Additional materials for the teacher (Teacher Guide)

Example lesson plan

Introduction to the lesson

This assignment deals with a wide range of social problems. Our examples may be of interest to both high school students and students in such fields as history, security, economics, and pedagogy. It is important to encourage the creativity of students when carrying out the exercises. We suggest agreeing with a group on the principle that “every question is important” at the beginning of each class. We are aware that, especially for high school students, constructing research questions may seem a difficult task at first glance. Therefore, it is even more important to activate students, and ask them to share their own examples and ideas.

Introductory discussion

Before you start working with this module, ask students to revise the information they have learned about the research process. Try to guide them to discuss issues pertinent to your class. You can use the following questions:

• Do any of you have any idea what will be the next step after identifying a research gap?
• Have any of you ever heard the terms “research problem” or “research question”? How can we intuitively define these concepts? How does a research question differ from the questions we ask in everyday communication?
• How important is the research questions in the research process in your opinion? Where do you think ideas for research questions come from?

After a short discussion, familiarize students with the rules of working with the didactic module. For remote classroom teaching, ask students to prepare a pen and paper, as the module includes exercises that require their answers to be written down.

Core activity: Work with the module

In the case of in-person classes, you can use two methods of working with the module:

1. Independently present the topic of the module, equipping students with the resources for exercises only (printed or displayed on a screen).
2. Work through all the content of the module together with the students.

The choice of the method depends on your preferences.

Exercises 

In the project team of Navigating Social Worlds: Toolbox for Social Inquiry, we are convinced that effective teaching of social research methods is based primarily on practice. Therefore, below we have prepared additional exercises for teachers to use while working through our module.

Note: Additional exercises are not included in the basic time allocated for work with the module!