Year 2, Lesson 3.5 - Applying Dilemma Strategies

Unit Learning Goal

Students will analyze real-world dilemma situations using various lenses to determine central conflicts and possible solutions.

Lesson Goal

Students will be able to apply the various lenses together (including roles, responsibilities, alignment/misalignment, and values) to examine dilemmas.

Assessment

  • Observe classroom conversations to provide feedback on potential areas of misunderstanding related to the lenses. 

  • Review written responses to the dilemmas during the Chalk Talk exercise for comprehension.

  • Analyze Exit Tickets to determine which lenses students find most challenging and would like more clarification.

CASEL alignment 

Responsible Decision Making, Social Awareness

Portfolio documentation

Resources

prerequisites

  • Year 2, Lesson 3.1 - Professional Roles, Dilemmas, the 3 E’s and the 4 C's

  • Year 2, Lesson 3.2 - Responsibility in Decision Making

  • Year 2, Lesson 3.3 - Alignment and Misalignment in Dilemmas

  • Year 2, Lesson 3.4 - Analyzing a Personal Dilemma

Total TIME

45 minutes

  • Remind students that in Year 1, they learned about the idea of "lenses" for approaching dilemmas. These lenses are roles, responsibility, values, and alignment.

    Over the past four lessons they have talked about how each of these frameworks can affect their decision making when it comes to dilemmas.

    Today they will take a closer look at how these lenses come together in real life dilemmas.

Instructions

1. Opener: Remind students of the 4 Lenses they might apply when facing a dilemma [3 minutes].

Explain to stuents that in this lesson they will explore how to apply the lenses of roles, responsibility, values, and alignment in real scenarios to figure out the best solution. 

  • Roles: Roles are the functions we take on in our life, often related to our identities. For example, we might have familial roles (e.g., mother, daughter, cousin), professional roles (e.g., manager, board member) or, as an adolescent, academic roles (e.g., student, school newspaper leader). We might have cultural, religious, or other socially-constructed roles (e.g., a woman, a Buddhist). Roles change across contexts and situations.

  • Responsibility: Responsibility involves recognition of interconnectedness and effects of actions on others and systems.

  • Values: Values are Ideas or principles that we find to be important. They may guide decisions we make, such as how we spend our time in our work and in our personal lives, and are influenced by a variety of factors, such as our families and communities.

  • Alignment: The various people in an organization or workplace share the same goals as one another and have similar views of what constitutes success. Aligned people have common understandings of excellence, of ethical behavior, and of what engages them in the work. This makes it easier for people to do good work with one another. It makes it more likely that quality, enjoyable work will be done together and less likely that ethical breaches will occur.

2. Watch this video to review the 4 lenses  [7 minutes].

3. Have students engage in a “Chalk Talk” discussion around the classroom to discuss and reflect on the obstacles presented to doing “good work” in different dilemmas [20 minutes].

  • Put the 4 dilemmas onto large sheets of paper and have them placed about the room on the walls. (If you feel that there are too many dilemmas for the length of discussion time or the size of your class, consider using 2 or 3 instead.)

  • Break students into groups. Instruct each group to choose one of the dilemmas around the room.

  • Give students 5 minutes to read the dilemma and write their reactions to the dilemma regarding the following prompts.

    • Discussion questions: Which lenses (values, roles, alignment, responsibility) can you use to analyze the dilemma?

    • A few example answers are below. Direct students to contribute ideas such as:

      • “Rob’s passion for theater is misaligned with his father’s interest in having him be part of activities that are more conventional for boys in their town.”

      • “Emma’s responsibility for herself and her friends are conflicting with her responsibilities and values as a scientist who doesn't like to withhold information from others or the community.

      • “Does Allison have a responsibility to disclose her experiment details to the judges? She didn’t lie completely; she just withheld information.”

  • After 5 minutes are up, have the groups move clockwise around the room to the next dilemma and repeat the procedure. 

  • Students should read previous comments that have accumulated at each station and connect their own ideas to previous ideas.

  • Remind students that they can connect their own ideas to previous group’s ideas.

  • “I divided students into groups, each group worked on one problem analyzing it more carefully, (who, when, what, why, etc.). Then, I asked them to spend some time with the rest of the problem just writing down some questions that came to their minds (still in the same groups).

    Once each group covered all the problems, they presented their primary problem and tried to answer the questions provided by the other groups.

    I decided to work this way because of time - my students like challenging the provided problems as they say "the problems are too obvious". I wanted to show them that actually they are wrong and nothing is obvious.”

  • Check out this video on “Constraint Brainstorming” as a creative way to get students to think through problems and dilemmas—with a twist!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyfzOxl72fY

4. At the end of 20 minutes, have students return to their original dilemma. Ask one or two groups to share their reactions to the activity and what is written below each dilemma, commenting on how ideas evolved and connections between stories [10 minutes]. 

  • Discussion questions: Were you surprised by what other groups wrote, or did others match your own reactions? How can diagnosing challenges like we did when analyzing these stories help us overcome them?

  • Have each student take a picture of their initial dilemma and the chalk talk reactions to their dilemma (or take notes, if taking a picture is not possible).

Chalk Talk Poster

This example comes from the students in Peggy Dunstan’s class at Mountain View High School.

5. Closing and Exit Ticket [5 minutes].

  • Ask students to complete the Year 2 Lesson 3.5 Exit Ticket

    • Students will answer the following question:

      • Which of the lenses (roles, responsibilities, alignment/misalignment, values) is most challenging to understand in dilemmas, and why?

Possible Enrichments

  • Using the Chalk Talk Synthesis, students will synthesize the reactions to their initial dilemma and discuss their take-aways from the activity. 

    • Using the notes/picture taken during the chalk talk, complete the worksheet.

    • Add to the Good Work Portfolio.

Lesson Walkthrough

Watch this short video guide for lesson specific advice from The Good Project Research Team.