The Global Politics Political Engagement Activity (PEA) is a unique IA as it creates a chance for students to become personally involved in politics in their local/national area, and create change themselves on issues that they’re passionate about.
The Engagement Activity is completed by both SL and HL students, and it’s a 1500-2000 word essay exploring a political issue that you’re curious about, worth 20% of your final mark for HL and 25% for SL. This IA is all about taking first-hand action on political issues, applying course theories to this and then reflecting on it.
As always with an IA, there is a set of assessment criteria that it is to be marked against. For the PEA, this is:
- Identification of issue and justification (4 marks)
- Explanation of engagement (4 marks)
- Analysis of issue (6 marks)
- Synthesis and evaluation (6 marks)
However unlike other IA’s, a key point has been made by IB Examiners that the final report should be holistic. This means that your identified issue should have two or three different perspectives within it (that can form some of your sections) – so like for my issue, I had the perspectives of two groups (activists and government). So, from this as well, your paragraphs shouldn’t be sectioned by marking criteria but rather written from multiple points of view with the criteria weaved throughout.
The PEA has 3 main parts that build on each other to create the IA: Research, Engagement and the Report. It’s helpful to initially complete these parts in order to figure out and develop an idea.
The IA Process
To start your IA, there are two main ways to begin settling on an idea. You may already have an idea about your political issue (the local scaled idea/question to investigate), and thus you can then choose a topic that it falls under from the 6 key concepts (Environment, Poverty, Health, Identity, Security, Borders). However, for many, especially SL students, choosing your topic first is probably the best way to go so that you then have a broad topic to think of issues under. Your political issue is designed to be on a local or national scale – inspiration can strike from local news, political rallies you’ve been to or heard about or issues that you’ve seen in your community.
Personally, I chose an issue first and then a topic. What I, and other HL students in my cohort found, was that in some ways it will be easy to choose both the issue and topic for HL students, as it’s similar to the 2 Global Politics HLX Presentations. My topic was Non-Violence and my issue ended up being around youth activism.
From this, the next part of the initial stage of planning is researching. I found it helpful to create a table in MS Word of news articles, journal articles, podcasts I had heard, etc., list citations for them and write a couple of sentences on how it related to my political issue (e.g. whether it was a similar topic from another state, or it was written by someone local or had a theory I could incorporate). This really helped me as I had a false start with one of my ideas for a PEA as I realized that there wasn’t much published material to support my idea. Even though the report is mainly based around the engagements you personally undertake, there are also substantial marks for the evaluation of them, which can be backed up using other sources. I recommend finding 6-7 sources at first to see if there is enough discourse in your area to warrant progressing with your idea, rather than getting halfway through your process and realizing that you’re stuck.
After you’ve done some first-stage research, bring back ideas from your political issue and brainstorm about what is happening in your community. As the assignment is called ‘Engagement Activity’, part of it is to ‘engage’ with your issue on a local or national political level. Typically, you choose 2-4 ways to engage with your issue, depending on how much time is spent on each. You could interview stakeholders involved in the issue (get different perspectives), organize a peaceful rally, write emails to ministers among others. I organized multiple local protests, interviewed a protest organizer as well as a national activist and author. A key point, though, is to start your engagements early – Contact people related to engagements well before you may actually need to have a discussion with them. Additionally, always be prepared – Bring a list of questions to ask, but also don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions from responses.
Essay structure
During and after these initial planning stages, it’s time to actually start writing! While it may seem daunting to put together this report, remember that a draft is something to work on and improve over time – you just need to get something down to start. So, to quote my amazing GloPo teacher: Just Start Writing!
As mentioned before, a major thing to be aware of is making sure your report is holistic and not just explaining, analyzing and evaluating one after another over and over. Below is a proposed PEA structure that worked well for my cohort and I, either to follow or as a jumping off point as everyone has their own writing style.
- Introduction: Introduce Topic, Political Issue, and some Global Politics theories that are going to be used.
- Introduction to Engagements (short paragraph): Give an overview of what engagements you did into your issue, how and why you got involved with each of them.
- Body Paragraphs – Perspectives: Analyze the engagements that you took, and how they relate to concepts and theories studied throughout the course. Provide claims and counterclaims and how they explore the political issue and topic, as well as relating it to a wider global politics scale.
- Conclusion: Summarize engagements, political issue, theories and concepts. Take care to not mention any new points that you haven’t already introduced in the report.
Reflection from a Grad
Personally, I really enjoyed my PEA process! Yes, I too had many doubts over its progression (‘Have I done enough research?’, ‘Is this draft good enough?’, ‘Did I ask the right questions at my interviews?’ were just some of the few!). But, this IA really gave me a sense of freedom that the IB is known for. There was no boxed-in feeling of ‘you have to do topics similar to this’ or ‘must conduct these engagements’ because everyone around the world has different ideas, issues, communities and engagements, so you really get to create unique IA’s and see others progress as well.
Overall, the Engagement Activity is about personally connecting to a political issue you’re passionate about which means you can get very involved within your communities and have a lot of autonomy over your IA unlike other subjects that are more restrictive. So, get brainstorming and planning but most importantly: Just Start Writing!
Summary
Topic: Exploring Global Politics through Engagement Activity IA
The Global Politics Political Engagement Activity (PEA) presents students with a unique opportunity to delve into political issues at a personal level. Structured into research, engagement, and report phases, it underscores the holistic integration of assessment criteria. Students actively select local or national political concerns, conducting thorough research and engaging with stakeholders through activities such as interviews and protests. Through this process, students discover autonomy and freedom in exploring a diverse range of political issues, thus fostering a unique and enriching IA experience.
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