What Causes Poverty?

This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:

• critical thinking
• empathy
• ethical understanding
• global citizenship

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description: Year 7 & 8 Business and Economics

• Interpret information and data to identify economic and business issues, trends and economic cause-and-effect relationships AC9HE7S03 / AC9HE8S03
• Develop questions to investigate a contemporary economic and business issue AC9HE7S01 /AC9HE8S01

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical Understanding, Personal and Social Capability 

Syllabus outcomes: COM4

Cross-curriculum priority:  Sustainability

Relevant parts of Year 7 & 8 achievement standards: Students can interpret information and data to identify economic and business issues and trends, and describe economic cause-and-effect relationships. They can also develop a range of questions to investigate economic and business issues.

UN SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

• Target 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance

• Device capable of displaying audio-visual material
• 1 pack of ordinary playing cards per 4 students (ask your Maths department if they have these)

This lesson has been developed with the support of The Life You Can Save.

The Life You Can Save conducts research to identify non-profits running highly impactful programs that address the multiple dimensions of poverty. They also help connect people who want to donate money and resources with these non-profits to maximise the impact of their gifts. They aim to create a world where everyone has an opportunity to build a better life and where there’s no suffering or death due to extreme poverty. The Life You Can Save was founded by Melbourne-born Peter Singer, widely recognised as one of the world’s most influential contemporary philosophers, to advance the ideas in his 2009 book The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (republished 2019). Since then, they’ve worked to introduce the ideas from Professor Singer’s book to new audiences, inspiring people to help others experiencing poverty around the world and empowering them to make the greatest impact possible.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium - teach students to play a card game and facilitate discussion.

Ethical Understanding in the Australian Curriculum v9

Explore how to teach the General Capability of Ethical Understanding as of version 9 of the Australian Curriculum. Learn what Ethical Understanding involves and how to incorporate ethics into your regular teaching.