Connecting ToK Concepts & Knowledge Issues- ToK lesson starter activity.
This blog post is a development of the earlier post What no Knowledge Issues?, you may wish to read that for more context. This post describes a ToK lesson starter activity that improves student understanding of ToK concepts.
I find that my students often arrive in my ToK class with the modus operandi of other subjects, namely that they're eager to find 'right answers' and arrive at solutions. As such, I try to use starter activities which tune them into ToK ways of thinking (complexity and incongruence are allowed). My starter activities tend to be content-light rather than reading complex tracts of text.
Today's starter activity is designed to:
Help the students to learn the ToK Concepts.
Help the students to develop their own definitions of the ToK Concepts.
Link Hexagon Subjects with ToK.
Knowledge Issues.
As explained in the earlier blogpost Knowledge Issues have been replaced in the current ToK Study Guide (first exams 2022) by ToK Concepts. However, students will still be learning about problems of knowledge construction (aka "Knowledge Issues") in their Hexagon subjects. The types, and names, of these knowledge issues will vary by subject (eg in Psychology they may learn about Ecological Validity, in Language A Intertextuality, in Visual Arts Expression as Truth etc etc). The challenge for the ToK teacher is to help students to place those subject based knowledge issues under the ToK Concepts.
If we are able to place the subject based knowledge issues under the ToK Concepts we will be increasing the integration of ToK into the Hexagon Subjects, and vice versa.
Student Activity.
This graphic organiser places the ToK Concepts on the left & right borders of the page, and puts Knowledge Issues in the centre of the page.
The instructions to students are to draw lines linking the Knowledge Issues to the ToK Concepts. You could make this more specific, for example requiring each KI to be joined to at least 2 ToK Concepts etc. Or you could limit the number of connections that they can make.
Obviously, you can swap out the knowledge issues for whichever ones are most suitable for your context. You could make it specific to a particular AoK, for example if you're studying The Natural Sciences just use Knowledge Issues which are relevant to The Natural Sciences etc.
You can get a PDF copy of this graphic organiser at this link.
The learning.
The students will have to come up with working definitions of both the ToK Concepts and the Knowledge Issues as they try to link the Knowledge Issues with each concept.
Of course, the real learning comes when they explain the links they made to the rest of the class, and compare their links with other groups in the class.
Of course (2), an argument can be made to link any of the Knowledge Issues with any of the ToK Concepts - the learning is in the arguments made for the link. As students become more au fait with ToK you can ask them to bring their own knowledge issues from one (or more) of their Hexagon Subjects.
Here's an example of a 'linked up' set of ToK Concepts & Knowledge Issues. Your students should come up with something which looks like this, or is even messier than this !
You can get a PDF of this filled version here, but remember it's not 'the right answer', it's just one of many answers.
As with so many of these "Starter Activities" they can quickly expand to take up the whole lesson. I'm usually happy to let them take up the whole lesson if learning is taking place. Especially, if the students are enjoying them.
If you use this (or any other of my activities) I'd be really interested to hear how they go, and how they may be improved. You can contact me at Daniel@TokToday.com.
If you have any requests for further activities or ideas please do get in touch.
Daniel,
Lisbon, Aug 2022.