Two options here that I’ve used, depending on the context. The first is a ‘Media’ module that will be based around my recently published student booklet (here), the second around some other key concepts that are relatively easy to work in a digital environment.

I’m including both an MS Word and PDF format version of the documents for the second option so that teachers can easily adapt the contents for their own needs. Please remember, nothing here is designed to be prescriptive. These are only suggestions and my goal in presenting them here is to make a potentially chaotic return to online teaching a little bit less daunting and difficult.

TY Politics & Society 8 Week Taster Module (pdf)

TY Politics & Society 8 Week Taster Module (MS Word)

This is based upon an 8-week module, 3 periods per week (one ‘single’ and one ‘double’). It aims to give students some insight into what studying Politics & Society at Leaving Cert level might be like. It hopes to facilitate students to investigate valuable material that will (hopefully) be interesting and have contemporary relevance, while also being of some use for students who will not be pursuing the subject at a later date. The course is also structured so that more motivated students, or classes, that move through the material more quickly will have plenty of ‘extension exercises’ to allow them to engage with key concepts more fully. It can’t cover everything, and doesn’t try to…

The overall goal is to introduce the subject structure in general and then engage in four main areas of study (Human Rights, Children’s Rights, Civil Disobedience, and the Use of Violence against Undemocratic States) in sufficient detail as to making the experience worthwhile and illustrate to students where they could further engage with the course ideas, beyond just the materials covered in online class. It integrates materials already available on www.polsocpodcast.com and introduces a number of new resources that I’ve tested in (on-site) class this term. Obviously, if you don’t have a TY ‘taster’ module, these materials should also be useful for 5^th years who are already studying the content. I hope you find them useful. Please remember, that nothing here is designed to be prescriptive and should be adapted to meet your needs and the needs of your students. I know, from a personal perspective, that if one of my classes became particularly interested in one specific topic covered in the course, then I’d be more than happy to do a ‘deeper dive’ into that area at the expense of some other aspects of the course. I think that’s the way the subject should work, particularly while the dreaded LC exam is still far off in the distance

P.S. The ‘Google Form’ assessments (linked in the document) “should be” set up to be ‘self-correcting’ and give instant feedback, but individual teachers might want to adapt them to their own purposes (I always like to add in a short paragraph answer to get bit more engagement and insight, but I sure as heck won’t be marking them for ye all!), so feel free to make a copy of the quiz and adapt it as you see fit!

Best of luck in the inevitably chaotic weeks ahead and please all, keep safe and distant!

JD 05/05/2021

(if you missed my recent post on Sylvia Walby and the Patriarchy, you can find it here: https://polsocpodcast.com/2020/12/30/sylvia-walby-and-patriarchy/)

I finally got around to doing up proper ‘Sylvia Walby Notes’. It only took me four and a half years… There are two things to be aware of here… Firstly, I’d welcome any feedback on the notes as I found it particularly difficult (bearing in mind that they are focussed not on being a full history of Feminism, but rather a means to address the spec question as to whether Ireland is a Patriarchy or not?). Secondly, the third page looks like it’s accidentally empty, but is intentionally so. Let me explain…

Here’s what I do with my own students (often using lots of group work, but in a more limited way in Covid-world obviously). I start off the week doing a little bit of work on how ‘Deductive Reasoning’ works (I found this video a useful summary: https://youtu.be/3jvQrpVQaYM). I then move on to a brief history of Feminism to put events into context. Once students have a grip on the historical (and geographic) variations within the different ‘waves’ of feminism, I dive into the whole “Public” and “Private” Patriarchy idea.

When the students have engaged with how the public and private patriarchies might be seen (or not!) in their own lives, I introduce the ‘Six Structures’ of Patriarchy that Walby outlines in Theorizing Patriarchy. Once we have given due consideration to the various elements of the different components, I ask whether BASED ON THIS DEFINTION OF PATRIARCHY Ireland could be categorized as a patriarchy. My initial goal is to get a sense of what the students’ gut reactions would be, then I follow it up by introducing an ‘evidence-gathering exercise’ where I break the class into groups and set each group the task of doing a detailed ‘deep dive’ into just ONE of the areas. Their goal is to gather 4-5 pieces of key data in their category, with sources clearly identified and 2 or 3 of those sources being evaluated in terms of their reliability, contemporary relevance, verifiability and so on.

Once the group has gathered their data, I ask them to ‘Prioritize’ their ‘qual’ and ‘quant’ data and rank the information in terms of how well it addresses the specific terms of the Spec’s requirements. They often have trouble with this, but I’ve seen some really interesting debates emerge in class on the back of this aspect of the student’s investigations!

Then comes the feedback section where each group presents its findings and note down the findings of the other five groups. (This could easily be done by a google doc, but I prefer to do it orally). I usually distributed an enlarged A3 version of the third page to make this a little easier to do. The students then have to return to the ‘deductive reasoning’ model and make their final assessment as to whether Ireland is a Patriarchy. If they are struggling to come to a judgment, I often present a range of options: 1. Yes, it’s a full patriarchy; 2. No, it isn’t a patriarchy; 3. It is largely a patriarchy; 4. It was once very patriarchal, but has made significant progress (you get the idea…)

Finally, I ask them to consider how they would frame their conclusions. In this instance, I ask them to focus back on the areas they spent time researching in detail and suggest which policy/policies might be most useful in terms of reducing the “domination, oppression, and exploitation” of women in our societies (yes, I’m overtly trying to get them to re-engage with Walby’s definition at the end!) and suggest how this could be achieved. If time allows, I ask the students to share their policy conclusions with each other in the same way as they did with their data. Depending on the time of the year that I’m covering this topic, I might also point students to SDG 5 and/or CEDAW, but this might be something that I come back to later when I’m covering those specific topics, though this will also depend on how engaged and enthusiastic each individual group is with the material… Once I’ve finished doing Kathleen Lynch, we return to the specific essay title and the students draft their own essay for a more formal assessment (I’ve told them about this in advance!)

Anyway, as always, none of this is designed to be seen a prescriptive, and obviously should be used at your discretion, but it might at least give some ideas to teachers as to how this topic could be covered. And again, I would really welcome any ‘constructive’ feedback on the handout. It’s one that I really struggled with.

Obviously, I’d love to hear how other teachers end up engaging with the patriarchy question and would love to learn about other, more successful approaches.

Happy New Year and good-bloody-riddance to 2020…

JD 30/12/2020

Many thanks to the contributors to this week’s contributors – The Ombudsman for Children Dr. Niall Muldoon; DCU student Holly Farrell; and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman TD.

Listen to the episode here: https://polsocpodcast.com/ep-10-childrens-rights-and-policies/

All of the additional resources, such as the Listen-Along Guide, Case-Study Materials, links to our “Children’s Rights Essay Screencast”, and other relevant sites and resources can be found here: https://polsocpodcast.com/episode-10-notes/

As always, if you want to support the podcast and help with the upkeep of the site, please consider doing so here: https://polsocpodcast.com/contact/

Best,

JD 15/11/2020

I’ve noticed it a lot recently, but only in a way that confirmed my previously held belief, that Pol-Soc students really struggle to negotiate the process of ‘gathering and analyzing‘ data, as the subject specification suggests they do. This, I suspect, is partly because I’ve never had to teach this kind of data gathering before and partly because no other subject on the Leaving Cert asks students to do anything like this (as far as I can see). With the newly enforced Covid-19 restrictions, the kind of group work that I had been doing to let students gather, analyze, compare, and evaluate data seems to have gone out the window. So I’ve really been struggling to do this effectively in a classroom context…

Having partially anticipated this difficulty over the summer, I began a long-term project, that some of the Cohort 1 teachers had discussed at different stages (over a quiet beverage in the Killeshin Hotel…!) – trying to create a set of “Pol-Soc Log Tables” that would at least give students a bit of a start on the process. I think they call it ‘scaffolding‘ in the many education books that are (only slightly perused) on my shelf at home. It won’t (by any stretch of the imagination) be comprehensive, but should model the kind of process that we’re hoping that students will begin to gain at least some mastery of during their two years of LC Pol-Soc.

I decided to focus almost exclusively on the various Index-Rankings that we see these days, some of which are a little problematic at times, but some of which (at least) are useful starting points for exploring different topics on the course. I include a summary page at the start with “Headline Data” that might make it a little easier for students who struggle in this area to get their heads around. In that table, I give the Index Name and year, Ireland’s position in the Index, and contextualize that by giving the top and bottom 3 or 4 countries in each category. What follows in the next 20-ish pages is A brief summary of each index, how it works, some of the methodologies/maps/graphs that often accompany these Indices, and a box for students to complete that helps them to make the link between the Index and (most importantly) the kinds of essay titles to which those data best apply. That’ll take some work on the part of the student, but is (I hope) where this serves as a scaffolding exercise, rather than just a spoon feeding extravaganza…

Anyway, this is still in draft form, and I’m sure there’ll be some typos and mistakes, but I just can’t find any more time to devote to it. So, I give you, in its interim format, the…

PolSocPodcast Log Tables 2020-21

Ideally, I’ll return to these every year or two to update them, but if you knew the hours that have gone into this process already, you’d forgive me for my apprehension at this prospect!

The final thing to note is that nobody really knows what providing “up-to-date” info really means. I’ve basically said to my students that in my head, this means being within 2-3 years of the exam (or basically at any point after they started studying Pol-Soc in 4th or 5th year in school). But that’s just my best guess.

And my final CAVEAT… There really is no substitute for students digging into reports and reliable data for themselves. That’s where they solve the big problem of being able to anticipate some of the issues that they may come across in an unseen Data-Based Question themselves and recognize trends within those data. But for the moment, if I can just get my own students through this stuff, I’ll be reasonably happy!

I hope it’s useful, and if (as usual) you want to support the website, then please consider making a small donation on the Contact and Support page here: https://polsocpodcast.com/contact/

JD 10/11/20

So… I was asked by PASTAI (the Politics and Society Teachers’ Association of Ireland) to do a short presentation at the upcoming National Conference about adapting the (otherwise very expansive and progressive) methodologies we normally use for a more restricted Pol Soc classroom in the times of Covid-19. So I’ll be gathering my thoughts in the coming weeks so as not to actively embarrass myself in front of people I only get the chance to interact with on twitter these days. Hopefully I’ll not end up sounding like a Luddite, or wasting people’s time…

One of the areas that I’ve found myself relying on these days is more dependence on ‘direct instruction’ (not necessarily a bad thing) and a greater emphasis on ‘guided reading’ (which I think I’ll definitely be doing more of in the future – see the picture below for more on guided reading – from Simon Beale @spbeale on twitter). I need to do more research on reading on the best way to present that material, but I’ll stick with what I have until I figure out a better way to do it. (I now know that I should really narrow my margins to make more room for both note taking and guidance, but that’s something you can do for yourself… I use my TLDR sheets for that process)

The problem with both of these things is finding appropriate resources that are tailored to the classroom. While “Pol Soc Twitter” is a vibrant and inclusive community, where relevant articles and ideas are circulated in a spirit of generosity, the problem remains that those articles aren’t necessarily ‘classroom ready’, and take quite a bit of time to adapt, edit, and develop questions that students will find useful. This is particularly the case because in previous years you could fairly reliably just ‘talk the students through’ the article and do oral feedback on their responses (either as individuals or from a group discussion). But now that many students (and teachers) are necessarily absent because of waiting for a Covid test result in their family, or because they are being suitably cautious with minor symptoms, the students need to be able to work through some of the materials at home under their own steam in a more tightly ‘scaffolded’ manner.

So, one of the things I’ve been trying to do is put together old style ‘comprehension’ texts with questions that are accessible and will prepare students for the kind of questions they will encounter when they go to the full DBQ-style questions (particularly as an intro to this process for new 5^th year students). So here are a few of those comprehensions that I’ve developed for that purpose. With the usual caveat that they’re just my best effort, they might help students to engage with the key thinkers in a modern context. I’ll include them as PDFs that are ready to go for a class and MS Word files that you can adapt for your own needs. (Some of them might be a bit long for an exam context, for example…) I’ll add more as I go, but will also archive them on the Data-Based Question page. Let me know if the links don’t work, as I don’t have a great track record with that!

I’d say the basic principle behind all of this is that I’d rather have a good resource (80-85%) that’s pretty much ready to go than an amazing one (95-100%) that’ll take me an hour to adapt and format. Who has that kind of time during Covid-19!!!!

MS Word Version: https://polsocpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/hobbes-leviathan-johnson-covid-19-article.docx

MS Word Version: https://polsocpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/john-locke-covid-19-article-nbc-news-july-2020.docx

MS Word Version: https://polsocpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/rand-paul-september-11-article-wapo.docx

MS Word Version: https://polsocpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/lynch-class-and-wealth-in-education-article-30th-sept-2020.docx

After a bit of a Covid-related hiatus, and with many, many apologies for the delay Professor Graham Finaly from UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations, we’re back with Episode 9, dealing with key thinker John Locke. In some ways this should be 2 shorter episodes, because Professor Graham Finlay covered so much ground in his discussion that I found it very hard to leaving anything on the virtual cutting room floor. But I’m trusting that students will know when to pause to catch their breath. As always, there’s a full suite of resources available on the Episode Notes Page to help students get to grips with this material.

Listen to the episode HERE! Or download it on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you find the materials useful, please consider making a small donating to the upkeep of the site, by visiting our Contact and Support page.

Hopefully, the episode will do at least something to take the edge off the stress of starting back into school after a prolonged break.

To all the Pol-Soc students and teachers out there, best of luck with the return, as daunting as it might be.

All my very best,

Jerome

One of the most difficult parts of trying to teach the ‘Data-Based Question’ (DBQ) on the Politics & Society course as it currently stands is the lack of “Past Papers” to give students a sense of how this particular question should be approached. Yes, obviously, they should be getting practice of gathering and analysing data themselves throughout the two years of study, but that only gets them so far when it comes to sitting the exam. So I’ve decided that over the next year or so, I’m going to try and produce a few samples that will make it a little easier for students to get used to the process.

So here’s my first offering: Sample DBQ 1 – Election Integrity and Electoral Commission

As I always remind my own students, “Any DBQ that you do, automatically becomes a CASE STUDY for you to refer to in future”. So the goals of the documents that I produce will be two-fold. Firstly, they should enhance the learning in specific areas that are directly relevant to the course content/subject specification (in this case Learning Outcome 2.5 – “summarise research evidence on the effectiveness of the Irish system of elections in representing the will of all the Irish people”). Secondly, they aim to familiarize students with the kinds of questions that have been asked thus far. These seem to range from questions that focus directly on ‘comprehension’ of the key content and arguments, to reliability and methodology, presentation of written and visual data, bias in authorship, and comparative views of the two documents. But, bear in mind that we only have two past exams and an SEC sample paper to go on, so this will (by definition) be an imperfect set of sample questions. I’m forever telling students that they should look at the ‘N’ number (sample size) in any data they gather and so I should heed my own advice and not make any extravagant claims about anything I produce based on the ‘trends’ that I’ve tried to infer. Seeing the ‘backup’ paper in November that students were supposed to have sat in June will undoubtedly help with improving the relevance of future sample DBQs!

This one-page handout with suggestions on how to approach the 50-Mark question at the end of this section should also help students: DBQ Long Answer 2020 Suggested Approach

There are a few specific issues with the first sample DBQ (link above) that students and teachers should be aware of… The visual representation of data in Document A are probably too expansive (also the colours are slightly off in the world map, but I can’t seem to fix that…) and word count of the ‘Opinion Piece’ in Document B is a bit longer than I would expect to be included on an SEC exam, but if you remember that the goal is also to produce DBQs that help with learning, then I think that it’s ok in this instance. In other words, I wouldn’t be suggesting that students use this DBQ to practice their ‘exam timing’ or anything like that, but I do think that it will help students get used to the general process.

The final problem with this process is that it takes A VERY LONG TIME to put these samples together. This one took me about 3 ½ – 4 hours and there may still be a few typos. I have gotten a little bit of practice putting these together for the DEB Mock Papers, but even still, it’s a very labour-intensive process. Even more frustratingly, the sample answers become dated (if not obsolete) relatively quickly and there’s absolutely no way I’ll be able to go back and update them, so you’ll have to take them as they come! As always, if you have any (constructive) criticisms of this sample paper and/or suggestions on how to improve them, then please do get in contact. I’m always eager to improve.

Anyway, I hope they’re useful, and that I’ll have time to produce a few more in the next few months.

JD 11/8/2020

 

Episode One: 44 mins

Episode Two: 33 mins

Episode Three: 31 mins

Click here for a short analysis of the Cultural Context for the Comparative Question

In a break from my usual Pol-Soc posting, I wanted to share these audio recordings of one of my all-time favourite plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come! as the play is back on the Leaving Cert English Comparative Course. (They’re at the bottom of the page…) I got a present of the cassette tapes many years ago from my dad (who was also an English teacher). I’ve never liked the 1977 film version, but I have found that students reading the text, while simultaneously listening to the audio version is a useful partial replacement for actually seeing the play in a theatre. At the very least, it allows the students to use their imagination and ‘stage’ it in their minds, rather than relying on the decisions of the film makers. It strikes me that nobody is going to be able to go and see this (or any other) play in the year ahead, so I decided to digitize the cassette tape and am uploading here so that students and teachers can use it for their own education (strictly non-profit) purposes. This recording is from the late 1980s, and while there is a little bit of hiss (because of the tape recorder), I don’t think that it gets in the way too much. (I tidied it up a bit with a noise gate, but didn’t get much improvement)… The cast list here has some of the stalwarts of the Irish stage whose voices really bring you back to some of the great productions over the years.

It was a particularly meaningful present at the time because my first significant introduction to the power of drama was in early 1995 when I spent 5 weeks of Transition Year doing my ‘work experience’ in the Abbey Theatre as an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager – really a ‘gofer’) on their revived production of the play. I was supposed to do 2 weeks, but ended up being allowed to stay through the full rehearsal process and technical rehearsals. It was directed by Patrick Mason and starred David Parnell and Darragh Kelly as Gar Public and Private (pictured right). I think that I literally knew every word of the play off by heart, and had the daydream that one of the “Lads” (hopefully ‘Joe’) would get sick one day and I’d be drafted in as a replacement for one show. Obviously, that never happened, but a teenager can (and should) always dream of the possibility!

I have many, many thoughts about the play itself, that I wouldn’t presume to bore you with here, but hopefully having a good recording to work from will be of some use to people, particularly if there is another round of school closures. It might take a little bit of the pressure off…

Both students and teachers might be interested in reading this recent post on a reliable technique for answering the dreaded Leaving Cert English Exam Essay, a synthesis of a career and a half of teaching writing by my ‘Da’ and myself…

If you found this useful and would like to make a small donation to the upkeep of this site, please consider doing so here.

Enjoy laddybuck!

Jerome

 

The summer holidays that are just about to get started aren’t going to be like any holidays that have previously happened. Many of the sports camps, language schools, activities, and travel that you might have been hoping for have all “vanished into air, into thin air” (to quote from The Tempest). So one thing I’ll be trying to do over the summer is to keep a relatively steady stream of resources to engage with via the website. I’m going to try and post once every 10 days or fortnight, as much to keep myself sane and focused as trying to help the students, I suspect!

So, here is a list of a few possible activities that you can be getting along with under your own steam that would be an excellent starting point:

 

1. https://ucdsummerschool.ie/ 2-6 June. They’ll have sample lectures on all the different disciplines from across the university. Obviously, I’d want you to pay particular attention to the Politics/International Relations and Sociology/Social Policy lectures that are happening next week, but as I mentioned in the class, I do think you should use the opportunity to dip into some of the other subject areas that you may never have looked at before.
2. If you haven’t already done so, make sure that your subscribe to my website at www.polsocpodcast.com (click ‘follow’ on the home page) to make sure you get email alerts for the new materials (podcasts, screencasts, readings, exercises, etc) that will be going up at fairly regular intervals during the summer.
3. Follow along on Twitter with @khpolsoc (https://twitter.com/khpolsoc?lang=en) to see other relevant materials that I’ll be circulating through the twitter feed.
4. Try and take ONE news event each week to take a deep dive into. Look at it from different perspectives and see how a single event is covered from different media outlets. (You could start by keeping track of the Trump ‘vs’ Twitter confrontation that is about to kick off…) Use the TLDR handout template from the website (https://polsocpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/tldr-recording-your-pol-soc-reading-upload-version.pdf) to keep a track of your reading and to make sure that you’re in a position to use those materials when it comes to your essays next year.,
5. Start a log of movies, documentaries, and YouTube videos that you’ve watched that you think might be able to draw on for your work next year. Share those video resources with your classmates, and maybe even start up a movie/documentary discussion group where you all watch similar shows and might even discuss them afterward.
6. If you haven’t already done so, you could start with the Covid-19 Key Thinker reading list that I posted previously. (https://polsocpodcast.com/2020/05/07/pol-soc-and-covid-19-a-provisional-reading-list/)

Take it upon yourself to read one article a day. That’s eminently doable!!! It’ll be a good way to keep up to date, while also reinforcing your key thinkers.

Above all, remember to keep safe, follow the guidelines, be kind to your parents (it is very stressful for them, you know), and try to get a bit of valuable rest of the summer.

The class of 2020 has moved on now, but there’s still a big hill ahead for the class of 2021. We’ll do our best to help you along that journey.

Best,

Jerome