Reply To: Pressure groups inquiry (A-Level Politics)

[Joseph Sanders Participant]

To reinforce Jenny’s message about critical thinking above, a quick note on what the audience does during debates at the Express stage. Whilst the Construct sheets are used for the debaters, non-participants are busy completing their Express sheets, gathering evidence on each side of the argument for each pressure group as they are debated. These are structured in a similar way to the Construct resource; divided into the five success criterion for pressure groups, with space afterwards to form a judgement on whether success has been achieved by each pressure group. As Jenny says, the Express stage is about the quality of the argument, not just a regurgitation of facts in a non-discriminatory fashion. Though only one student has referenced the CRAAP testing explicitly, it is clear that the debates only gained their analytical edge due to the student’s approach to the Investigation before it.

In addition, students complete peer assessment with small Reflect slips for the audience to complete for each debater, providing successes and tips for the speakers. This has two uses; for the students and for us. We are interested to observe peer- and self-reflection as students honestly react to their debate performance, and the process leading up to it. But we also want to take a long view on this inquiry project, and will return to these peer comments when we review the success of each FOSIL stage.