Below you’ll find the answers to your questions on teaching the IB Diploma Programme Global Politics 2024 Subject Guide from our recent webinar with expert author Dr. Michael O’Shannassy.
Michael answers your questions on everything from planning your course to how Pearson Global Politics for the IB Diploma Programme Student Book can support you.
For a question grounded within the unit, for example: how contested notions of rights affect the implementation or the practice of human rights in global politics, you do not need to go into development and sustainability or peace and conflict to answer that question – you could, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, but when the mark scheme comes out, you'll see that there's no requirement. It would be a case of how do contested notions of rights, or contested conceptualizations of rights, affect the practice of human rights within global politics.
An integrating question, the ones that appear in Section B, very clearly signpost that you need to draw from the Rights and Justice chapter or unit, as well as from Development Sustainability, or Peace and Conflict. It could be something like: universal human rights are necessary for positive peace to be achieved. You've clearly got a bit that's been taken out of Peace and Conflict and a bit that's been taken out of Rights and Justice, and you need to deal with both of those if you're going to score highly.
I would point you towards the specimen paper from the IB to see an example in practice.
I can't speak on behalf of the IB, so I don't know the exact reason. I've just introduced the engagement activity, as we're still calling it with my current grade 11s who will be the last ones to go through it in its current iteration, and I have Global Politics students who are doing, for example, something on refugees for their IA, and they also want to do something with refugees for their EE. For me that's not “double dipping” because it's a huge topic. Where the IB identifies “double dipping” is if you are basically plagiarizing yourself by using the exact same case study, or using the exact same material, for both. I don't think it's a clear line and I think we need to be careful about quashing student interest and passion in a topic, which should be lying at the heart of both the IA and the EE.
Will the levels of analysis still be useful in the new curriculum or is it obsolete?
I think they will still be valuable, but I'm not sure it's going to be quite as explicit as it was in the old Subject Guide. In a similar way to how the engagement project is still very much based at the local level, I think if we look at the current subject-specific material for the extended essay in Global Politics, one of the options is also making connections between local level phenomenon or how things play out at a local level, and a national or regional or even an international level, and that might be a point of comparison or contrast in terms of analysis and evaluation in an extended essay.
There are sections on how to answer questions on each paper, which include how to develop analysis skills. The Student Book also has practice questions throughout to develop analysis skills.
How has changing from engagement activity to engagement project changed the nature of the PEA IA?
The assessment criteria have changed so that there is a little bit more of an explicit emphasis on skills, and on actually planning out a project that we’ve already seen in some of the other IB subjects too. The messaging we're getting from the IB is around 21st Century skills, like project management, and how you plan something out and then bring it to fruition. One of the criteria in the project is the planning process: can you see evidence in the final report of how this project was planned and then implemented? It’s one of those subtle but very significant shifts because it's something that students were always doing: if they were going to do well in the engagement activity they had to project manage it; this was built into it, but it just wasn't assessed. I think the IB wanted to make it explicit, so it's now something that we are going to teach explicitly.
For the Internal Assessment, is it still required to write a 2000 word paper?
2,000 words for Standard Level and 2,400 words for Higher Level. HL students also need to include a policy proposal.
Why has the word count for HL/SL changed for the Engagement?
As in other IB subjects, it’s not enough for HL students to simply understand and analyze phenomenon or events, they actually have to start to propose possible policy solutions or ways of resolving a problem. They have to make recommendations, using higher order thinking, which is why the extra 400 words has been added. HL students are expected to do more than SL students and to have a deeper understanding, putting into practice some of their analysis.
I wouldn't necessarily say there's specific content because I think the idea, much like the current HL oral extension, is that students pick the topic. You could start with a common topic that we're all going to do to give students an idea of how to do their research and how to present those findings, but at the end of the day the Global Political Challenges should be something that the student has chosen for themselves.
The chapter in our Student Book on the HL extension topics would be helpful as a starting point to give some material for students to use as a springboard into their research.
The major difference between the current system and Paper Three is the explicit requirement for students to make those interconnections, and that's going to be what’s slightly different about the teaching process – you need to constantly
encourage students to make those interconnections to be able to see how there's that interplay between different GPCs and different case studies.
Students pick a topic, start to develop a case study, and then within that case study they're identifying different Global Political Challenges that fit, and they can work out the three or four strongest or most meaningful interconnections.
I recognize that's quite daunting because it can be quite a fluid approach and this is one of the reasons why I probably wouldn't start introducing the the GPCs and the case studies too early in the course.
It requires a bit of work upfront. I'm not saying you necessarily have to have entirely complete and streamlined case studies ready to go at the start, but I'm going to create four to six case studies.
I know that my students coming into Grade 11 next year will not have had much exposure to a case study methodology, so in my first term I will be introducing and modeling the difference between an example, a case and a case study, which is something you can find in the Subject Guide and also in our Student Book.
How do you go about setting a deadline for a draft on a Case Study for a Year 12 class?
I plan on modeling a case study approach throughout the first year of the course and then providing some scaffolding for students in the second year. I don't think that we can simply throw students in the deep end right away but instead need to guide their inquiry in an appropriate fashion and at an appropriate pace. My thinking is that if we have already covered 4-5 case studies, created by me but co-developed to varying degrees with my students as we move through the course, then this last student-generated case study is less about the content (what is learned) and more about the process (how learning in Global Politics can be structured, encouraging student agency, etc.). While I do still believe that this experience will help them as they prepare for their IB exams (in particular Paper 3 for HL students), I take a long-view approach to teaching Global Politics and see at least some of what we are doing as preparation for university...and beyond!
As for setting a deadline, this would vary depending on your students but I would imagine that somewhere around two weeks before your Grade 12s go on study leave would be about right. I would also have them present their work to their classmates. I would also curate a collection of the most impressive and share these with all of my students as far ahead of their IB exams as possible.
I would respectfully disagree with the premise of this question. While there was some reference to 'theoretical foundations' in the previous guide and some expectation that theory might feature as part of a Paper 2 response, theory/theories never featured explicitly as part of the prescribed content. By comparison, the new Guide has an explicit focus on theory with one of the prescribed topics in the Core Unit being 'Theoretical perspectives in global politics' with its accompanying prescribed content including: Theories, models and analytical frameworks in global politics / Use and applicability of theories and models to political issues / Bias and limitations of theories and models. So, I think that opportunities to use theory as the basis for analysis still exist. Given that theory (and, I would argue, theorising) needs to be directly taught / covered now, I think that we can ask students to begin to make links to theory as they engage with the Thematic Studies. For example, how do different theories view conceptualisations of justice? In short, I think that student will now have a firmer theoretical base for their critical thinking and analysis.
Concerning the levels of analysis, while it is true that the new Guide does not see the same explicit focus on them as was the case previously there are still references to the need for students to approach content and concepts from 'the local to the global level' scattered throughout the new Guide. Again, I don't think that you will necessarily need to do anything differently than it seems you are already doing.
It is also possible that you can encourage other forms of analysis and/or evaluation. I used to be an IB Economics teacher and one of the tools that I've carried over into Global Politics from teaching Economics is CLASPP. Without going into too much detail (as it is not all relevant to us), the 'L' stands for 'long-run vs. short-run', the 'A' stands for 'assumptions', the 'S' stands for 'stakeholders', the first 'P' for 'pros and cons', and the second 'P' for 'priorities/prioritisation'. Each of these offers itself as an opportunity for analysis/evaluation.
Do students need to cover two HL extension topics?
At least two. Students need to be able to make connections between two topics in Paper 3, which is not too dissimilar to what they are currently doing. In the old Subject Guide students had to cover two separate topics, but were not required to make interconnections between them. Now with Paper 3 they are required to make interconnections. They could potentially do more than two, although you have to keep it keep it manageable so that there is a degree of depth to their understanding of the topic, so that they can apply it effectively.
How can teachers use the HL links throughout the Student Book to support students in the lesson?
Links to HL topics are there to remind students that they should constantly be making connections to HL themes. Relatively early on in the process, for an HL class, you will have introduced the eight Global Political Challenges, so that they’re thinking about them throughout the course and that's where HL extension occurs, and the more flexible approach to teaching and learning that the IB is trying to encourage. We don't make the connections for learners, but we want to leave it up to them to make those connections; we're just flagging that a connection is possible.
In many of the curriculum development meetings this was a topic of heated discussion amongst all of the teachers and the participants.
I've always loved the presentation because it was a real point of difference between Global Politics and all the other Group 3s in terms of their internal assessment.
Initially the HL was externally assessed, and this became too much for the IB with the exponential growth of student numbers, which is why it became internally assessed, which left us with, unlike most subjects, 40% of an HL student’s grades
being internally assessed. We had two IAs, which is not consistent with student experiences in other IB subjects and so there was a discrepancy.
There was also an issue in terms of some of the ways in which a video oral presentation might be assessed, e.g. reading off a script vs. not reading off a script, so there was a little too much variability and a little too much of students being assessed on their presentation skills, which is not actually what they're supposed to be assessed on.
As a teacher I'm sorry to see the the oral presentations go, but I do like some of the changes. In particular, I like the requirement for students to make interconnections. There is nothing stopping us as teachers from continuing to do HL presentations in class, they just won't be externally assessed. I certainly think that this is something that I'll end up doing around the HL extensions. Even though everyone's going to be showing evidence of their learning in Paper 3, it doesn't mean that we still can't have students develop those skills within a class and that also becomes a really lovely way for them to share their research with other students. The more we can collaborate and the more we can build knowledge together, the easier it's going to be for them indivdiually when they get to the exam.
