Teaching Development Economics

I always find the Development Economics section of the IB is one that teachers find the trickiest to teach due to the range and scope of possible issues to cover. For the past couple of years I have made use of a two major projects to keep students hooked.

1) I get students to produce a development profile. I get them to choose a country from the ones found at the bottom of the HDI league tables and then produce a two/three page document similar to this one (the Niger profile produced by one of my students this year):

Developing_Country_Profile.pdf

Aside from a summary of the economy and the country one of the major issues I want them to establish are the current barriers to growth that their chosen country is experiencing. We then use their profiles to complete a set of notes on barriers to growth/development, common features of developing countries and this leads us then into the topic of development policies.

Last year as well as the profiles I got my students to produce a powerpoint presentation on their chosen countries. Many included news/video clips which proved very useful to our class discussion. Rememeber IB examiners love students to have lots of real world examples.

2) Millionaires Mission. Two years ago Channel 4 produced a fantastic 4 part series that is full of development economics. Millionaires mission sent a group of millionaires to a remote village in Uganda and with the help of World Vision gave them three weeks to identify and try and solve (with their own money) some of the key issues in the village. The issues identified included poor water supply, lack of electricity in the hospital and poor trading conditions for the village potato crop.

Although each episode is just under an hour long they are well worth getting hold of and watching with your class. Each class I have shown them too has been hooked. The website also has an excellent resource section full of material to teach from.

Some short answer questions (10 marks each) that you might want to set in relation to these projects:

1) Explain how overdependence on primary products may act as a barrier to economic development

2) Explain two ways in which international indebtedness of developing countries might hinder their growth and development.

3) Explain the role of fair trade organisations and micro- credit schemes in promoting economic development