21st Century skills addressed

• Character
• Collaboration and Teamwork
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Creativity and Imagination

Objectives

With this tool, students are expected to: 

- Stimulate the critical reflection about the gender inequity that still dominates in the social models of the third millennium, helping to understand this is a transversal phenomenon that also affects the societies that are considered more advanced and not only those linked to ancient social and religious traditions

- Encourage the use of creative solutions when tackling gender problems, favouring a reading of reality that is autonomous and free from the conditioning of the "pack"

- Acquire awareness of the opportunities for assistance guaranteed by national and international bodies to which citizens can appeal when faced with a situation of gender inequity

Activity details

Materials

A deck of playing cards.

Smartphones, tablets or other devices connected to the Internet. You need at least one for every 3/4 students.

Basic school stationery (sheets of paper, pens/pencils).

Easily available objects that may be necessary for the realization of the short dramatizations that each group will be called to propose to the rest of the class.

Duration

about 100 minutes, divided into two 50-minute modules

Group size

3/4 students per group, depending on class size

FIRST LESSON

- The first module starts with a warm-up phase in which the teacher/teacher asks the class some questions capable of arousing curiosity and reflection on the subject from everyone, male and female. Examples: Do you know what the expression 'gender equality' refers to? Is it true in your opinion that women's brains are different from men's? Are there activities that have to be done by men and other things that have to be done by women? Who established this and how?

Those who ask the questions will obviously be careful to express themselves in such a way as to contain as much as possible the physiological male-female division that certain topics can provoke and the inappropriate comments from students. This start-up phase will last about 10 minutes.

Once the students' questions and reactions are exhausted, the teacher/teacher will not provide answers but will declare the objective of the activity, which is to induce students to reflect on their own beliefs, which may be based on unfounded stereotypes and preconceptions.

At this point the class is divided into groups of 3/4 people. It is important to ensure that the composition of the groups is completely random, even with the (calculated) risk that they will be entirely male and/or female groups. To do this we can use e.g. a deck of cards managed by the teacher/teacher with the help of the first two students who volunteer. All figures and numbered cards that exceed the number of groups to be formed are removed from the deck. Example: if the class consists of 24 pupils, 6 groups of 4 pupils each will preferably be formed. The cards with king, queen and jack, and those whose value is higher than 6 will be removed from the deck. The remaining cards will then be shuffled and randomly distributed among the students, giving one each. Each group will be formed by the four students who have received the card of the same value (and of different suits): all 6, all 5, etc. It is possible that the number of students in the class will not allow to form groups with the same number: in this case it will not be a problem if one group will have one more or one less student than the others.

- The groups formed in this way come together, with pen and paper at their disposal, and start working with the aim of producing a list of 3/4 recurring situations in real life that from their point of view represent discrimination against the female universe. In this phase, the teacher/teacher does not intervene to let the reflection arise exclusively from the students' sensitivity. The time dedicated to this phase will be about 15 minutes, at the end of which the teacher/teacher will invite each group to identify a speaker who will briefly explain to the rest of the class which are the alleged gender discriminations he has identified as most important.

- At the end of the exposure by each group, the teacher/teacher will summarize on the blackboard (better LIM if available) the situations that have emerged, which could easily be the same by several groups. Using a criterion of recurrence and/or relevance, the teacher/teacher will identify as many cases of gender inequality as the number  of groups in which the class was divided, and will assign the task for the next lesson: each group will have to prepare a 2-3 minute dramatization, in which they will stage the situation assigned to them, trying to bring out the negative aspects that need to be corrected in order to meet a principle of gender equality.

If possible, when assigning the themes, the teacher/teacher should try to make each group develop one of the situations that they had highlighted in their analysis work.

SECOND LESSON

- Following the instructions given by the teacher/teacher at the end of the previous lesson, the groups take turns performing their dramatization, if possible, taking advantage of a little more space than is available in the classroom usually used by the class (school’s hall, courtyard, larger classroom, etc.). The performances will be carried out in the order determined by the number that each group was drawn with the card game of the previous lesson (first the group composed by the numbers 1, then 2, 3 etc.). Or vice versa, starting from the group with the highest number). The other students will not only be spectators: each one individually, and not in groups, will try to grasp the negative emotions and the incorrect behaviours that emerge from each situation represented, and will pin them on a sheet of paper. The teacher, who knows the class, will decide whether to put the name and surname of each student on the sheet or to request that the reports be submitted anonymously.

The representations should not take more than 20 minutes in total.

- At the end of the dramatizations, the teacher/teacher will collect the sheets with the students' impressions and propose a brief sharing, commenting with the class what has been seen and what broadly emerges from the notes. In this way, the negative, ugly, unfair situations that everyone has witnessed are further highlighted, and the class is ready for the next step.

Tips for the teacher

1) The teacher/teacher will take care of preparing the necessary material and preparing in advance the spaces to be used, in order to avoid unnecessary waste of time.

2) The teacher/teacher will have to pay a lot of attention to the questions to be asked to the class during the warm-up phase, which will have to be calibrated according to the age of the students, the composition of the class, the presence of disabled people, foreigners etc. The stimulus offered by these questions will in fact be fundamental for the motivation transmitted to the class with regard to the topics dealt with.

3) After the first lesson, once the topics on which the attention of the class will be focused will be defined, the teacher/teacher will independently carry out a research on the network about the support bodies that oversee gender equality, in order to already have a clear picture of the situation and to be able to promptly integrate the research made by the students if they are found to be incomplete.

Debriefing

Based on the response received from the class, the teacher will consider how to continue the discussion with further insights in subsequent lessons. In order to collect feedback from the students, satisfaction questionnaires can be used, whose preparation can refer to the various existing digital tools (Plickers, Google forms, etc.).

The analysis of the feedback received will allow the teacher to ascertain if and to what extent the activity carried out has produced for the class as a whole and for individual students a growth in terms of acquiring 21st century skills.

Follow-up/Inspiration for the future

In the weeks following the activity the teacher will have the opportunity to observe the behaviour of the class and the male-female group dynamics, focusing on the possible occurrence of different attitudes compared to the past and on the awareness of their rights by the female component.

Further activities can be planned if necessary, to encourage the consolidation of the transversal skills that the activity intends to strengthen.