Facilitating P.S.D. in an effective way

Abstract

Personal and Social Development (PSD) is mainly consists of activities which are followed by processing questions. These activities help students learn to investigate, observe, describe and form hypotheses about different situations. Every different activity has an aim, which should be known by facilitators so that the activity has the best outcome on the students. As P.S.D facilitators we should know what different types of activities evoke in our students and what advantages and disadvantages they bring about. This dissertation tries to find answers to issues such· as factors that may influence some activities. These questions were answered by facilitators of different schools, through in depth interviews. There was an attempt to find out what kind of impact, facilitators, students, time of the year and topic, have on the particular activities which have been discussed in the literature review and others added by the facilitators themselves. In this dissertation there was the attempt to find out issues such as the most common type of activities used. Other questions discussed the activities preferred by students and facilitators, the activities most effective to learning in P.S.D., and the problems encountered during these sessions. Some other factors mentioned include the reasons for success and failure of some activities. From my collected data it was found that brainstorming exercises, games and role-plays were the most common types of activities used in the P.S.D classroom. These different types of activities together with others, where analyzed and their influences, constraints and success were discussed. The possible link between an activity and a particular topic was also tackled, but little evidence was found stating that these two are related. Gender, students' ability and age were considered as the most common factors which a facilitator takes into consideration when choosing an activity. All this information should help facilitators reflect on the particular aims of activities and make the right choices in their P.S.D. sessions, taking into consideration the fact that students are not the same and that situations can change with time.