Using Feature Films to Teach Poverty
Abstract College students, who often have little experience with persons living below the poverty line, can ignore or misunderstand the experience of poverty. Feature film is one way to illustrate poverty in educational settings. Through identifying with a character, students may gain insights into the daily issues related to poverty. This article presents a review of the literature of using film to teach social science. Six specific films for teaching poverty are presented.
Grasping the social through movies
In Turkey, one of the major challenges that university education faces is the indifference of young people towards social issues. The aim of this article is to contribute to the practice of critical pedagogy by proposing that showing movies is an important critical teaching method with the power both to give pleasure to the students and to develop their interest in crucial social issues. To support our argument, we showed three movies to students taking Sociology and Social Psychology courses in three successive academic terms on the topics ‘the death penalty’, ‘gender equality’ and ‘prejudice’. Analysing the essays which the students were asked to write on these movies, we observed growing interest and an increase in critical thinking on the issues in question. We then conducted a survey to test this change quantitatively. The results indicate that showing movies is very influential in helping students to develop an interest and critical perspective.
“Dear Mom and Dad”: Using Personal Letters to Enhance Students' Understanding of Developmental Issues
An exercise designed to address a number of developmental issues by requiring students to write semiautobiographical personal letters is described. Student responses were overwhelmingly positive and suggest a number of beneficial outcomes. Recommendations for instructors are provided.