Sample Solution
The second principle of justice, introduced by John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice (1971), is the principle of “fair equality of opportunity”. This principle proposes that all citizens should have a fair chance to pursue their chosen goals and that no one should be excluded from doing so because of arbitrary factors like gender or race. That is, each person should have an equal opportunity for advancement regardless of any external characteristics or background.
This principle serves as a counterweight to the first principle, which seeks to ensure social and economic inequalities benefit everyone or are at least reasonably distributed among society members. The second basis goes beyond this idea, aiming to eradicate unjustified impediments such as class or inherited wealth preventing some individuals from rising in life while others with similar talents may succeed more easily due to favorable circumstances. This requires taking positive steps towards creating opportunities for those who were initially denied them due to arbitrary factors such as gender or ethnicity. It also means ensuring those with greater abilities get training opportunities in order for them to reach their full potential within society (and don’t merely use their advantages unfairly).
Rawls argued that introducing this type of egalitarianism would not only increase individual liberty but also promote overall social welfare since it would encourage merit-based decisions rather than ones based on chance circumstances beyond someone’s control—thus leading people towards a fairer system where hard work was rewarded instead of luck being the determining factor in success. In other words, if everyone has an equal starting point then talent and ambition could be directed into meaningful pursuits benefiting both the individual and society at large. Consequently, by removing barriers preventing certain groups from achieving what they are capable off, increased efficiency and productivity can be expected from all citizens which will result in faster progress for everyone involved.
Sequentially, the lessons following on from this all activities focussed on numeracy. Students need to have a key understanding of mathematics in order to incorporate these skills in to the programming activities. REFER TO LITERATURE HERE. WHY DO STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW THIS. There are lots of opportunities in Computer Science when numeracy can be applied. In every activity students conducted, they related to real life examples (Appendix). As can be seen from students work, we started from the foundations of basic addition of two integers then built on this once the foundations where in place. Teaching Standard 4 states that as teachers we need be aware of pupils’ capabilities and their prior knowledge, and plan teaching to build on these (DfE, 2011). The lesson plans support this and it was vital I knew about students capabilities and the series of lessons built on their already existing knowledge. If students lacked in numeracy skills, they would not have been able to progress through the activities as students were required to test the outcomes of each program (student work). If students do not understand basic number systems, BIDMAS and data type’s students would not know if their outcome was correct. To support learning, students had a printed version of the comparison operators that would be used in the activities.
The activities conducted differentiated in difficulty with students progressing at their own rate. Throughout all the lessons there were plenary’s to collaborate learning and discuss key features of Python and their coding.
Assessment took place throughout the series of lessons. This was the first 3 lessons of a series of 8. Students conducted various programming activities after being taught the content. Brown and Knight (1994) stated that assessment is important as it is a performance indicator for both staff and students and provides opportunities to remedy mistakes. High quality verbal feedback was given during every programming activity and this motivated students. Teaching Standard 5 states that we should give pupils regular feedback, both orally and through accurate marking, and encourage pupils to respond to the feedback. (APPENDIX) I used terms such as ‘almost’ and ‘nearly’ during verbal feedback encouraging the correct response from the student, rather than them relying on me giving them the answer; a term Davies (1998) called evaluative listening.
Students began to learn from their mistakes and highlight mistakes in their evaluations. Nightingale et al. (1996) stated that assessment should also focus on team-working, problem solving and communication skills. These skills are transferable skills that can be used in many different subject areas, plus in society. Not only did the discussions during my lesson highlight this but it gave chance for me to
