Select Committee Discussion Strategy: Explanation
Select Committees are made up of groups of MPs or members of the House of Lords.
The House of Commons has Select Committees for each department of government as well as some cross-departmental committees.
The House of Lords has fewer committees that focus on specialist areas, taking advantage of the specific expertise of members of that House and the greater amount of time available to them.
The committees review information and interview individuals who are called or required to attend.
They produce reports for public consumption based on specific remits.
Here is how to take the select committee approach and use it as the basis of classroom discussion. Set up the classroom as follows:
- Arrange a few tables in a horseshoe and place eleven chairs around them.
- At the open end of the horseshoe place two tables and four chairs.
- Place the remaining chairs behind these in rows of five.
Explain to learners what topic, question or statement will form the focus of the debate.
Choose eleven pupils to be on the Select Committee.
These learners should go off and research the topic, question or statement, finding out as much as they can before the time is up.
The remaining learners will all be playing the role of individuals who have been called to give evidence before the Select Committee.
The teacher needs to plan who these will be.
They also need to provide resources the learners can use to inform themselves about the views and opinions of these people.
With roles assigned, the resources are handed out. Pupils familiarise themselves with these before the teacher calls time.
Select Committee members take their seats at the horseshoe.
The rest of the learners sit on the chairs assembled in rows.
The teacher hands the head of the Select Committee (sat at the top of the horseshoe) a list of the individuals who will be called to give evidence.
The head of the committee calls their peers in whatever order they choose
When called, these learners sit at the two tables and four chairs at the open end of the horseshoe.
Members of the Select Committee ask questions to their peers, and debate ensues.
An air of cross-examination usually develops, with the committee members pressing their peers and testing their thinking.
Once everyone has been called to give evidence, the room is returned to normal.
Learners come together in pairs or threes and write a report on the issue that has been discussed.
Ideally, groups should contain learners from both sides – those who were on the committee and those who were called to give evidence.
Select Committee Discussion Strategy: Example
Topic: Cloning
The teacher explains that the Select Committee will be examining whether human cloning should be made legal in the United Kingdom.
The learners who will form the Select Committee are sent off to research the topic (the class are part way through a unit of work on genetics, meaning some preparatory work has already been done in previous lessons).
The remainder of the learners are given various roles to play.
Let us imagine that in this case there are fifteen other learners who are given the following roles:
- Three are asked to play representatives of the Catholic Church.
- Three are asked to play representatives of a pro-cloning private scientific research company.
- Three are asked to play representatives of a university research department that specialises in human illness and disease.
- Three are asked to play representatives of the Church of England.
- Three are asked to play representatives of the British Medical Association.
Each group is given resources with which to familiarise themselves. (They can also take these with them when they are called to the Select Committee, as a scaffold.)
While the learners investigate the roles they will be playing, the teacher gives the head of the Select Committee a list of who will be called to give evidence.
This gives that group of learners the opportunity to frame some questions in advance.
With preparation time at an end, the discussion takes place as outlined above, each group being called in turn to give evidence.
By the end of the activity, the whole class has spent an extended period looking in depth at the issue of human cloning and hearing a wide range of viewpoints.
This leaves learners in a great position to write up their own response to the topic, or to create a joint response in pairs or threes.
Select Committee Discussion Strategy: Extensions and Developments
- Give members of the Select Committee slips of paper on which is written a position about the topic. Members keep this secret but use it to inform their questioning and discussion contributions. This helps ensure a range of views are heard during the main part of the activity. In the above example, this might see three members of the committee given slips that say ‘pro-cloning’, three given slips that say ‘anti-cloning’, and five given slips that say: ‘neutral about cloning’.
- Allow members of the Select Committee to recall individuals and groups if they have further questions for them. This gives learners the opportunity to think about the discussion and to consider whether they have any new questions they would like to put to their peers.
