Case Study: Strabrecht College

Case One

Group 1 15-16 years old one lesson

Three statements were made.
1 Is it allowed to wear Lonsdale in the school?
2 Students shouldn't be allowed to wear short shirts, short tops and see-through clothes
3 Several rules at school don't have effect, students and teachers don't care about them. Skip these rules.

Groups of 4 students, pro or contra the statement debate on the statement. Afterwards they vote pro or contra.

Case Two

VMBO department

Stage 1)
We have put together 15 theses on paper

The students, individually, were given the opportunity, to give there opinion about these theses.
They could choose the following possibilities; against, in favour and no opinion.
Afterwards, we had a brief class discussion on all of the theses, whereby for every thesis the most important in favour and against notices have been noted.

Every group had the opportunity to decide which 6 theses would be discussed further in a later stage.
All together we have collected 115 forms with theses, which formed after processing, the bases for stage 2.

Interesting in this stage was that quiet a lot of students noticed that the theses were very broad, very general theses and that if you make them more specific, a different discussion is imminent.

Stage 2)
All classes have been divided into groups of four or six students.
Every group has been given one of the 15 theses; their task; prepare arguments in favour or against the thesis and present it to the class in a discussion.
After the discussion the class will be asked to give their opinion once again on the same form as they filled in already in stage 1).
The most important arguments will, as in stage 1) be noted, for later comparison. We expect that early June, all groups will have presented and discussed their thesis. At this moment the first groups of the different classes have presented their theses.

Stage 3)
After processing all the gathered data, it will be interesting to see if there has been a shift in opinions compared with the situation at the start.

Finally we want to organize a class discussion, around the following case; suspicion of a battered student by his parents.
Before we do so, we will ask students to define the norm used in the different theses and to note which value can be linked, for them, to that norm.

A remark about the question "What students think about basic values"
At the start of the project and at this stage of the project, we haven't talked about basic values at all.
We will do so in stage 3.
The main idea is to let students go through a process.

If at the end of that process there will be more willingness to listen to somebody else's opinion, that would be a big gain.

Case Three

13 years old
Tease is part of a larger project about Basic values.
In different groups of 8 pupils we played a game.
Different situations situated in the school were written on cards.
The pupils discussed: is the situation acceptable or not.