Category 4
Silver award 2016
Title :
Criticism of Christianity in the media
Subject :
Religion
Authors :
Preben Brock Jacobsen
Country :
Denmark
Evaluation
- Excellent material designed to develop analytical and critical thinking: it helps students to build their skills in important areas like media analysis, comparing abstract ideas and discussing complex moral and scientific questions with the help of analysis of discourse.
- By examining arguments from different angles and positions, and analysing quantitative data, the material develops empathy and tolerance by approaching the often sensitive and emotionally charged topic of religion in a thoughtful, impartial, analytical way.
- The material is very flexible: chapters can be processed in any order depending on the needs of the students and the class; exercises and discussion topics have different levels of difficulty that allows for differentiation.
- The structure is clear and simple with a short, concise note to teachers about teaching ideas, cross- curricular and differentiation opportunities.
- Interactive recap exercises at the end of chapters help to summarise and solidify abstract ideas.
- The content is of a high quality and is based on twelve positions of criticism and defense of Christianity in the media; the material takes the students seriously as the content is challenging.
- The material is based on a qualitative approach with discourse and argumentative analyses and a quantitative approach where the students learn to handle 'big data'; both approaches are useful and prepare students for higher education.
- Rich and engaging tasks give the students opportunities for discussion and for developing their own opinions.
- The material brings in the voice of thinkers, authors, film-makers etc.; this expands the perspectives on many of the difficult questions that are considered.
- The video clips are of high quality and relevant to the topics. Important notions are explained by clicking on the words in the texts; this makes the texts easier to read.
- There are interactive tasks in separate chapters where students can test out their opinions.
- The material has a very interesting conceptual approach - presenting various critical and contradictory positions on Christianity in the media.
- Various types of activities encourage students to develop their analytical and critical thinking skills.
- The author brings together a great variety of resources, including texts from newspapers and other media, cartoons, videos, photos and other visual materials.