) Teaching
Teaching can take many forms: it can be formal or informal, didactic or discussion-based. It can use role play, drama, art, research and so on. In fact, a good citizenship curriculum will employ a range of teaching strategies over the course of time. It is important to select methods of teaching appropriate to the aims of the lessons, the content and the skills being practised. For example, enquiry-based approaches emphasise that citizenship issues are complicated and often involve controversial or contested ideas. They also develop students' ability to extract information from different sources and use it in various ways. On the other hand, there are some citizenship topics which cannot easily be discovered through discussion. For example, learning about police powers on arrest is a topic that relies very much on the transmission of information, whereas role-playing an arrest situation will help to establish the importance of communication skills and body language. Taking part in a mock trial will teach how a court works and develop a range of skills and understandings about the nature of legal justice.

Using the video
Ask colleagues to reflect on the different teaching methods exemplified in the programme and their benefits. Then ask them to suggest other methods not shown (given that no programme of this kind can cover everything). Included in the programme are didactic teaching, discussion, role play, and an informal quiz from outside expert (from a Citizens Advice Bureau) in an informal setting, It may help to structure the analysis under the following heads:

Method	Suitable for ...	Role of teacher
teacher-led
session on factual issue
drama/role play
mock trial

One practical issue raised by the video is the tackling of controversial issues. In this video we feature two experienced teachers handling one of the most difficult of all subjects - racism. If you wish to focus on this issue with colleagues, you might consider asking them first to brainstorm what they think are the main problems. This will orientate them to watch the video specifically to see how teachers Chris Waller and Trevor Finch handle the subject. What are the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches and how much are they adapting their strategies to the nature and composition of their classes? Use the guidance Finch and Waller offer, as well as the notes on teaching controversial issues in the non-statutory guidance on citizenship, to develop a set of principles and 'ground rules' for dealing with contested issues in your own situation. See also the QCA schemes of work for theme outlines on diversity, tolerance and anti-racism.

Racism in education is the subject of much research and academic writing. Detailed notes on teaching about racism plus a resources guide will be available from the DfES from September 2001 (www.dfes.gov.uk).

If you are able to explore teaching methods further, you might take one or more of the QCA schemes of work and look at how the issues or themes are explored. Ask colleagues in small groups to evaluate critically the suggested teaching methods in relation to the subject and look at how many different teaching/learning strategies are proposed across the course of the topic. Ask colleagues to think of other possible ways of teaching the topic, especially drawing on their specific skills and interests and also the resources you have in your own school.

Given that active learning is important for students, think with colleagues about the value of arranging different types of learning experience including visits off-site (for example to a court), visits from outside speakers (for example police, councillors, magistrates, charity workers). Also consider the advantages of collapsing the timetable for a day or longer. Schools often use this type of arrangement to consider themes such as 'our multi-cultural society', 'human rights', 'law' and so on.

Finally, you might wish to explore the contribution of other subjects to citizenship learning. The 'school audit' where a brief 'tick-box sheet' is circulated to different departments has often been criticised as saying very little. Perhaps it would be better for subject coordinators to ask heads of departments where and in what ways their subjects help students to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens? Responses to this question are likely to be much richer and more holistic than a cursory tick that might indicate little more than the fact that some aspect of the subject includes a tangential reference to a citizenship issue.

Information on how to organise a mock trial in class or enter the national competitions (for lower and upper secondary students) can be obtained from the Citizenship Foundation. Enquiries should be addressed to the organisers of the Bar Mock Trial Competition (for senior students) or the Magistrates' Mock Trial Competition (Years 8 and 9). Information about dates of entry can also be obtained from the Foundation's website (www.citfou.org.uk)

ii) learning
Looking at things from the viewpoint of how and what students learn in school gives an overview of the different ways in which young people develop their understanding of society and how it works. You could ask colleagues to brainstorm a list of all the sources, outside the classroom, from which students learn about citizenship - for example, parents' beliefs and actions, the actions of teachers and other adults, peers and the media. In this respect, students' experiences as members of the school community are very significant. You might ask colleagues to consider 'what do students of this school learn about their rights and responsibilities as young people?' You might also consider the other concepts outlined in the Crick Report, which can be considered in the same way - including power, authority, democracy, fairness (justice), community, and conflict. This exercise raises some potentially wide-ranging and challenging questions about the way students are treated in school, including the quality of the relationship between staff and students, levels of student consultation in school, the quality of school facilities and so on.

Using the video
The question of how students learn citizenship attitudes and values is also central to questions about the quality of discussions in citizenship lessons. In this respect you could ask colleagues to reflect on the quality of the debate going on in Chris Waller's classroom. Suggest that they assess the effectiveness of the discussion, as far as they can from this brief extract. Consider what elements make up a successful discussion in class - from the points of view of the teacher and students, but also in terms of how well the subject itself was addressed in this discussion.