First Year Philosophy, Ethics and Religious Studies

Welcome to First Year Philosophy, Ethics and Religious Studies! You will find all of the relevant course materials on the various pages of this site including Powerpoints, worksheets, reading materials and media clips to enhance your studies.

Philosophy, Ethics and Religious Studies is an exciting and stimulating course which will give you an opportunity to think through and debate some highly thought provoking questions, ideas and concepts, some of which are ancient and timeless and some of which are on the cutting edge of contemporary debate.

You will develop skills such as:

• Deep analysis: The ability to identify the key points within an argument and systematically explore similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses and significance.
• Evaluation: The ability to make judgements about particular aspects of a debate and to arrive at an overall conclusion.
• Critical Thinking: The ability to critically anayse and evaluate arguments, with particular emphasis on credibility, reputation, ability to see, vested interests and neutrality and bias.
• Essay writing skills: The ability to express your knowledge and understanding clearly and coherently in a structured manner.
• See the 'skills' section of the site for further details!

You will receive support throughout the course to enable you to be successful in developing all of these skills to the best of your ability:

• Detailed feedback/ feedforward on essays
• Making improvements to essays
• One-to-one progress discussions (see the 'progress' section of the site for further details!)
• Catch up/ study sessions if at any time you need help with understanding any aspect of the course

If you would like any further information or clarification on anything related to the course please do not hesitate to contact your teachers:

• Dominic McArdle: dmcardle@g.qeliz.ac.uk
• Chris Crozier: ccrozier@g.qeliz.ac.uk