Tag: Critical thinking

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The Battered Woman Defense: A Classroom Mock Trial

a little justice
a little justice

The highly-publicized trial and acquittal of Barbara Sheehan, brings the subject of spousal abuse and the battered-woman defense to the front page. Wife Who Fired 11 Shots is Acquitted of Murder (NY TImes October 7, 2011).

This case brings to mind a battered-woman defense mock trial that I developed and used for many years with my seniors at Pittsford Sutherland High School (Pittsford NY). I found that participation in mock trials enabled students to hone their critical thinking skills, collaboration, and explore significant legal and social issues in a real-world setting. Here is a copy of the fact pattern for this mock trial in pdf format – The Donna Osborn Case.

I found that many students who had previously been labeled “academically at-risk,” excelled in the fluid environment of a trial. “Honors students” sometimes struggled with material that cannot simply be memorized for a traditional test.

Mock trials are not “scripted” events. Well-written, they should offer a reasonable chance for either side to prevail. While I provided students with the witness statements, it was up to their legal teams to develop prosecution / defense theories and prepare to serve as witness or attorney in a trial held before an actual judge (or attorney) and a jury of adults from the community. 

Each class was a separate trial held over a series of 5-7 days. (My classroom trials became so popular, that adults routinely stopped me in the grocery store to ask if there was another jury they could serve on. … Yes, but it has to be a case you haven’t heard before.)

The course was a one-semester politics and law class that included students from across the academic spectrum. Over the years, I found that many students who had previously been labeled “academically at-risk,” excelled in the fluid environment of a trial. “Honors students” sometimes struggled with material that cannot simply be memorized for a traditional test. This was a lesson that shaped my belief in fostering engagement with a more a student-centered and project-based approach.

To prepare students for this “authentic” assessment, they were introduced to rules of evidence and were given chances to develop their legal skills in preliminary classroom-based trial activities. The community-based trial was the “final exam” for the course. While the students were evaluated by me with a teacher-based rubric – the real mark of success was winning the case. That required developing a logical theory of the case, successfully communicating it to the jury, and skillfully restraining the opposition’s case.

After the adult jury rendered their verdict, they spent time with the class to explain the basis of their decision – highlighting both the successes and shortcomings of the prosecution and defense case. That was a real-world assessment that gave students valuable feedback on the difference between what they had intended to do and what actually “got through” to the jurors.

All trial testimony was video taped and catalogued in the school library for use by subsequent classes. Students carefully studied video tapes of prior trials to look for strategies that they might utilize. Having your trial video on a library “waiting list” was a peer assessment far more coveted than my evaluation. (Off loading content transfer to homework, so that classroom could be performance-based? Today we call that “flipping the class.”)

I developed the “Donna Osborn Case” after extensive interviews with police, district attorney’s office, medical professionals and advocates for abused women. The fact pattern was realistic and designed with many conflicting accounts that provided good material for cross-examination. While it had a solid evidentiary foundation, verdicts were often driven by belief systems that transcended the evidence and put jurors’ social values to the test. The fact pattern was carefully crafted to give both prosecution and defense a good chance at prevailing, and over the years I saw a fairly even split in verdicts.

In closing this post, I must give a big hat tip to good friend and attorney Jay Postel. The expert witness statements he crafted are a skillful distillation of both merits and shortcomings of the “battered woman defense” and the legal arguments against it.

Over the years I’ve received many interesting email from teachers across the world who have used the Donna Osborn Case. (A steady stream of emails suggests that mock trials may be especially popular with English language classes in China). I also have been amused by reoccurring theme – the student who needs help crafting their closing argument on the eve of summation.

Note: There are additional legal resources of interest to educators available for download at this link. They include simplified rules of evidence, as well as other criminal and constitutional appeals cases that I used in my class. Here’s a timeline of the facts of the Osborn case that someone posted on Dipity.

Image credit: flickr/orangesparrow

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Students Reflect on Their Learning

Student-reflection

Since I first posted my Taxonomy of Reflection in Jan 2010, I’ve seen it put to use many ways (including a financial reporting specialist).  Yesterday Silvia Tolisano posted “Reflect…Reflecting…Reflection..” a thoughtful application of the model to elementary students. Beginning with “brainstorming vocabulary words … that encourage reflection,” she details the steps they followed with their students and includes some inspired reflective thinking by 2nd – 5th graders.

Of course once you start thinking reflectively, you realize that your school must become a more reflective community. For more on that subject see my Prezi “The Reflective School.” Here’s Silvia’s take: 

We needed to take a step back to become a reflective teacher- community before we could expect our students to become a reflective-learning community and our school a reflective school culture. We are starting to work towards that by making it an official theme that is running through all our Professional Development.

She concludes her post with “21st Century Learning Reflection” a great Vimeo that looks back on the evolving technology use in her school. I highly recommend her post, and be sure to contribute your ideas for supporting your reflective learning community. 

Image credit: flickr/sarah-ji

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Putting the Problem First Can Create the Knowledge

Dan-meyer-math As I blogged in my Apollo 13 video post,  Watch Problem Based Learning in Action  ”While our students have been conditioned to ‘learn the basics – then solve the problem,’ that’s not how life always works.” 

Here’s a great 4-minute video by Dan Meyer that gives three examples of how to bring real-life problem scenarios into the math classroom.  To paraphrase Dan, “In these examples student have to first ask the question – what information do I need to solve this problem? The textbook usually gives you that information. But here students build the problem and decide what matters. The question that’s usually buried at the bottom – it’s the last thing in the textbook problem – now becomes the first thing in the student’s mind. I want to make that question “irresistible” to the student, so they have to know the answer.”  For more great ideas on how “math makes sense of the world” – go to Dan’s blog dy/dan

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Revising Advanced Placement: Will Thinking Beat Memorizing in the New AP Tests?

Think by Stig Nygaard

The NY Times recently showcased the proposed revamping of the AP program and testing – “Rethinking Advanced Placement” (1/7/11)

“A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests … The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. … Trevor Packer, the College Board’s vice president for Advanced Placement, notes that the changes mark a new direction for the board, which has focused on the tests more than the courses. …’We really believe that the New A.P. needs to be anchored in a curriculum that focuses on what students need to be able to do with their knowledge,’ Mr. Packer says.”

In recent years, many high schools have stopped offering AP courses, and a growing number of universities have raised AP score requirements or no longer award credit for the test. Memorization might have been a valued skill when AP testing began in 1956, but today many AP courses have become little more than relentless test prep.

As the College Board phases in the new courses and tests over the next few years, more teachers will feel free to restructure courses to support greater depth and student-centered inquiry. I urge teachers to forge ahead courageously. My experience teaching AP in “seminar approach” back in the 1990’s convinced me that advanced placement can be much more engaging than memorizing loads of information for an exam.

I was fortunate to have been mentored in that format by senior members of my high school social studies department – a hat tip to Brian Bell, Jim Wittig and Pete Crooker who pioneered the seminar approach used in our AP social studies classes. BTW – Our students scored very well on the AP exams.

Class size typically ran between 24 – 36 students. All students in the class would meet one day per week in a large group session. This might be used for unit testing, or to introduce or conclude a seminar with a lecture or full group discussion. The large group was also was divided into 4 seminar groups of 6-9 students. They would meet with me one day per week. Thus each student met one day per week in seminar and another day in large group. During the remainder of their week they worked independently or with their seminar group in preparation for the upcoming assignment. Today, we would call that “flipping the classroom.”

Of course, there were many weeks that were modified because of vacations and other interuptions – but you get the idea. Our high school was on traditional 8 period schedule. These AP classes were taught in a double period configuration of about 95 minutes for either the seminar classes or large group sessions.

My first experience was teaching one semester of AP US History while one of my colleagues was on leave. I focused on essential questions that fostered greater depth and relevance. Thus the typical question – “Should the Constitution be ratified?” became “How powerful should the national government be?” Anyone following the reauthorization of NCLB or the proposed health care legislation knows the enduring relevance of that question. For more on that approach, see my post “Essential Questions in American History: The Great Debates.”

After my semester of APUSH, I settled into my primary AP assignment – one semester classes in AP American Government / Politics and AP Comparative Government. There I used the seminar approach to give students guided experience in research, critical thinking, collaboration and presentation.

Visualize the typical American government lesson. Teacher standing up front asking students to follow along as they go over the diagram of “how a bill becomes a law.” Contrast that with an outline of one of my AP US Gov seminars on the same topic.

Congress and the Lobbyists
This extended seminar will investigate the relationships between Congress and the lobbyists. You will develop an investigative report which will ultimately answer the question “Does Congress represent the needs of its public constituency (the electorate) or its financial constituency (its contributors)? Weekly seminar abstracts will be used to prepare Tabloid TV-style PowerPoint report in support of your investigation. To see the full seminar assignment click here.  

Students were assigned a member of Congress who sat on one of the major committees. Their task over the next few weeks included researching and developing the following:

  • Demographic / political profile of their legislator’s elective constituency.
  • Profile of their financial contributors.
  • Committee jurisdiction and major lobbyists.
  • Voting record on legislation of interest to their elective constituency and financial contributors.
  • Their answer to the seminar question with supportive reasoning.  
  • Presentation and reflection

The latest word from the College Board says that they plan to delay their implementation of the new AP US History until 2012-13 See: “New Advanced Placement Biology Is Ready to Roll Out, but U.S. History Isn’t”
I hope that won’t delay teachers from realizing that they can get students prepared for the AP exams without resorting to a force-fed test prep model of instruction.

Historian

My SlideShare of DBQ resources / strategies for students historians

“Think” image credit flickr/Stig Nygaard

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The Four Negotiables of Student Centered Learning

I spent most of last week guiding teachers on classroom walkthroughs. (Here’s links to my protocol and some recent participant responses.) It’s an effective approach to professional development – one that focuses on the students, not the teacher. Think of it as a roving Socratic seminar that provokes reflections on teaching and learning.

One of the subjects that often comes up during walk throughs is how to recognize a student-centered approach. I tell participants to watch the students and try to decide the extent to which they are being asked to manage the four central elements of any lesson – content, process, product and assessment. Any or all can be decided by the teacher, by the students, or some of both. As I often said to my own students when introducing a lesson – “Which elements do you want to be in charge of? Which do you want me to decide? Remember you don’t  all have to take the same approach.”

You can’t simply “throw students in the deep end” and expect them to take responsibility for all their learning decisions. But with scaffolding and support, students will increasingly take more responsibility for their learning. The reward is the increase in student motivation that comes with greater student choice. And as students take more ownership of the learning process, they are better able to monitor their own progress and reflect on themselves as learners. See my Taxonomy of Reflection for useful prompts.