Ross Woods, 2022
This is a sequence for leading a group of professionals to explore and common major problem and offer various solutions.
Present a problem that is relevant to the whole group of students. The purpose is to engage with the topic as soon as possible, and getting their personal views is often one of the most effective ways to do so.
In discussion, let students create a variety of opinion on the nature of the problem, its causes, and its probable effects. In what situations does it arise? It might not be obvious, especially if students could interpret the problem and its causes in many ways. At this stage, there is no need to provide solutions. In practice, however, some students jump to conclusions, and others generate good ideas for solutions quite quickly.
What would you do?
Set students the task of writing a realistic scenario. Each scenario describes a serious situation where one faces a dilemma with no easy solution. It should be based on real cases, but must be fictional and not libellous. It needs enough descriptive detail to sound realistic. It usually helps to have at least two equally weighted solutions, but neither of them is obviously correct. Hopefully, these scenarios will be useful and make this topic easier to teach in future.
Students consider the effects of context, sharing what they know, asking questions, and evaluating any factors that are particulalry relevant to their own context. This will promote mindset comprsing both anaytical thought and practical application.
At this stage, students gather and collate evidence that would help reach solutions. Students most easily want to debate their opinions and anecdotes, but this does not necessarily lead to solutions at this stage.
The main sources of information are the literature and their instances of the problem, which they can document as either case studies or as grounded theory cases. (Students need to look at anecdotes and consider how they are different from case studies.) In a course in Christian ministry, the students should identify relevant Bible passages, exegete them, and compare them. Students then analyze the evidence and evaluate opinions.
Draw conclusions and define them as closely as possible. Students might create a range of conclusions, not just one. The tutor helps them to qualify their conclusions, that is, specify under what conditions are they true. In many cases, solutions cannot be “one size fits all.” It might be qualified in many ways or be multifaceted.
It is likely that applying solutions in practice is more difficult that creating them in an armchair theory.
We need to identify if this has actual research value, and if so, of what kind.
If we have made progress, it it a contribution to professional practice or to theory? Is its relevance local or more universal?