How to use Cards for Democracy

In last article we talked about Cards for Democracy through the interview made by Cinzia Billa to Pascale Mompoint Gaillard on this topic.

We therefore investigated the origin of the cards, who designed them and how they were conceived.

In today’s post, we will learn specifically how the Cards for Democracy can be used.

As Pascale herself anticipates in the interview, the Cards were conceived as a very versatile and adaptable tool, and therefore are now also used in different contexts other than the school or academic.

To give an example, today cards are also used in business management and team cooperation contexts.

So, thanks to their versatility, the cards are adaptable to different methods of use.

Use the cards on their own

To use the Cards, it would be good to think in terms of the matrix to which the individual Cards belong, which can fall into three main categories:

1. Cards can be a stimulus.
   For example, the Card “I ask more questions than answers” can be a stimulus for me to reflect on: it asks me, like, how curious I am and how much my curiosity is actually shaping the interactions I can have with my environment. And it can also be the start of a conversation with someone. So a stimulus to have a conversation, for example.
2. Another broad category is using them as learning outcomes.
   For example, if I’m a teacher, and I see repeatedly that there are some interaction problems in my classroom (for example, problems of racism, stereotyping, violence or just that my students have never really reflected on the topic of democracy and what it is to be in a democratic culture) then I can use each Card as a learning outcome. I could, for example, use three of them, combine them, and then from that create my lesson plan or my training activity, knowing that this training activity aims to develop these learning outcomes.
3. And then the third broad category would be offering a response to a problem or situation.
   So, for example, if there is a conflict in a break time between the students and I’m witness to this and I want to deal with the situation.
   Well, the cards are a very good way of dealing with that kind of situation, right then through a interactive activity where different protagonists of the story are going to be able to step back from what happened and get into a conversational mode to actually be able to talk to each other.

Stimulus, learning outcome and response to a problem or situation are the three broad categories.

Then, we have seen that we have actually nine Scenarios that we can develop. All these are going to be presented in detail through next publications.

Using the cards with the support of other publications

As Pascale states in the video interview, the cards can be used alone or with the support of other pedagogical methods of our knowledge.

As for the latter, Pascale herself shows us some examples that can go very well with the Cards for Democracy, for example:

LifeComp: The European Framework for Personal, Social and Learning to Learn Key Competence

The LifeComp framework regards “Personal, Social and Learning to Learn” as a set of competences applying to all spheres of life that can be acquired through formal informal and non-formal education, and can help citizens to thrive in the 21st Century.

RFCDC: Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture

The Framework is a set of materials that can be used by education systems to equip young people with all of the competences that are needed to take action to defend and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law, to participate effectively in a culture of democracy, and to live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse societies.

TASKs for Democracy

A book to support teachers in their efforts to promote democracy through and in education developed within the Pestalozzi Programme Community of Practice. This book is meant as a handbook for practitioners in formal and non-formal educational settings.

Where to find the full interview

The interview is hosted by Cinzia Billa, French teacher in Italy and Learn 2 Change’s member since 2015, and the interviewed is Pascale Mompoint Gaillard, researcher, facilitator and co-founder of Learn to Change.

The main topic of the interview is the Cards for Democracy which is one of the latest products that Learn to Change launched.

Where to find Cards for Democracy

Click below, download and print your own set now!