ABSTRACT
Class members are to define political ideologies or phenomena by plotting them as imaginary variables on a two-dimensional grid. This gives a sense of the important dimensions on which they can be measured, as well as of the nuances in the concepts. When more than one phenomenon is plotted on the same grid, it also shows the relative distances separating them. The purpose of this exercise is to increase individuals’ understanding of historical phenomena by evaluating the inter-relationships among key concepts and ideologies. This is done by representing the concepts visually, plotting two scalar variables on perpendicular axes. A good example of an application of this is Robert Dahl’s typology of political systems along two axes, one measuring opportunities for political participation, the other measuring opportunities for political contestation or opposition. Every political system could be given an x and a y coordinate, with a ‘pure democracy’ scoring highly on both axes (Figure 24). When applied to the school curriculum, it could be used to examine the personal characteristics of philosophies of key historical figures. Any pair of variables can be used as long as they can be scaled from one extreme to another.
