Global Politics: Approaches to Development

This is an inquiry-based, structured and fully scaffolded lesson on Approaches to Development, designed as a capstone for the IBDP Global Politics Development unit. It brings together key content on free-market, state-led and hybrid models, while revisiting core theories and global actors in a clear, assessment-focused way.

There is no excessive heavy reading for students. Content is broken down into accessible chunks, with a strong emphasis on real-world examples, including China, Russia, Qatar, Rwanda, and global institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO. The lesson moves beyond description, requiring students to apply concepts such as globalisation, inequality and sustainability to evaluate development outcomes.

There are ten structured tasks, all differentiated and fully resourced, including tables, comparison activities, and essay planning task aligned to Paper 2 and Paper 3 skills. The sequence builds from knowledge and classification through to analysis, evaluation and judgement, ensuring students are prepared for exam-style responses.

This lesson is particularly suitable for mixed-ability and EAL-heavy cohorts, with clear instructions, repeated structures and visual support throughout. It is discussion-based, with opportunities for independent thinking and application, and would typically take three to four lessons depending on depth.

The resource is ready to use immediately, with no unnecessary formatting or branding. It is fully editable and easily adaptable for different classrooms or online platforms such as Teams or Google Classroom.