GCE Religious Studies

Transcription

1 GCE Religious Studies RST3A Religion and Ethics Report on the Examination 2060 June 2013 Version: 1.0

2 Further copies of this Report are available from aqa.org.uk Copyright 2013 AQA and its licensors. All rights reserved. AQA retains the copyright on all its publications. However, registered schools/colleges for AQA are permitted to copy material from this booklet for their own internal use, with the following important exception: AQA cannot give permission to schools/colleges to photocopy any material that is acknowledged to a third party even for internal use within the centre.

3 General comments It appeared that the questions were equally popular and accessible to all students and there were, as always, some very impressive answers presented to examiners, particularly for this session, on Question 4. The best answers were those which answered the questions set, not the question for which students had prepared earlier, in class. The best AO2 responses not only presented arguments for and against the stated view, but were able to offer some comment on, or analysis of, the arguments or evidence presented and some evidence of independent thought. There were also many students who could quote from eminent scholars confidently. There were, however, a number of scholars cited who were unknown to the examiners and some explanation is appropriate if the scholar cited is less well-known than others. A comment which applies across the board is that many students are confusing the command to State with the command to Explain. Many students like to show an examiner what they have learnt; however, this often comes across as facts, rather than knowledge with understanding. Students must get used to supporting their knowledge with evidence that shows they do understand the relevance of what they have just written. For example, students who write In the Bible, it says will not score as highly as students who write In the Bible it says and this means that individual Christians might well interpret this.. There were a number of students who did not answer the correct number of questions or who incurred other rubric infringements. There were also many scripts which were illegible and schools and colleges need to be mindful of this when considering some of their pupils for access arrangements. Question 1 Libertarianism, free will and determinism 01 This was a straightforward question on material with which many students are very familiar. However, most students were less secure with the concept of soft determinism and imbalanced answers often prevented students from achieving high levels. There needs to be some more clarity given to certain points. The trial of Leopold and Loeb is not an example of hard determinism; Darrow used hard determinism as a defence for his clients but, as they were still found guilty and thus morally culpable, one could make a strong case for it being more an example of soft determinism. (Interestingly, many students who claimed that the Darrow trial was an example of hard determinism in 01 then went on to use it as an example of soft determinism in 02). Also, Gandhi choosing to fast in the desert compared to a starving man is only an example of soft determinism when explained properly and fully as to why the starving man has less choice than Gandhi. 02 Perhaps it was the words How far do you agree that triggered the response, but examiners were surprised to see answers which were largely subjective in their response, using very few facts indeed. Many students seemed to forget everything they had written about hard determinism previously in 01 and argued that everyone has a choice, all the time. Good answers talked about choice, free will and moral anarchy if wrong doers were not held responsible and the aim of punishment not just being retributive but also a deterrent and rehabilitating. 3 of 5

4 Question 2 Virtue Ethics 03 This was a straightforward question. Most students answered this from an Aristotelian perspective; students who tried to include other virtue ethicists often had little to write about. Students who achieved the highest levels were guided by the remit of the question whereas other students lost focus by writing about other aspects of virtue ethic theory. 04 This question was, on the whole, well answered with arguments clearly given, for and against. However, the students who scored the most highly were those who debated the word compatible. Most students tended to compare virtue ethics with a religious approach to ethics, which is different. These were also the students who tended to debate the word completely as well, usually deciding that the two systems were not completely compatible but could work in tandem quite nicely most of the time. The best AO2 responses not only presented arguments for and against the stated view, but were able to offer some comment on or analysis of the arguments or evidence presented. Many students told examiners that a virtue ethics approach could sometimes work at total variance to a religious approach, but failed to give any examples or explanation of how this could be and so the point was redundant. Question 3 Religious views on sexual behaviour and human relationships 05 This was a popular question but probably the one that was answered least well. Some students only talked about marriage (last year s question), some only talked about sexual relationships within marriage, some only wrote about sexual relationships outside marriage and the majority submitted answers with fact after fact unsubstantiated (e.g. the Bible says ; The Roman Catholic Church says ). 06 Most students did not read, and thus did not answer, this question correctly and most produced arguments discussing whether religion was out of date or not. With the current debate about same-sex marriages and religions response to this, it was sad to see how few students mentioned this in their answers. Good answers talked about how religious moral guidance had much to offer today s permissive society and how, if believers were to take a faith seriously, then sexual behaviour would be something they would want the religion to address. Question 4 Science and technology 07 Question 07 was answered well, with the majority of students answering the question set. Some approached it from a generalised ethical approach; others went systematically through all the ethical approaches their centre had covered. Both approaches worked. 08 Very few students addressed the word straightforward, rather tending to write more about how religious ethical systems would be applied to this issue. Those who did try and address the concept of straightforward often contradicted themselves, for example by indicating that Utilitarianism is straightforward as you follow the GHP and then saying that Utilitarianism was complicated because of the inability to predict consequences. There was, once again, a general lack of evidence of essay plans, but 08 was probably the question were these would have been the most desirable. 4 of 5

5 Mark Ranges and Award of Grades Grade boundaries and cumulative percentage grades are available on the Results Statistics page of the AQA Website. Converting Marks into UMS marks Convert raw marks into Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) marks by using the link below. UMS conversion calculator 5 of 5