lesson focus

  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Freedom
  • Integrity
  • Care and compassion
  • Understanding, tolerance and inclusion

expectations and goals

  • Students to demonstrate a clear understanding of the terms Bystander Effect and Diffusion of Responsibility

learning experiences

Classroom Ideas

  1. Explain to the students, “In the past few lessons we have talked about citizenship and what it means to be an active Australian citizen. Sometimes we aren’t always capable of doing this”.
  2. Pose the question, “What is the Bystander Effect?” and hold a class discussion to explore the topic.
  3.  Ask students to read through the information on the Bystander Effect on the Changing minds website
  4.  Provide students with access to the Bystander Effect explosion chart (Resource 16 below) and ask them to complete.
  5. Ask students to research and summarise the murder of Kitty Genovese and how it influenced the establishment of the Bystander Effect.
  6. Ask students to identify where the Bystander Effect and the Diffusion of Responsibility occurred in the Kitty Genovese case based on their research.
  7. Provide students with access to the Diffusion of Responsibility (Resource 17 below) and ask them to complete by identifying examples of these terms in their own lives.
  8. Hold a class discussion by posing the question, “How does Crime Stoppers encourage taking positive action in our community?” (eg protecting what we value, reducing the negative state of actions).
  9. Ask students to consider in what ways they can take positive action.

lesson focus questions

  1. What is the Bystander Effect?
  2. What are its origins?
  3. Who is Kitty Genovese?
  4.  What is the Diffusion of Responsibility?
  5. How does Crime Stoppers encourage taking action in a positive way?

assessment tasks

Students to:

  1. Complete Diffusion of Responsibility (Resource 17 below)

download resources and tools

Printable lesson plan [Download Year 9, Lesson 7 plan)

Resource 16: Bystander Effect explosion chart [Download Resource 16]

Changing minds website

Resource 17: Diffusion of Responsibility [Download Resource 17]