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STUDENTS' POV

In your break-out groups, discuss:
a) the concerns / fears felt by students in a CCE classroom
b) strategies/ support that can be done in the CCE classroom to tackle the problems.

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TEACHERS' POV

In your break-out groups, discuss:
a) the concerns / fears felt by CCE teachers in designing a Contemporary Issue lesson
b)  strategies/ support that can be done in the CCE classroom to tackle the problems faced by the CCE teachers

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a) Some may not be comfortable to share their true feelings/thoughts/situations as they fear that they may be judged.
Strategy: Set up class routines with common understanding to suspend judgement; sharing is for learning
b) Some may prefer to share verbally, others, in written form
Strategy: Use different modes to collate responses

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Students don't feel empathy towards the issue.
No connection to the issue being discussed.
They are unable to see how the issue is related to their lives.
Lack of information.
Lack of time.
Fear of political correct answers.
Pre-requisite knowledge that teachers are expected to have regarding the issues --> daunting.
Fear of saying the wrong things.

Use of ICT tools like Padlet. They tend to be more honest when they are anonymous.

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- students don't find it relevant to their lives
- students do not understand the full context of the issues raised, which lead to them giving surface-level answers
- CCE lesson too short to be able to adequately share all the different viewpoints there are out there
- limited time to prepare for the lesson

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1. Students have little to share on topics they are unfamiliar with.  Teachers try to circumvent this by providing articles on social media to pre-read before the CCE lessons.

2. Students find it difficult to connect with the issues. Teachers can build up emotional vocab first before engaging students with issues cognitively.  They need to learn to clarify what they feel about the hot-button issue first, before they can offer any genuine response.

3. Students find it difficult to take on different perspectives (i.e. the people involved in the issue). Teachers may try role-play, hot-seating or other pedagogical strategies to familiarise and tune the students into the issue and the people involved in that issue.

4. Students tend to be shallow in their views. Teachers need to structure the lessons deliberately to try and elicit deeper thoughts from students about the issue being discussed.

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Handful of students who are afraid that they may say the wrong thing, and therefore not comfortable in sharing.
Unable to see beyond their own perspective of the particular issue.

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- Teacher readiness, especially when it comes to sensitive issues
- How much to share? How deep to go?
- Teacher's voice versus students' voice
- Age appropriateness of the issues discussed
- No 'correct' answers

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Concerns/Fears:
- Students may not feel comfortable sharing their points of views in that classroom environment
- Could also be afraid to be judged by classmates
- Topics/issues could be close to their hearts, so could feel triggered or uncomfortable by the discussions

Strategies/Support:
- Setting of rules at the start that students agree with to create safe and conducive environment for discussion
- Teacher assures class that views/perspectives/sharings can be accepted, no black and white for contemporary issues
- Online tools can be used to allow students to share anonymously
- Students who could possibly be affected by the issues discussed could be prepared before that and given the option whether they would like to share or sit out of the discussion

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- Ensuring age appropriate content are selected
- Using relevant hooks e.g. personal stories
- C.S.I. questioning strategy

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- Teachers feel uncomfortable having to teach handle topics that require personal engagement like sexuality issues in CCE
- If the class is a particularly rowdy behaviourally challenging class, it will require extra effort to engage them in CCE issues
- if teacher himself/herself is facing problems in the area of CCE being discussed, it may not be suitable for him/her to be facilitating that topic

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- teacher may have identified an issue that is relevant, but some students are disengaged when they don't find it relevant.

- Some Total Defence/IFD learning packages can be content-heavy, so students may not be willing to read up beforehand => shallow discussion, with teachers playing a bigger role than planned.

- issues of race, students may have different or entrenched mentalities (such as some may not treat causal racism seriously) about practices at the start of lesson that may be hard for teachers to converge.

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Concerns/ Fears
- Students cannot contribute during class discussions as they are unsure or unaware of the issues discussed
- The inability to vocalise their thoughts or feelings accurately
- Fear of being judged by their classmates

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Some students are concerned about the reactions of their classmates. There's also concerns of trust among one another.

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- Students may find these content irrelevant and unrelatable to their lives hence seems uninterested

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- Students may find these content irrelevant and unrelatable to their lives hence seems uninterested

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Concern: students are not really familiar with the topic before they participate in the discussion. 

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Concern: students are not really familiar with the topic before they participate in the discussion. 

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Strategies: teacher to introduce the background of the topic and can use some related news that happened recently as example.

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- use ICT tools to make sharing anonymous
- Guide them to think of the issue from various perspectives starting from self, then others, school, community, world.

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A strategy is to share the class, have teacher-partners

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- Create a positive classroom culture; safe environment, keeping within the 4 walls of the classroom
- trigger video / pre-lesson articles

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Appoint students who are competent or positive in certain topics to share /help/to facilitate some topics rather than the teachers