Staff list
Mrs K Thompson - Teacher of History & Deputy Achievement Leader KS5
Vision
Collaboratively creating independent, critical thinkers who enjoy and confidently participate in the world they inhabit
Intent
The Curriculum topics are set by the exam board specification and include the following four topics:
1) Epistemology (i.e. the study of knowledge and how we acquire it),
2) Moral Philosophy (i.e. how we decide what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do in a given situation)
3) Metaphysics of God (i.e. looking at arguments for and against the existence of God)
4) Metaphysics of Mind (i.e. understanding what consciousness is and how it relates to the body)
Emphasis is given to the skills the subject teaches and the value these have in future study and in many different careers. The types of skills stressed include:
a) How one idea can imply another or contradict it
b) The ability to spot flaws in arguments
c) The ability to justify an academic argument
d) Imagination: coming up with novel solutions and novel ideas
e) Communication and conversation: philosophy is done through discussion and debate
Implementation
The aim is to make this complex yet rewarding subject as accessible as possible by delivering the subject in as interactive way as possible. This is achieved by:
- Frequent use of strong images in explaining new concepts
- Debates held to help students test validity and strengths of arguments and counter arguments studied. These include both binary debates that allow students to evaluate opposing arguments, and multifaceted exploratory debates that allow students to see the complexity of an issue when there emerge more than two opposing arguments. Demonstrates that a debate is not about ‘winning’ an argument, but listening carefully to what others say and adapting own beliefs/material accordingly.
- Students encouraged to re-explain ideas they have studied in order to test clarity of their spoken understanding
- Work frequently self and peer assessed in order to encourage greater clarity and confidence with concepts studied.
- Course supplemented with additional resources such as explanatory You tube clips in order to make ideas clearer than they would be if the textbook alone was used.
- Structured group work used regularly in class – even if teaching remotely/in a blended fashion. Stresses individual responsibility to achieve group goals.
- Clearly structured and explained revision system embedded throughout the course.
- Going above and beyond – encouraging a culture of encouraging students to think, collect and discuss examples of where they have seen the concepts we cover applied in the real world – eg citing films, TV episodes, books, news articles etc where concepts have been used. MS Teams pages used to share this work.
Impact
- Observation of student performance in collaborative and explanatory tasks in class
- Use of self marking to individually assess and monitor own progress
- Use of Peer marking to help and support each other while identifying best practice in other student’s work.
- Electronic marking of student work by teacher once established what IT support students have available.
- Regular use of non threatening summative assessment
- Targeted use of formative assessment when needed, accompanied with transparency of assessment criteria and content covered.