Special Exam Pack: Comparative Theories

For Edexcel A Level Paper 3A: USA Politics

Rational, cultural and structural approaches covered in a student-friendly way and applied to the key topics! Push your students to unlock top marks with a special focus on answering the 12-mark comparative question.

Provides concise overview of the approaches and links them to actual content areas. This is the most difficult thing for students and therefore this is crucial

R Lawton, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

How does it work?

  • Learn: Notes, tasks & talking points explore the theories and consolidate their understanding
  • Apply: approaches applied to examinable UK–US topics with key revision material

    An excellent resource for a very difficult topic

    D Taborda, Head of Year 7 & Peer Reviewer
  • Practise: Sample exam answers with tasks & commentary show them how it’s done, plus original questions to try

What do teachers say about this resource? (11528)

an excellent resource for a very difficult topic. Students often struggle with the application of comparative theories and from personal experience, I know that my students would have benefitted from this type of resource earlier! ... I very much like the following:
a. For each comparative theory, how to apply that to the question and how to apply this to certain answers.
b. The activity to help apply the theories is good – a very useful starter or homework task for students to use.
c. The theories have been very well explained in ‘student speak’ so that they understand what each one clearly means – this is important.
d. On page 16, excellent activity which shows how more than one comparative approach can apply to certain topics – this helps students understand that it is not necessarily the case that only one theory will apply to one section.
e. Excellent task on pages 17-18 going through a previous question and working on how to apply the relevant comparative theories.
f. PP 19-30 are excellent examples of how all three comparative theories can apply to one topic and how students can use examples to apply this.
g. Page 31 – excellent bank of questions with following mark schemes to help with practice ... This is hugely important to enhancing learning – students need to know that they must not fear this question! It is broken down carefully for the students and I think it is the best example of any explanation of the comparative theory I have seen – certainly less convoluted than mine! ... Simply put, it perfectly matches the specification and ensures that nothing is irrelevant ... It takes the core aspects of the USA component and ensures that it is perfectly linked with the relevant UK aspects of the Component to ensure that the students are able to effectively and carefully answer the questions ... I would definitely buy this resource

D Taborda, Head of Year 7 & Peer Reviewer

The resource does a good job of providing concise overview of the approaches and links them to actual content areas. This is the most difficult thing for students and therefore this is crucial ... The exam advice is sound ... Many textbooks tend to outline what the approaches are but resources like this are invaluable in actually making suggestions of where in the content it can be applied ... This resource is good at what it does

R Lawton, Teacher & Peer Reviewer