What is dilemma-based learning?

Dilemma-based learning uses the following process:1. Students are presented with a dilemma – a situation in which a

difficult choice has to be made. A dilemma can be based on everyday life or in history, a historical event.

2. In groups students discuss possible solutions to the dilemma and try to come to an agreement on ways forward.

3. To help structure the group discussion students are presented with several sets of questions. The questions are intended to encourage students to look at the dilemma from different perspectives and develop a more sophisticated solution.

4. Students feed back their individual group discussions at regular intervals and in a whole class reflection at the end of the activity.

Points to note...• Dilemma-based learning can be used with all age and ability

groups. • A dilemma can be used at any point during a lesson, and can

take up part of the lesson or make up the whole lesson.

Your name is Lisa and you are fifteen. You are living in a small town in German occupied France during the Second World War. You live with your parents and two younger siblings, Thomas (9 years old) and Rebecca (11 years old). Your father is the only local doctor and people in the village depend on him.

It is late November 1943 when one of your school friends knocks on your bedroom window late one evening, just as you are about to fall asleep. You know his father has links to the anti-German resistance. He tells you that he has been sent by his father who knows of a Jewish family that has managed to elude the German police authorities, but needs to find a new safe house. Your family are respected and trusted by the local community as well as the German authorities, and the Jewish family has nowhere else to go.

Will you shelter them?

Example Dilemma (I created this for my Year 10 GCSE History class. The syllabus covers Nazi Germany.)

Web One

1. What is your decision?

2. How are you feeling about what your friend is asking?

If you say no… If you say yes…

3. Do the whole group agree?

What are the objections?

Yes

4. Anything else to add?

First set of questions1. What is your decision?2. How are you feeling about what your friend is asking?3. Does the whole group agree?

Second set of questions1. How might your parents feel about your decision?2. How might this affect your siblings?3. Is there anyone else who might be affected?

Third set of questions1. What would happen if everyone chose to help?2. What would the town think about your family?3. What might the authorities do?

Fourth set of questionsIf you decided to help...1. What might go wrong? Why?2. Do you think it will go wrong? Who might let you down?If you couldn’t help...1. What might happen to this family?2. How might you and your family deal with this?

Example sets of questions

Adding extra challenge…• Depending on the progress of the students

discussion, you can introduce so-called “Spanners”.• Spanners are intended to add an extra dimension by

“throwing a spanner in the works” of the students decision-making process.

• So, for instance, for the previous dilemma I used the following spanner: “Before you went to bed you overheard a conversation between your parents. They discussed the fact that the father of your friend had been arrested for anti-German activities by the German police authorities earlier that day. What will you do? How will this affect your decision?”

• You can use spanners at any point during the dilemma activity and you can use as many spanners as you like.

Other dilemmas I used…

• …whether to join a trade union in 1860s America (Civil Rights in America - KS5).

• …whether to fight in the civil war and on which side (Tudors - KS3).