This lesson was devised and used by the late Mark Hutchinson, a history teacher at High Storrs Secondary in Sheffield. In the lesson, students use photo documentation from the 1980s when Sheffield became the first local authority to pledge that it would end all links with apartheid (see Sheffield and Anti-Apartheid Movement study guide) The main focus of the lesson is on the visit of Marti Caine to the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 1984 and the protests surrounding this. We are grateful to the AAM Archives Forward to Freedom committee for granting us permission to use some of the images.

P4C is a learning approach which runs throughout the NVAFC lessons. We recommend training before using P4C but here you can find a guide to the ‘10 Steps of P4C’ and concept question plans to support teacher questioning during an enquiry.

This lesson, part of the series of lessons Non-violent Action: A Force for Change, is an opportunity to evaluate learners’ knowledge and understanding of non-violent action by returning to the pictures of objects/actions that were introduced in Lesson 1. Learners should, having experienced the other lessons, now be able to give more creative responses to the pictures. This lesson could come before or after the lesson which looks at contemporary issues.

This is the final lesson in a series of 6 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72).

This is the fifth in a series of 6 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72).

This is the fourth in a series of 7 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72).

This is the third in a series of 6 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72). This lesson follows on from “Developing personal power part 1”.

This is the second in a series of 6 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72). In this lesson learners explore personal power.

This is the first in a series of 6 one-hour lessons written by consultant, Lucy Holbrook, which explore the concept of “power” – power over, power to, power with and power within. The aim is to give learners a comprehensive Power Toolkit that includes an understanding of how to use their internal body resources to support that external process of non-violent social change. Please see the supporting document written by Lucy explaining the rationale for the lessons (Resource Sheet 72). In this lesson learners are introduced to the four types of power.

This series of lessons takes learners through a participatory step by step process of thinking about issues they care about in their school or local community; choosing an issue; researching it; deciding on the change they would like to see; deciding on an action; planning, doing and evaluating the action. These lessons are designed to take place after learners have experienced some historical case studies and the contemporary case study lesson but could also stand alone as an active citizenship activity as a day event or for a school council. The ideas are based with permission on the resource Get Global! Oxfam, 2007, as well as on real life planning of actions for change. It is important that learners are given the freedom to decide for themselves whether they wish to take action or not and the kind of change they would like to see but also that they are supported by adults to ensure that they have a positive experience of change being possible or at least understand what more they need to do to achieve this.

This lesson is an opportunity for learners to apply their learning from the historical case studies to current examples of non-violent movements for change. In order to conduct this lesson teachers will need to do their own research of what might currently be happening locally, nationally and globally and provide links for the learners to support their own research. This lesson provides a bridge to the lessons on ‘Taking Action’ where learners decide whether they would like to take non-violent action about anything that they care about.

This series of lessons examines the success of non-violent resistance to Nazi occupation in Denmark and the anti-Jewish laws in Germany during World War Two. The lessons use original accounts and documents from the period which are brought to life through drama and other creative activities. Learners take part in Philosophy for Children discussions in role and as themselves. The Pillars of Support are used to identify support for the Nazi regime and how it was undermined.

This is one of a series of lessons relating to the environment (the others are the Chipko Movement in India, The Green Belt Movement in Kenya and Sheffield Street Trees). This lesson explores the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in the Peak District, UK in 1932. After considering the idea of ‘trespass’, learners respond to a film about the mass trespass using a question quadrant to generate questions and engage in a philosophical enquiry about one of them.

This lesson uses the Salt March and the lesser-known Pashtun Muslim non-violent army (Khudai Khidmatgar) as examples of resistance during the Indian Independence movement. It was felt important to include Gandhi as a well-known figure and central in the history of non-violent protest but also to show that Muslims in India were involved in non-violent resistance led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan. This might challenge the stereotypical views of Islam of some learners. The main approach to learning in this lesson is to use an in-role P4C discussion where learners enquire from the perspectives of different people involved in the struggle for independence.

This series of lessons introduces learners to the role that the arts can play in protest using two different case studies as examples. The English Disco Lovers was created by Quaker artist, Chris Alton in 2012 as a counter-English Defence League group aiming to reclaim the EDL acronym. In the Singing Revolution the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia won freedom from the Soviet Union through a series of singing protests including a 600km human chain through the three areas. The lessons include song analysis, drama and art as well as P4C enquiries.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “You may well ask, ‘Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatise the issue that it can no longer be ignored”. The Sheffield Street Trees campaign illustrates this beautifully as direct action was used successfully not only to actually protect trees but also to bring the issue to the attention of the wider public. This led to a successful process of negotiation where different views were taken into consideration when deciding how to manage the street trees. These lessons use a fictional context using ‘Mantle of the Expert’ to introduce different perspectives and to engage learners in the Sheffield Street Trees case study which is introduced at the end. At this point it would be helpful to make a distinction between the fictional drama and what really happened. Although different perspectives and complexities are introduced through the lessons, including the contestability of the decision by some tree protectors to break the injunction by going through the barriers as ‘persons unknown’ the final outcome of the actual protests was that the protestors were vindicated in their objections. The new tree strategy that came from negotiations illustrates this and is a much more cautious and participatory approach to street tree management in Sheffield. Sheffield Council received criticism from national bodies such as the Woodland Trust and was investigated by the Forestry Commission. They issued an apology for the dawn raid on Rustlings road (that the first scenario is based on) ‘A public unreserved apology’ was recommended by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman . A script is provided for those teachers who are not familiar with Mantle of the Expert but this can obviously be used flexibly with those who are. Out of role curriculum activities feature throughout.

This is the second of four environment-themed case studies (the others are the Chipko Movement in India, Right to Roam in UK and Sheffield Street Trees). This lesson uses the story of Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya to explore the concept of influence – who do we influence and who influences us?

This is one of four environment-themed case studies (the others are the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, Right to Roam in UK and Sheffield Street Trees). This case study is the story of how women in India in 1974 successfully resisted the cutting down of their forests by hugging the trees and setting up groups to guard them. The lessons explore the concept of ownership, introduce the idea of ‘impact assessment’ and use P4C discussion in and out of role.

This lesson is one of two alternative core lessons (the other is Bristol Bus Boycott) to be completed after Lesson 1 and 2. It introduces an important idea of the “Pillars of Support”, which will be referred to in subsequent case study lessons. It uses a mystery activity as a way of engaging the learners with the case study. Groups are given different parts of the OTPOR story and have to piece together what happened by asking the other groups questions. For it to work it is important that that no one knows the whole story at the start of the lesson.

Enquiring into Violence and Non-Violence. There are many nuanced definitions of non-violence but most seem to agree that non-violent action is not just about doing anything without using violence. Non-violent action has the aim of undermining violence whether it is physical, structural or institutional. The main part of this lesson is a discussion activity which encourages learners to decide where they would put an action on a spectrum from violent to non-violent. The main part of this lesson is a discussion activity which encourages learners to decide where they would put an action on a spectrum from violent to non-violent. Many of the examples are contentious and the learners need to listen to each other and will potentially change their minds when they hear good reasons. Through this activity the learners will hopefully start to understand some of the complexities around the concepts of violence and non-violence. “Looking at principles of non-violent protest and deciding which ones we like and which we would question (orange for challenge, yellow for agree and annotations) gave the children a chance to critically analyse some complex ideas and to start to think about how their own values affect their reaction.”