TASKs for democracy

When the plan is announced, some local residents come together and agree to hold a peaceful demonstration
in the park on the weekly market day, Thursday. They do not want a car park and want to keep the park as a
place for walks and leisure where children can play and adults can jog.
The next Thursday morning arrives and they all turn up; some have made banners and others hand out leaflets.
An hour later, however, the police intervene and tell the demonstrators that they have no right to be there and
should go home. The demonstrators refuse to obey the police officers and continue demonstrating.
Instructions for class work
1. All pupils read the text carefully on their own.
2. Start a discussion with the class with questions such as: Who would you be in in this story? Why? Give
your own solution to this problem.
3. The pupils divide up into small groups (maximum four people) to conduct a dialogue (or a role-playing
exercise) about the situation with the ending that they want.
4. Address the different situations experienced by the different people in the story.
5. The pupils present their points of view.
TASK SHEET 2
Steps for conceptualising a competence
The method for conceptualising a competence with a short tale can be presented in simplified form with
the following steps.
First name a competence (for instance, “being a good listener”).
Step 1: Produce an initial definition of the competence chosen after having identified various representations
by going round the participants.
Step 2: Note several key aspects of the definition on the basis of the representations formulated.
Step 3: Identify contexts for application and assess the relevance of application.
Step 4: Flesh out the definition of the competence by linking the key aspects to a particular context
and ranking them by order of importance.
Step 5: Test the relevance of the conceptualisation (the definition) by checking whether the characteristics
developed (the aspects) remain valid in similar situations.
Step 6: Broaden the definition and compare it with daily life.
Step 7: Formatively assess the acquisition of a competence.
Step 8: Develop metacognition of the learning process. Definition of metacognition, from Doudin
and Martin (1992):
First of all, this term refers to what a subject knows about his own cognitive processes and those of others and
the way he can recognise this and account for it; more recently, it has also come to mean the mechanisms for
regulating or monitoring cognitive processes. These mechanisms refer to activities which guide and regulate
learning and cognitive processes in problem-solving situations.
Step 9: Certify.
A pupil is deemed to be competent when he/she shows evidence of satisfying competence-development
indicators. The criteria and indicators may be presented in a table which serves as a tool for assessing the
competence.
Activity 39 – Imagining possible outcomes Page 211