3.2 Explore

Aim: Designed to begin a young person's engagement in politics. To start thinking about social and political issues, with a link between a learners' life and politics. These resources help learners who feel they have no interest in politics to connect issues they do care about to democracy and politics.

Qualities: fun, engaging, interactive, games, issue based.

We recommend delivering a lesson using "explore" resources with your learners, especially if they have not engaged in democratic education before.

Explore resource example

The "Decision Making Game" is a good example of an interactive "Explore" resource. Learners are given 8 areas of policy that a government is responsible for.

Once you have ensured the learners understand what each policy area refers to / means, learners then individually rank the areas from the most important to least.

They then pair up, and have to come up with a compromised ranking. Then the pairs become fours, and compromise their list again and so on. You can keep combining groups until you have just one list as a group, or until it feels you’ve reached the limit of discussion. 

This is a fun activity that encourages learners to explore what they think is important in their community or their county. They also have to defend their views and ideas to others, as well as listen to the arguments and points of the rest of the group. It is also a neat way of illustrating a big part of the political system - compromise and prioritisation. 

The full lesson plan can be accessed on our website.