Kantian Ethics Keyword Revision Games

So it's been "a while" since I last posted! Here are some keyword games I've created for the Kantian Ethics topic for the OCR A level spec. I like to use these as quick starter activities to recap key vocabulary and clarify any misunderstandings.

You can download them from google docs here or TES here.

Secularisation / Fundamentalism Revision Games

Revision time for GCSEs and A Levels is upon us, and students up and down the land are no doubt spending every possible hour practicing past papers and creating technicolour mind maps. Or am I just being wildly optimistic?

Here are some revision activities on Secularisation and Fundamentalism, from the WJEC Religion and Community topic for AS. I find they work nicely as quick starters, helping students consolidate their knowledge of key terms, while giving me an overview of what areas might need extra clarification and revision. Included are keywords for an Articulate style game, keyword pairs, and some suggestions for different revision activities using the keywords. Plenty to keep your students busy!

Also of use might be these student revision self-assessment sheets for fundamentalism and secularisation.

Features of Fundamentalism Mnemonic

Mnemonics are ways of remembering complex chunks information by linking them to simpler or more memorable words, phrases or images. If, like me, you learned the points of the compass through the phrase "Never Eat Shredded Wheat", that's a good example of a simple mnemonic.
 
Below is an acrostic mnemonic I've come up with to help remember and revise some of the key features of religious fundamentalism:

If you've already studied fundamentalism, then most of these should be fairly familiar, but if you're not, then here's a brief explanation of each feature:

Science - Rejection of scientific views when they conflict with sacred texts. However, many fundamentalists have made effective use of modern technology to promote their message.
Elect - The view held by some fundamentalists that they are part of a spiritual elite, chosen by God for a particular mission. In some cases, this may justify violence.
Patriarchy - The view that men and women have different roles, with women subordinate to men. In fundamentalist groups this is seen as being ordered by God, not the product of culture or history.
Authoritarian - Blind obedience to authority, as opposed to individual freedom and conscience. This may involve obedience to the teachings of a religious text or a religious leader.
Reaction Against Modernity - Fundamentalism is seen as being a reaction against the modern world. Fundamentalists view themselves as being distinct from, and separate to, modern secular society.
Apocalyptic - The view that we are living in the last days, and that the world as we know it will shortly be brought to a sudden end.
Texts - Belief that a sacred text is inerrant (contains no errors). Fundamentalists hold that their sacred texts are literally true, and are hostile towards attempts at historical or literary criticism of them.
Ethically Conservative - The moral commandments of religious texts are seen as being binding for all time. In practice, this tends to lead to a conservative moral position, for example opposing homosexuality.
Dualism - Dividing the world into clear categories of good and evil, right and wrong, "with us" and "against us". There is little room for ambiguity or grey areas in fundamentalist thinking.

Some of the above might be open for debate, and some scholars might include other characteristics, but if you can use the SEPARATED mnemonic to remember these characteristics, and can explain and give an example of each, you should be well on your way to getting a decent grade in a Part A question on the features of fundamentalism.  
 
I've also put together a short PowerPoint that (if you're a teacher) you could incorporate into a revision lesson.

Christian Ethics: AQA "A" Spec Revision Workbook and Checklist

I've come across a workbook I put together for the AQA A Specification  GCSE unit on Christian Ethics. I no longer teach the A spec (and to be honest I completely forgot that I'd made the workbook), but somebody out there might it useful.

Looking through the workbook, it's mostly made up of candidate sample answers for peer assessment, plus some past paper questions and a set of key facts to learn.

There also a revision checklist for four of the six topics in the GCSE (I might have put it together for mocks rather than the final exams), which might also be of some use.

You can download the checklist here and the workbook here via google docs.

I am, of course, still hunting for the Year 12 revision booklet I was actually looking for when I found them...

Life After Death Revision Checklist

Photo credit sxc.hu/fanginhoon

I've put together a revision checklist/topic self assessment for the AQA unit on Body, Soul, and Personal Identity. You can download it from Google Docs here.

If you're revising for your GCSEs or A levels right now (and if you're following these tips on how to get an A, then you should be!), using checklists can help you identify the areas you need to target in your revision, and avoid the temptation to simply go over the parts of a topic you're already most comfortable with.

I've put together checklists for most of the AQA GCSE and A level syllabuses for RS. If you'd like any others for particular topics, then please post a comment below.

How to Get an A in A Level Religious Studies

The holidays are ending and a new term is upon us. With a fresh group of Year 12 students chomping a the bit to get started on their A level course, I thought I'd post a few tips on what you need to do to get an A or A* Grade in A level Religious Studies, though I'm sure many of the points apply just as well to other subjects. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but in my experience, successful students tend to do the basics consistently and do them well. So here we go...

1. Put the work in. Attend every lesson, complete all the work set. In the event that you are absent for a lesson, don't wait to be asked to catch up on the work you've missed.
2. Learn the jargon. You have a bewildering bunch of technical terms and strange names to get your head around: The Irenaen theodicy, Anselm's ontological argument, the fallacy of composition. You know the sort of thing, or at least you will. Write new terms into a vocabulary book or word list, and use mind maps to help you keep a grip on how they all fit together.
3. Act on feedback. Those words your teacher scribbles in red next to your grade are not just there for decoration, they're actually the important bit. Your grade is like one of those "you are here" arrows on a map. The comments are (or should be) like a set of directions that tell you how to get to where you want to be. Read feedback carefully, act on it, and your work will improve.
4. Talk in class. No, I don't mean about last night's Geordie Shore or, or that totes amazing party at the weekend. Ask questions. Clarify concepts and ideas if you are unsure. Participate in class discussions and respond to the contributions of your fellow students. Answer your teacher's questions, and don't be afraid of giving the wrong answer sometimes: you learn more from one wrong or half-right answer than you do from a thousand "I don't know" shrugs.  
5. Read. Questions. Carefully. Your A level grade isn't determined (at least not directly) by how clever you are or how hard you've work over the two years of your course, but by how well you can deploy knowledge and arguments that are directly relevant to the questions that appear on your exam paper. Whether you're completing an essay for homework or you've just turned over your final exam paper, take the time to read the question carefully and think about exactly what it's asking you do. Take it from me me, this is important: The last three minutes of my A level Sociology exam consisted of blind panic and a desperate attempt to write ^{and the disabled} above every other sentence. Not fun.
6. Plan your essays. Again, this will help you to keep your answer relevant to the question. Your plans for homework essays should be detailed, but you should take a minute or two to sketch out a quick essay plan even in exams.
7. Read widely. There is not enough time in lessons to cover every possible theory, argument or philosopher. To bag that A grade, you'll need to do some reading yourself. As well as your textbook, your classroom or school library has a whole bunch of other books, journals, and newspapers. Read them, and make notes on everything you read.
8. Revise smarter. Revision should be constant throughout the year, and your serious revision should start a couple of months before your exam, not a couple of nights before it. Use your course syllabus to assess your own knowledge and plan your revision to address any gaps or weaknesses. Resist the temptation to focus on material you 're already comfortable with. Make your revision active: Don't just read through notes or your textbook, use them to produce plans, essays, and mind maps, or memorable stories, acrostics, and rhymes. Better still, learn from memory experts and use peg and loci techniques in your revision.
9. Know what examiners are looking for. Exam mark schemes can be found online through your exam board's website. Use these to self-assess your work: How do you think an examiner would mark it? You can also find examiners' comments for specific past paper questions, which outline the material expected in a good answer. If you find something you don't know or aren't confident with, you need to learn it.
10. Don't settle for less than an A. If you hand in some homework that gets below an A grade, use that feedback I mentioned in #3 to re-write it so that it's worth an A, then get your teacher to remark it. If you're using a computer to write your essays, improving them should actually be pretty quick. You're aiming to build up a store of good essays to revise from.
11. Tackle as many essay questions as possible.  If you look back at past papers, you'll notice that the same questions tend to repeat themselves in different years, perhaps with slight changes. Use past papers to compile a list of previous questions, and brainstorm with friends on other topics that might come up. Write answers for as many of these as you can, or create detailed essay plans, and use them in your revision. The more questions you've tackled, the better prepared you'll be for your exams. 
12. Practice writing in exam conditions. Fairly self explanatory, but get in the habit of writing timed essays without your notes in front of you.
13. Work co-operatively. Share your best essays a revision resources with colleagues and copy theirs to revise from (this does not mean copying their homework!) Swap revision resources. Revise in pairs or as part of a group. 
14. Develop an academic style of writing. A proper description of essay technique really deserves a separate post. Briefly, remember to use a formal essay structure with introduction, a main body set out in paragraphs, and a conclusion. Pay attention to spelling, punctuation and grammar, and use relevant religious/philosophical vocabulary. Make sure your essay consistently addresses the question and avoid waffle. It takes time to develop a good essay style, but wider reading and drafting essays will help. 
15. Learn how make an argument. This links to the point above on essay technique. About a third of the marks available on your exam paper depend on your ability to put forward a reasoned argument. A good argument puts forward a clear point of view, supported by evidence. It also considers opposing views and shows why they are unconvincing, again using relevant evidence. Don't wait until your conclusion to give your point of view, make your overall argument clear from the first paragraph.

If all that sounds too complicated, a simpler method is this one outlined by Libby Ahluwalia (whose books you should go and buy immediately):

One method is to attend all the lessons, do all the work set, read and act on the feedback, read around the subject and start revising no later than March... another method is - no, there is no other method.

Great advice. If you think I've missed anything out or have any ideas of your own, please post a comment below.

Buddhist Ethics: Five Precepts Revision Postcards

The Five Precepts: No. 3

A few weeks ago I uploaded a set of Christian ethics revision cards, to help students remember some of the key Bible verses that relate to the ethical issues we study at GCSE. I was pleased to see that quite a few students did actually put them up in their cubicles (I work in a boarding school), and rather natty they looked too.

In a similar line, I've created a small set of revision postcards illustrating the Five Precepts, the basic ethical code of Buddhism. As with the Christian ethics postcards I uploaded a few weeks back, the idea is to get the students revising them so they can easily incorporate them into their exam answers.

You can download them as a pdf here, or if you have a TES account, as a Word document here.

Ontological Argument Revision Games

I've been a bit busy with work and the nascent Duke of York's Triathlon Club recently, so I've not had a lot of time for blogging. Hopefully as school tails off for summer I'll get to post more regularly.

I've uploaded some key word revision games for the ontological argument, which also include some general vocabulary on philosophical reasoning (as these two are tied together in the AQA A2 course). As usual I've uploaded them as a pdf to Google or as Word document to the TES. You'll need a login for TES to download the Word file, but anyone should be able to access the pdf version.

Christian Ethics Quotations - Revision Postcards

Well the exam season is under way, and my Year 12 Religious Studies class have already taken their AS exam. They seemed pretty happy with the questions that came up, no evil AQA surprises as far as I could tell. Good luck to everybody out there, whether you're taking exams or sweating on your students' results!

I've put together a set of revision postcards illustrating some of the key Christian quotations that GCSE RS students should incorporate into their exams to support their views and access the higher grades.

You can download them on the TES here or via Google Docs here. You will need an account with the TES or Google to view them.

Student Revision Videos and Blog

So the revision season is upon us. The Easter holidays seem months ago already, and for A level students, the few weeks until exams start will go by in a dizzying whirl of revision cards, double bubble maps, and last minute crammer sessions.

I thought I'd share these useful revision videos made by student Komilla Chadha. From the topics cover, I think Komilla must have studied the OCR RS syllabus, but the videos are also useful for other exam boards too, and over a wide range of topics in Philosophy and Ethics. There are also videos relevant to Law and Economics, if you're taking these subjects. 

Komilla also has this blog. It hasn't been updated recently (by the dates, I'd guess she took her A levels a couple of years ago), but some of the materials are well worth a look.

Notes on Jung

Here are a couple of resources on Jung's views on religion, both courtesy of the Richmond Philosophy pages. The first is a Powerpoint introduction to Jung and his work, the second focuses on Jung's concept of individuation, and also some criticisms of Jung's work.

Also of interest, there's an In Our Time episode on Jung, available here. 

Virtue Ethics Key Word Games

Some more word games today, this time they are for the Virtue Ethics topic of the AQA A Level in Religious Studies.

You can download the games from here, or if you have a TES account, from here.

I've also previously uploaded vocab games for Religious Language and Psychology and Religion. 

Psychology and Religion Key Word Games

I've uploaded a couple of word games you can use to build and revise your vocabulary for the Psychology and Religion topic of the AQA A Level in Religious Studies.

You can download the games from here, or if you have a TES account, from here.

Thought Experiment #1: The Runaway Trolley Car

 

Thought experiments are used in philosophy and ethics, philosophy, and even science as a way of clarifying and testing concepts and theories. For example, ethicists can use thought experiments to present a hypothetical dilemma, and examine the most “intuitive” response, drawing out implications for ethical issues in the real-world.

I thought (no pun intended) it might be fun to blog some well-known thought experiments, hopefully as part of an occasional series. As well as examining your own ethical reasoning processes, thought experiments are also useful as a revision exercise: you use them to test out and evaluate the ethical theories you are studying in your A level.

 One of the most famous thought experiments is The Runaway Trolley Car. It works like this:

A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?

So have a think – what would you do?

Our second thought experiment develops this scenario a little. It’s called The Fat Man and the Trolley Car.

The runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track and, aware of the imminent disaster, you decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. Although you will die, the five people will be saved.

Just before your leap, you realise that you are too light to stop the trolley. Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

Again - have a think – what would you do?

Were your answers to the two scenarios different? If so, you’re not alone. In a survey conducted by the BBC, roughly 75% of respondents said they would flip the switch in the first scenario, versus 25% who said they would not. However, in the second scenario, these proportions were pretty much reversed: 27% said that they would push the fat man, while 73% said they would not.

Given that the moral dilemma is, at least on one level, exactly the same (either one person dies or 5 people die), comparing these two thought experiments raises some interesting questions about how we make moral choices and how (in)consistent our ethical decision-making processes are.

Questions to consider:

1) Most people understand that the issue in both thought experiments is the same (1 person dies or 5 people die), so why do you think that the response to the two scenarios varies so much?

2) Think about two of the ethical theories you’ve studied. If you apply the principles of these theories, which is the “correct” ethical response in each scenario? What might that tell you about your ethical theories and how useful they are in making ethical decisions?

3) When I’ve tried these thought experiments with GCSE and A level students, I find it’s very common for students to try to justify their decision by allocating some sort of blame which is not an explicit feature of the scenario (e.g. “it’s the people’s fault for being on the track”, “it’s the man’s fault for being fat”, “if the man was on the edge of the bridge, he was probably suicidal anyway”). What might these justifications tell us about the way we make ethical decisions?   

4) Do the issues raised by the two thought experiments have any implications for any real-life ethical issues?

 

Religious Language Revision Games

I've uploaded a couple of word games you can use to revise your vocabulary for the Religious Language topic. If you find you have a few minutes in your busy half-term schedule of revising, writing essays, and in-depth background reading, why not give them a try?

The games are Key Word Pairs and Key Word Articulate. You can download them here, or if you have a TES account, from here.

You might also want to take a look at this post on the Via Negativa.

Enjoy your break!

Notes on Hume and Kant

For any AS Philosophers out there, here is a link to a useful PowerPoint file that recaps some key vocabulary for the AQA unit on Reason and Experience, plus the views of Hume and Kant. Remember that any of these keywords could come up in AS exam questions, so make sure you know them inside out.