The IB has defined global issues in the following manner: (a) they have significance on a wide/large scale; (b) they are transnational; (c) the impact is felt in everyday contexts (55).   It is imperative students remember this and test their ideas against this definition when thinking about, developing and refining their individual oral.   

The IB has also identified 5 broad “fields of inquiry” that will allow students to develop and focus their individual oral down into a manageable global issue.

They are:

1. Culture, identity and community
2. Beliefs, values and education
3. Politics, power and justice
4. Art, creativity and the imagination
5. Science, technology and the environment

These 5 “fields of inquiry” are not the be all and end all, but instead, they are helpful starting points for students to get a more specific and detailed global issue.  They overlap, are not discrete, and have many common elements to them.  In other words, global issues are everywhere, in almost every text or literary work.   

Furthermore, the choice of extract is vital here.  The extract - of no more than 40 lines, and often much less - needs to zero in on the global issue decided.  The student will be analyzing the author’s choices in relation to the global issue and how it is presented and so an extract that offers much potential is key.  Relating all of this to a larger body of work (for non-literary texts) or the entire work (for literary works) is also paramount.

Helping students narrow their ideas from technology (too broad!) – to something more specific – how Facebook is using facial recognition technology and why (too narrow!) – is really important.  The key is to find the sweet spot.

For example, a student could take an opinion columnist who is critical of big tech in general (his body of work), and using a portion of one his specific columns about Facebook’s facial recognition technology in particular (the extract), and connect that to a something about the surveillance society we live in. 

Now, something about “the surveillance society” fits the bill for a global issue: it’s has huge implications across the globe, touches almost every country out there, and is felt in many different ways in different countries (the US versus China for example).  This might need to be narrowed down even more as the student finds the right extracts to use.  But it’s a start!

The obvious connection, of course, is to dystopian novels (1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World and so on).  However, students don’t need to be obvious.  Does the government or a large multinational corporation know something the characters don’t in the novel or play you are reading/teaching?  Are other characters spying on each other in the work?  How?  Why?  What are the larger implications of this type of society?

This is the type of thinking and process students will need to go through when narrowing down taking these large “fields of inquiry” into specific and workable global issues that can be dealt with effectively in a 10-minute oral.