Year 9 Global Studies | Expo – Are pandemics inevitable or just poor management?

Global Studies is our innovative transdisciplinary elective that combines Geography, Economics, and Politics, offered in Year 9 and Year 10. This course is provocation based, where each term, students unpack a complex provocation and present their views as a project at the end of the term. This term’s provocation was: “Are pandemics inevitable or the result of poor management?”

How does the course work? In a double lesson, students are taught blueprints and key concepts related to the provocation. For this unit, the focus was on disease diffusion methods, the role of the media, and soft power/hard power.

The creativity component not only comes from constructing their arguments but also from the students’ choice in how they present their findings. They have the opportunity to choose their presentation method based on the table below.

Here is a snapshot of the key learnings from this Year 9 class:

• “We loved all the different presentation methods our class came up with for this unit.” – Alisha Dhaliwal
• “One key takeaway from Global Studies was seeing how everyone was really creative with their tasks and had different ideas to put together an informative presentation.” – Avery Dauphinee and Soumya Kachhipati
• “Global Studies exceeded our expectations. We were able to be creative and independent by picking our own presentation modes, and we have all learned a lot from each other about the topic.” – Evie Fergus
• “Global Studies fostered our unique beliefs on topics, allowing us to explore areas of interest and present in modes that are unique to this class.” – Melisande Pitman

Here is a snapshot of the expo undertaken in Week 10 classes:

A huge thank you to the rest of the Year 9 Global Studies team (Dexter Martinez and Al Roland) who have supported our vision of Global Studies and guided close to 60 students in their first project.

– Danielle Rodrigues
Head of Department – HSIE