SMILE Pilot Studies: Misiones, Argentina Study

Summary

In an urban high school located in Northern Argentina, students were challenged to use SMILE in order to think critically about what it means to be an engaged citizen in their community.

Specifically, students were asked to generate questions for their peers relating to moral dilemmas that might arise in their community. Students generated questions about homelessness, suicide, stealing, school bullying, and violence. Each group staged a skit to represent the concepts and captured their skits with photos to generate multimedia questions on their phones. They would take pictures of ambiguous civic circumstances and create questions for their peers, such as “What would you do in this situation?” or “Who do you think is responsible for this?” Through the process of rating each other’s questions, students came to the realization that better questions were those that divided the class in terms of responses, where less complex questions would yield unanimity or near-unanimity amongst their peers. Many of the questions were highly subjective with student responses varying depending on perceptions and dispositions, which led to interesting discussions.

After three rounds of creating, answering and rating each other’s questions, the high school students were generating profound and challenging questions relating to local concerns. For example, one question addressed the fact that there had been an increasing incidence of suicide in the area and asked their peers what they thought was the leading reason for this.