Understanding consequentialism through class

Class discussion revealed that the students had the notion that a consequence was a punishment or a negative effect of an action or decision. By discussing familiar scenarios, Amy helped the students to understand that consequences can be positive or negative. First, Amy asked the class if they could identify the big question that was being discussed. Her intention was for the students to eventually link the issue to why they were learning about consequences. Some of the responses were:

What chemicals are fire retardants? What makes fire retardants?

Why are chemical fire retardants in our furniture?

What are the pros and cons of having chemical fire retardants in our furniture?

Amy then wrote “consequentialism” on the whiteboard. The students were asked to pronounce it and then suggest its meaning. One student said it was close to consequence, so Amy asked what consequence meant. The

responses were “It means you’ve done something wrong” and “It’s a punishment”. When Amy asked the students to give examples, one student said she is sent to the bedroom when she backchats her dad. Amy asked if anyone wanted to challenge this.

Student: Well, consequences might not be just a punishment, it could be like feeling guilty as well.

Student: Well it’s not really a punishment but it could be. It’s anything that happens to you.

Amy: Consequences are not always negative.

Student: Say you do something for someone and they give you something back – that’s a consequence. You get a good thing out of it. Say you clean someone’s house and they give you a box of chocolates. The consequence is that you get a box of chocolates.

Amy: So consequences are the result of an action.

This example demonstrates how Amy was able to expand students’ understandings that consequences are not necessarily negative and even told the students that, whilst she often thought of consequences as something negative, she was realising that they can be positive as well. She also pointed out that there can be more than one consequence to an action. She once again asked students to define consequences. Some examples were:

When you do something wrong or good and something happens. It’s the result of what happens.

There can be more than one consequence and they can be good or bad - like if your house burns down - that’s a consequence and if you get insurance, well, that’s a consequence as well.

5.3.2.2 Using familiar scenarios to identify consequences

In order to reinforce their understanding of consequences, students worked in small groups to list consequences for familiar scenarios, prewritten by Amy on charts. During the activity there was student discussion about consequences not always being an ‘action’ but that they are sometimes “something that happens on the inside”, for example, “guilt” or “good feelings”. Some examples of students’ ideas are presented in Table 5.3.

Table 5.3

Some examples of consequences identified by student groups in response to a given scenario.

Scenario What are the consequences?

You decide to wash the dishes every night of

the week without being asked to. - - I feel pleased I’m praised - I could get money

- Save power because I’m not using the dishwasher

You see a teenager, at a dairy, steal chocolate bars and you choose to tell the owner what happened.

- The teenager could get caught - You could get a chocolate bar for

telling that the teenager was stealing stuff

- You feel good for telling the truth You choose to play cricket inside your house

and break your mum’s favourite (and very expensive) vase!

- You get smacked

- You pay with your pocket money - You feel scared and run away - You worry about making mum angry You choose to train really hard, eat healthily

and get lots of sleep the night before your cross-country race.

- You think you have a chance of winning

- You get fit and feel good

- You get something you like - coke You choose to drop your rubbish from eating

your lunch on the ground - - You feel guilty about it You might have to pick up rubbish all around the school all lunchtime - You might have to say sorry to the

whole school

- You might have to do extra work at lunch time

- You may have to sit in a spot where you can’t play or see anybody play

Amy reported the students went a lot further than she expected. Not only did they understand that consequences could be positive (“I’m praised”) and negative (“You pay with your pocketmoney”) , but they also understood there could be mulitple consequences for an action and that they could be extrinsic (“I could get money”) or intrinsic (“I feel pleased”).

That most consequences centred around impacts on the individual demonstrates the ego-centric nature of students at this age. For example, in response to the scenario “You choose to drop your rubbish from eating your lunch on the ground”, the consequences were about the effects concerning them. There were no comments regarding the effects on the environment, or on the greater good/health of the school. Some students did widen their view

from ‘I’ to ‘We’ to include their family, for example, when saying “we have a tidy home” (when I do the dishes every night). However, the scenarios were also written to the students personally (each beginning with ‘You’), which presumably encouraged them to think about consequences to them personally.

At the end of this lesson Amy wrote on the whiteboard “A consequence is a result of an action. Consequences can be positive (e.g., you can do really well in the cross-country because you trained hard), or they can be negative (e.g., you came last because you didn’t practise)”. Subsequent lessons applied the learning about ‘consequences’ to stakeholders involved in the issue. Students learned about stakeholders, who they were, how to prioritise them and to identify benefits and harms to them concerning the use of chemical fire retardants.