Can ToK help me to get into university ?
Today we meet with Magda Kozlowska from Unifymecounselling. Magda is an expert in university applications, counselling, life coaching and educational consultancy. She has also taught IB DP Psychology and ToK. She is also an IB Examiner. She now runs a company that helps students to win places at top universities. She is the perfect person to advise us on the link between ToK and university application.
The video of our talk with Magda can be found at this link.
Here's a summary of the interview:
Q1: in what ways can ToK help with applying to university ?
Main benefit is not in actual academic score (points for getting in).
Can look at it in terms of knowledge, skills and qualities.
Knowledge & skills:
HE systems that involve interviews - ToK helps to develop critical thinking, flexibility in perspectives, developing questions, being comfortable with uncertainty, identifying nuance etc.
ToK helps you to show that you can make links between everyday things, and abstract second order ideas/thinking from those everyday objects.
Skills specific:
HE systems that require ‘Essays’ - ToK helps to develop essay writing skills, constructing a narrative, use of a story arc, reflective insights, evaluative points, implications of outcomes etc.
ToK helps you to demonstrate that you can present complex, and sometimes abstract, ideas in a clear and accessible way.
Qualities:
Teamwork - (eg essay development, organising & holding the exhibition etc).
Reflective learner - ToK involves a lot of reflection, esp if you have been keeping a ToK Journal.
Resilience, openness…,
Q2. So, it partly depends on the application process that is used in the system that you are applying to. Can you tell us a little about how students could evidence their ToK skills & knowledge in a few selected systems please.
US: College Essay. Possibly scholarship interviews ?
UK: Personal Statement, interview if required (Med, Nursing, Arts portfolio ?)
Hong Kong: Personal Statement, interview if required.
Q3: Can ToK be at all helpful when students are studying in HE / at university ?
Understanding how knowledge is made in the subjects that you study underpins all courses in higher education.
Understanding the potential flaws / problems of methodology / knowledge production is increasingly important in all subjects as you progress through the education system.
Particular relevance / pertinence in Humanities, Arts and Social sciences.
Magda's contact details
If you want advice or help with your university application, support with your DP or wider life coaching support you can contact Magda by email at magda@unifymecounselling.com.
Her website is linked here, and her other contact details are in the slide above / left.
Magda will be back soon to give us some help on understanding the role of the DP Core (ToK, CAS & EE) in university applications.
I hope that you found this blog useful, if you have any thoughts, or comments, please leave them in the comments box below.
Stay Toktastic my friends,
Daniel, Bangkok, Sept 23
The Significance of Structure in a ToK Essay: Lessons from an Octopus, a Skyscraper, and a Snowflake
ToK Essay Mini Series 2/4
Today, let's delve into an important, yet often overlooked aspect of your ToK journey: the structure in ToK essay.
To illustrate, let's take three intriguing examples: an octopus, a skyscraper, and a snowflake. What do they have in common? They all possess unique structures that define their purpose.
Echoing the thoughts of Barthes and Lacan: Structure matters!
Understanding the Importance of Structure in a ToK Essay
The question, “What structure am I supposed to use for my ToK Essay?” is one I frequently hear from my students. My answer: there is no universally correct structure. However, to achieve a high score, you need to integrate key components identified in the marking scheme. These are:
Areas of Knowledge (& therefore elements of The Knowledge Framework).
Knowledge Arguments.
The Implications of Knowledge Arguments.
Evaluation of Knowledge Arguments.
Potential Structures for a ToK Essay
Knowing these four requirements, we can start considering the potential structures for a ToK essay. A straightforward and often-used structure is shown here.
This common structure in a ToK essay is clear, easy to follow, and sufficient for scoring 9/10. Yet, you might want to develop a different structure to better present your arguments or to serve the function/purpose of the knowledge arguments in your essay. That's perfectly fine.
Planning and Choosing the Right Structure
I recommend starting with the basic structure outlined above. As your plan evolves, it will become clear whether a different structure might better serve your argument. In my e-book, "How to Write the ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps," I explore the strengths and drawbacks of six different essay structures, complete with examples.
Planning: The Heart of a High-Scoring ToK Essay
Let's now turn our attention to the significance of planning. It's essential to all assignments in your Diploma Programme, but it's probably most crucial in the ToK essay.
You need to spend considerable time pondering the prompt, drafting knowledge arguments, and researching real-life examples to illustrate those arguments. This process is planning, and it's what makes writing the ToK Essay enjoyable. I generally advise spending 80% of your time planning and 20% writing. The essay is only 1600 words long; with a clear plan and robust understanding of the prompt, you can pen those words in 4 hours or less.
Structure Isn't Only for ToK
Although this post wasn't about the philosophy of structuralism, it's very pertinent to Theory of Knowledge. You can check back a couple of weeks to see the posts about Structuralism
For more help or advice with ToK, we have an array of resources available at ToKToday.com, including coaching and written feedback. Last year many students also used the ebook, “How to Write the ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps,” it is brimming with advice on things like the essay structure, use of ToK concepts, and arguments.
Thank you for reading, and best of luck with your ToK learning. Remember, in your journey of ToK, much like in the world of the octopus, the skyscraper, and the snowflake, structure matters!
Stay ToKTastic!
For more help with
Understanding Intuition in the Context of ToK
Intuition is often seen as a mysterious, yet common and powerful form of knowledge. It sits in a space between a form of knowledge and an emotional response. Notably, we base many of our vital decisions (romantic partners, jobs, etc) on intuition. However, the role of intuition in decision making isn't very well understood. When it comes to experience, intuition often doesn't seem to match up with reason-based ways of knowing.
How Intuition and Emotions Fit Into ToK
A Theory of Knowledge (ToK) that includes intuition must also consider whether emotions are a form of knowledge. Neglecting intuition (or other emotions) in ToK misses some of the most critical influences on what we know, and why we know it. Hence, it's important to discuss intuition as a form of knowledge in ToK.
AoK Natural Sciences: Defining Intuition
We kick off with AoK Natural Sciences. Volz and Zander (2009) define intuition as a non-conscious process influencing behaviour, which operates based on implicitly acquired knowledge and signals to higher processing areas in the conscious brain. This takes us straight to the realm of AoK Human Sciences, especially neuro-psychology.
Neuro-Psychology and Intuition in ToK
To see intuition as more than an elusive meta-reality, we can examine cognitive processing in the memory and attention systems. Intuition might be understood as a process of linking implicit memories to conscious and subconscious memory systems. This perspective on intuition leads us to several intriguing knowledge questions about physical sensory perception.
Voss & Paller’s research published in Nature Neuroscience in 2009, provides evidence that the retrieval of explicit and implicit memories involves distinct neural substrates and mechanisms.
Essentially the research shows that stimuli encoded and stored whilst attention was diverted elsewhere were remembered more strongly than stimuli which were directly encoded through volition. As such this research indicates that intuition is most probably a product of learned behaviour rather than an innate ‘sixth sense’. In ToK terms this means that intuitive knowledge is formed indirectly without the proactive volition of the knower - we’ll call this the “indirect learning hypothesis”.
Knowledge Questions about Sensory Perception in ToK
The 'indirect learning' hypothesis of intuition brings forth a range of interesting knowledge(ish) questions about physical sensory perception, such as:
Is evolved niche development the cause or consequence of the development of sense perception?
Why did visual perception become the primary human sense?
Have we 'lost' perceptual senses beyond those currently known?
Is the residual data from lost/declining senses now labelled as intuition?
If Intuition is based on neurological processes of perception and learning (albeit indirect learning) then we should be able to improve decision making which is apparently based on ‘intuition’. This is exactly what Wan et al (2012) demonstrated with the training of novices in the game of Shogi (Japanese Chess). They trained the novices for 15 weeks, whilst also monitoring neural activation through fMRI. Wan et al took ‘next-move’ knowledge as being indicative of the knowledge that we usually label as ‘intuitive knowledge’. They compared professional players with amateurs, and found that professionals had a significantly higher level of stimulation of the caudate nucleus, an area in the dorsal of the Basal Ganglia. The role of the caudate nucleus in voluntary motor functioning has long been known, we are now beginning to understand that it also has a role in spatial mnemonics – which is similar in aspect to muscle memory. It is clear that indirect learning is involved in muscle memory, and other sensory based memories, as such the neurological basis for intuition becomes established.
The Importance of Intuition in ToK
In ToK terms this means that intuitive knowledge forms perception, and more pertinently perspective. These ‘frameworks of knowledge’ are acquired / socially constructed (through communities of knowers). However, they have an empirical biological base. This draws into focus the question of free will vs determinism - To what extent are we free to acquire / produce knowledge independently through volition, and to what extent is the acquisition & production of knowledge bound by external determinants such as biological conditioning ? This is even more acute given that the learning that leads to intuition is involuntary and indirect - ie we don’t choose to do it, we don’t know we’re doing it, and we have little control over it !
The claim that intuition has a neurological basis should be of interest to ToK students because firstly it gives an empirical basis for knowledge without evidence. Secondly, it starts to bring ‘scientific evidence’ to the constraints on our knowledge world. It leads us into the idea that our knowledge frameworks are, to a degree, the product of the limited boundaries of our biology. As such this claim leads to the possibility of currently unspecified AoK’s, those which have possibly ‘declined’ / lost during human evolution.
Intuition's Neurological Basis and its Impact on ToK
n conclusion I come back to the power of intuition, it’s a form of knowledge that we rely upon to validate other other forms of knowledge, and sometimes to make important decisions. Neuroscience is increasingly showing us that intuition is actually a learned set of skills and knowledge. As such it should be possible for us to teach people to be more intuitive. This would lead to better, and faster, decision making. As such knowledge of intuition becomes both an individual and social good.
In conclusion, intuition is a powerful form of knowledge that we rely on to validate other forms of knowledge and make important decisions. Neuroscience is increasingly showing us that intuition is actually a learned set of skills and knowledge. Therefore, it should be possible to teach people to be more intuitive, leading to better and faster decision making. Thus, knowledge of intuition becomes both an individual and social good.
ToK Exhibition Preparation
If you're preparing your ToK Exhibition, or deciding which ToK Exhibition prompt to use, be sure to check out our range of ToK Exhibition e-books - ToK Exhibition prompts explained. They provide step-by-step ways of developing knowledge arguments for each ToK Exhibition prompt, along with examples of objects that you could use. You can pick up the e-book of all prompts explained, or get an e-book for just 5 of the prompts, and we even have e-books explaining just the individual most popular prompts - whichever best suits your needs.
We also have resources to help you with your ToK Essay, and coaching services offered here.
Stay TokTastic my friends,
Daniel, August 2023
1st Yr Anniversary!
On 1st August 2022 (1 year ago today) I launched ToKToday, so I thought it would be a good time to look back at what has happened during that year. A reflection - we’re good IB learners, and IB learners know that reflection is central to learning.
ToKToday: Origin Story.
In summer 2022 I left my international school in Bangkok Thailand, and moved to beautiful Lisbon, Portugal. On the 1st August of that year I launched ToKToday, an online learning resource for Theory of Knowledge, with the aim to make “ToK more accessible for students and teachers. We aim to do this by providing accessible and effective resources for both the learning and teaching of ToK.”
The past year in numbers
Let's start with some quantitative knowledge (numbers, they’re nearly facts !):
We’ve published 144 videos on YouTube from analyses of Post-structuralist philosophy to the ToK of Taylor Swift, and 668 of you lovely viewers have subscribed to the YouTube channel, thank you so much for each and everyone of those subscriptions !
132 blog posts have been published on the ToKToday.com website (link in the video description).
32,000 unique visitors have come to the TokToday website (unique and special visitors), and those 32,000 visitors have collectively clocked up 66,000 views.
TokToday.com: global reach
People have visited the blog from 164 different countries in the world. The top 10 countries for visitors to the blog:
10: Turkey, 9: Japan, 8: Spain, 7: UK, 6: Hong Kong, 5: Canada, 4: Australia, 3: Singapore, 2: United States, 1: India.
The support from everyone has been great, but I need to make a special mention for India - the support of my Indian friends has been consistent and deep during the year. Further, in 3rd place there is Singapore, it’s not a big country in size, but it’s a big supporter of ToKToday - thank you Singapore!
ToKToday Ebooks
We’ve published 36 e-books on the ToKToday website, and they’ve been picked up by over 500 readers in 62 countries around the world.
I’ve worked with over 50 wonderful students in online coaching, and those students have come from 6 of the 7 continents of the world. - I’m still waiting for my first student from Antarctica
I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone who has supported TokToday this year by visiting the website, watching the videos, arranging coaching sessions and buying e-books. You have brought my vision to life, and given me the confidence to believe that this can actually work.
Qualitative learning from the past year.
Well, first of all I have to think about all of the wonderful people that I’ve met this year from all over the world through ToKToday.
Just to think that at this time last year I hadn’t met my new friends from Australia, they were the earliest supporters of the site, they helped me through a difficult time in the UK at the beginning of ToKToday, they gave me the confidence to continue to build the site, and have continued to be great supporters of the site over the past year - I won’t mention names, but thank you my Australian friends.
And then I also got to know new friends in Florida, USA who have also been wonderful supporters of the site, including giving me suggestions on content and direction - thank you so much to my special friends in Florida.
I have got to mention all of the wonderful people at United Lisbon International School here in Lisbon, they took me in at the beginning of the year, and have given me a practical element for ToKToday.
There are so many other people that I’ve worked with from all over the world who are new colleagues that I have met through ToKToday from HK, Singapore, India, Kenya, Latvia, Panama and Peru.
It’s been wonderful to meet all of you this year.
Unexpected outcomes this past year.
Well, to be honest - the whole vision of ToKToday has shifted during the year. There’s a saying : the first rule of planning is that the plan changes on first contact with reality. And that’s certainly true of ToKToday.
I thought that the main focus of the site would be videos on YouTube, but it’s turned out that the website gets far more attention & visits than YouTube. YouTube has been a lot more difficult than expected - I’m still working out what might work on YouTube.
Secondly, I thought the focus of ToKToday would be working with schools and teachers, and whilst some of this has happened most site views, video views and sales have come from students.
Another thing that I’ve learned this year is that student’s parents are very active in supporting their children’s ToK learning. It's parents who are looking at the site content and deciding whether I can support their children.
There are so many other things that I have learned this year from finding personal motivation free from institutional constraints to techy stuff like Search Engine Optimisation and ChatGPT.
Plans for the coming year for ToKToday.com
The first point of action is to redesign the website during the summer - the website needs to be more user friendly, and more aesthetically pleasing - so, I’m going to learn all about UX this summer.
The second aim is to produce more content for parents of DP students, and with that in mind I’m hoping to collaborate with other independent content creators & service providers in the DP space - there’s a couple of collaborations in the nascent stage, but if you’re interested in collaborating with me please get in touch.
And I’ll continue to improve the things that seem to be working in lots of other areas.
In summary
I recently read a quote from a teacher in the UK describing the state of education. She said that if a Pterodactyl were to land on the school roof the children would be told to ignore it so they could finish their allotted learning task.
Well I like to believe that ToK is a place in the school curriculum where we wouldn’t ignore the Pterodactyl. We’d go up to the school roof, and ask the Pterodactyl what evidence was required for its existence. Of course we'd also ask whether it could formulate 2 counterclaims for its existence.
Thanks for all of the support this year, thank you for watching & I hope to see you in the coming year, And of course,
Stay Tok-Tastic my friends
Daniel, August 2023
What is Technology?
Many of the explorations of knowledge questions in the Knowledge & Technology unit of ToK start with the question: "well, what do we mean by technology ?". So, I thought it would be useful to put together a blog which summarises 4 main approaches to how we can think of technology in its relationship with knowledge.
These approaches are very much umbrella approaches - they are rough ideal types to help us to explore that relationship between tech and knowledge, remember the focus is on knowledge, not tech.
The "tech is tool" approach.
The argument here is quite simply that technology is a tool that we use to solve human problems. This is obvious when we look at modern technologies such as the internet, cars, the printing press etc. It then also becomes apparent when we consider technologies from pre-industrial era such as smelting metals, wattle and daub etc.
This approach quickly takes us into non-physical technologies such as mathematics is a technology which allowed us to solve the problem of navigation through map-making, art is a technology which allows us to solve problems of expression and social cohesion etc. Arguably, language is the ultimate technology which allows for all other technological (& therefore knowledge) innovation. This approach has been well explained in the books by Yuval Noah Harari (particularly Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind).
Among the many writers who have taken the "tech is tool" approach are Plato and Rousseau who both argued that technology had a rather negative effect on knowledge and humanity. In Phaedrus Plato argued that that the use of writing had a negative impact on people's ability to remember and think critically. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote about the dangers of technological progress in his work "Discourse on Inequality." He argued that the development of technology had led to the development of private property, which had in turn led to social inequality.
On the other hand, Francis Bacon and Karl Marx, are writers who, in taking the "tech is tool" approach see technology as a positive benefit to the pursuit of knowledge, and the development of humanity. Bacon saw science and technology as being a single unified entity. He argued that science was the best way to uncover universal ordered truths from the disordered chaos of nature. Marx saw technology as a means by which proletarian labour (& bourgeois extraction of it) is quantified, and therefore is a necessary stage for the realisation of socialism. As such, Marx was positive about the influence of technology on the pursuit of knowledge.
I think that this approach is implied, and assumed, in the knowledge questions included in the ToK Study Guide for Knowledge and Technology. This approach may be all that is required of the ToK learner. However,
However, there are some concerns with this approach, concerns which are both general for us as learners, and specific to ToK:
Did these problems, which technology apparently solves, come before the technology or did technology create these problems ? (the problem here is one of causation - what is the cause of an object ?)
If the problems are antecedent to the technology, and technology is the solution to them, then are technology and knowledge actually separate entities ?
If technology and knowledge are intertwined then is there any non-technological knowledge ?
Wider ontological problems arising from the above - if knowledge is a requisite for existence, then is technology also a requisite for our existence ? Are we defined by solving problems ? Is consciousness essentially a task focussed process (Heidegger).
Concerns #1 & #2 conveniently segue into our second approach.
The "Some knowledge is tech" approach.
This approach argues that the knowledge which gives rise to the technology developed to solve the problems that we face is in itself technology. Knowledge such as language (incl. digital coding languages), religion, scientific theories, artistic arrangement etc all give rise to specific technologies which help us to solve a set of problems.
In this approach we start to understand technology as a set of practices rather than merely as a set of objects. Both the object (artifact) and the practices (processes) are seen as being technology. The object itself might be termed "instrumentality" as it was produced to (instrumentally) change the environment - ie to solve a problem. The practices which brought the artifact into being might be termed "productivity" as they gave us an object which, at some point, gave us increased control of our environment for a required purpose. The effect of this categorisation on the acquisition and production of knowledge will be explored in greater detail in subsequent blogs.
This approach also opens the door to a consideration of the social environment within which needs arise, and knowledge develops in order to meet those needs. Of course, this brings a sharp focus on what we define as 'needs', and who has the attendant power to solve that which they define as 'needs' (a quick sub-question: a lot of technology serves 'improvement' - is improvement fulfilment of a 'need' ?). And again, we have significant problems of causation here - what is the order of causation ? Is causation a necessary, or merely, sufficient requirement for the acquisition and production of knowledge ? etc
Overall, this approach also poses a number of challenges for our theory of knowledge:
Is the technology causal to the knowledge or vice versa ? (think about examples - this is more problematic than it first appears).
Both knowledge and technology can be thought of as evolutionary (and sometimes revolutionary) - does knowledge cause technology to evolve, or vice versa ? , and if so, how ?
Do we produce some knowledge which is not to solve problems ? , and if so what, and why ?
A range of ontological questions arising from #3: are we solely a problem solving being ? what about non-problem solving behaviours ? (do they even exist in this definition?). Is consciousness contingent on
Challenge #3 conveniently segues into our next approach.
The "all knowledge is tech approach".
If we accept that technology is a tool to solve problems, and that we accept that that which is known about the world is acquired, pursued and produced to solve problems then we arrive at the position that all knowledge is technology. Conversely, all technology is knowledge (however, this is a little more obvious, and a little less overwhelming). This approach gives rise to some very significant challenges:
Is there any knowledge which is not technology ? We can unpack this question by positioning problems as time, person and situation specific. ie we know things but may not be using them to solve a problem at that moment in time. Someone, somewhere else, may have used that knowledge to solve a problem, and once created this knowledge has been passed to me. This gives rise to a second problem:
Why do we have knowledge which does not solve problems for us ? If we accept that all knowledge can be categorised as technology, and that technology solves problems for us, then why do we know things which don't solve problems for us ?
Our now familiar ontological questions are now even stronger - if all knowledge is technology, and knowledge is a necessary requirement for our existence then this approach inevitably leads to the position that to being human is being technology, or put another way that a human being is technology itself.
And so we, conveniently, segue into our final approach.,
The "we are the tech - unified being approach".
OK, so now we need to work a little out of the realms of conventional ToK, but only to give us better ways to explore some of the ToK KQs posed in the optional theme Knowledge and Technology. Some writers have argued that our very existence, - our very human 'being', is one and the same as technology. Put simply we are technology. This approach, as the culmination of the 3 earlier arguments, aggregates those arguments to posit our 'being'ness as constituting a problem solving set of processes. This is often characterised as consciousness - the idea that consciousness is a referenced intention in the world.
This approach really helps us to start to answer questions about the role of technology in changing our pursuit of knowledge. Rather than tech merely improving, or impeding, our pursuit of knowledge technology reveals the world, and therefore is our very consciousness, our very awareness of the world - it neither improves nor impedes, but in its role as revelation is consciousness itself. This will really help us when we get to questions concerning artificial intelligence, and the biological integration of technology.
However, like the other 3 approaches, this approach poses some significant challenges for our understanding of the role of technology in the pursuit of knowledge:
1. Ethical issues - If tech & being human are one & the same thing, but there is unequal access to tech then is there also unequal access to the experience of being human ?
2. Continuum issues- where does the individuality of the knower begin, and the external universality of tech end ?
3. Categorisation & Organisation issues - why do we bother to have a separate category of knowledge called 'technology' at all ?
Hold Up!! - some of that has nothing to do with ToK!
"Some of those points above appear to be way beyond the scope of ToK". When we start to consider ontological questions such as the nature of existence, the requisite conditions for existence, and the nature of consciousness it appears that we are going well beyond the requirements of the ToK course. However, I believe that we can only tackle some of the technology KQs by considering some of the questions which might (conventionally) be asked by people who we label as existentialists, phenomenologists and ontologists. This will become far clearer when we get to the post on Artificial Intelligence.
Hold Up!! - again!
"Your 4 approaches are all based on one premise. They're all based on, and developments of Approach #1 - that technology is a tool to solve a problem".
Yes - this is a legitimate challenge to the framework outlined here. An equally valid approach would be to start from an entirely different premise, maybe that technology is not caused by problem solving, that technology is caused by, and defined by something entirely different. However, that's a big undertaking - maybe one that I will need to explore in another blog.
Closing thoughts.
We can use these definitions to help us to start to explore some of the knowledge questions in ToK Optional Theme Knowledge & Technology. We will look at 3 broad areas:
How does technology change our pursuit of knowledge?
Is Artificial Intelligence changing our understanding of knowledge?
Ethics and technology.
Those blogs are coming up in the next few weeks - I hope you come back to read them then!
Daniel, Lisbon, Jan 2023
Of further interest on Knowledge & Technology is:
We need to talk about Pune, India.
Women in STEM lesson (for teaching perspectives)
Did Photography change painting?
Bibliography and References.
Bimber, Bruce, 1990, “Karl Marx and the Three Faces of Technological Determinism”, Social Studies of Science, 20(2): 333–351. doi:10.1177/030631290020002006
Franssen, Maarten, and Gert-Jan Lokhorst. “Philosophy of Technology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford.edu, 2009, plato.stanford.edu/entries/technology/.
Plato. Plato's Phaedrus. Cambridge :University Press, 1952
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on Inequality. 1755. Aziloth Books, 2013.
Weeks, Sophie. 2008. “The Role of Mechanics in Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration”, in Zittel, C., Engel, G., Nanni, R. & Karafyllis, N.C. (eds.), Philosophies of Technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries. Brill. pp. 133-195.
Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. 2011. Random House Uk, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190207-technology-in-deep-time-how-it-evolves-alongside-us
What makes some ToK Essay Questions more difficult ?
What makes an IB ToK Essay question difficult, or easy ? Why are some questions more difficult than others ?
and conversely, what makes some ToK Essay Questions easier than others ?
The May 2023 ToK Essay titles are out, students are choosing their preferred title, and teachers are giving their advice. We often implicitly know that some titles will be more difficult than others, I decided to try to articulate some of that 'implicit knowledge'.
The video about this post is linked here, and below.
The relativism bit.
I feel obligated to get the "relativist" bit out of the way at the beginning of this post:
how difficult a student finds a question will vary by student.
how difficult it is to support a student writing a particular question will vary by teacher & student.
more popular questions may be marked more stringently by some examiners
Terms such as 'easy', 'difficult', 'challenging' are relative.
OK, with the relativist bit out of the way, we're going to pretend that our world view is a close representation of other people's world view - just for the sake of simplifying(ish)the world.
NB - IB own the copyright to all PTs, and don't allow them to be reproduced without written permission. Therefore I have attenuated, or changed the PTs presented here. The points made about the original PTs remain the same despite this, but if you want the actual full PT you will need to see the TRM on the PRC.
6 Factors which influence the difficulty of a ToK Prescribed Title:
1. "Closed Ended" vs Open Ended.
We know that all the questions are open ended questions (the command term is usually "Discuss"), but the Knowledge Question, or Claim, upon which they are founded is not always open ended. For example May 2022 #3 "Is there solid justification for regarding knowledge in Natural Sciences more highly than knowledge in [another] AoK?". In this case the student can start thinking about the essay in terms of answering "yes there is...," or "no there isn't...,". This makes writing claims and counterclaims far more straightforward, especially for those students who struggle with ToK.
The most 'closed ended' PT's contain absolute statements (eg #3 Nov 21: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” (Arthur Conan Doyle)). This absolute statement gives the student a fairly stable base on which to start developing their essay. For example with #3 Nov 21 students can start to think what Doyle meant by an "obvious fact", and therefore think about why it might be the most deceptive thing. It's a fairly solid base from which to develop the essay.
2. Assumptions.
Some of the PTs contain assumptions, sometimes these assumptions are explicit, sometimes they're implicit. Further some PTs contain both explicit and implicit assumptions. For example:
Explicit assumption: #3 May 2020: Does it matter that your personal circumstances influence how seriously your knowledge is taken?
Implicit assumption: #5 Nov 2021: “If all knowledge is provisional, when can we have confidence in what we claim to know?” (implicit assumption that we ever have confidence in what we know).
Both explicit & Implicit assumptions: #1 Nov 2021: "Why is it so difficult to identify a clear line between accepted and disputed knowledge within a discipline?"
OK, these dividing lines between explicit & implicit assumptions may not be as stark as shown here, but I assume that you get the idea.
The potential problem of assumptions is whether students should tackle them in the answer, and whether they NEED to tackle them to form their answer. The guidance is that students need to focus on the PT as given, and not change it. Therefore to spend too much time tackling the assumptions would be a diversion from the PT (as given), it's a loss of the required focus on the PT.
However, the higher marking bands of the assessment rubric also requires students to develop arguments pertaining to the KQ inherent in the PT. It is in this area that, with some PTs, students have the latitude to challenge the assumption(s) in the PT. The greater challenge comes when there are multiple assumptions in the PT. For example:
#3 May 2021: “Labels are needed* in the organization of knowledge, but they also constrain our understanding.”
Assumptions:
1. Labels are used in the organisation of knowledge.
2. Understanding can be constrained .
3. That there is organisation of knowledge.
In such circumstances I have advised my students to state which assumptions they are accepting as given, and which assumptions they will be critically interrogating. Further, if they have sufficient words they could give a rationale for their approach. This strategy has seemed to have worked well over the years.
Posing rhetorical questions within responses.
One of the particular holes that weaker students can fall into when dealing with a PT containing multiple assumptions is to write the assumption as a question in their response, and then to leave that question unanswered. For example, a student answering #3 May 21 (above) may pose the question "how do we even know that knowledge is organised, or is knowledge construction the organisation of disorganised data ?". In this instance we have a number of problems. The first being that PT isn't primarily about the organisation of knowledge (nor data), but about labels. As such the student is moving their focus off the PT. The student needs to directly link that question to the PT (about labels) for it to 'add' to the response. Secondly, by leaving a question hanging the essay reads like an incomplete, or incoherent, piece.
3. Quotes
Some of the questions contain a quote, often from a renowned writer. Eg #2 May 2022 "there’s a world of difference between truth and facts" May Angelou. Whilst this does not automatically make the question more difficult I have often found that it can introduce extra (confusing) variables into the process, particularly for students who find ToK difficult.
Obviously the student is required to interpret the quote in terms of ToK, and then to look at arguments pertaining to their ToK-interpretation of that quote. However, I have found that some students can get hung up on the author of the quote, and spend time trying to find a contextual meaning for the quote by investigating the life and works of the author. I assume that such students are bringing well learned skills and expectations from Grp 3 subjects such as History, or Global Politics, to their ToK. Of course, in some cases the quote can be a good platform for the student, but more often than not I have found it an added obstacle for students who are challenged by ToK.
4. Definitions.
Invariably the PTs require the student to develop definitions of concepts and key terms. Let's look at ToK Concepts first. ToK concepts should be easier for the student to define well (having studied the ToK course) than non-ToK concepts. Further some of the ToK Concepts will be easier to define than other ToK Concepts when they are readily apparent / clear in the corresponding AoK Knowledge Framework. For example in May 2022 #5 the concept of Interpretation in the Arts and one other AoK should have been relatively easy to draw from the Knowledge Framework. However, some ToK Concepts may not have been readily apparent to students even with interrogation of the corresponding knowledge framework eg #1 May 2022 the concept of Culture within AoK Maths will have required some further thought by many students.
However, this can become far more challenging when considering the need to define concepts/terms which are not included in the 12 ToK Concepts (which is not to say that they're not ToK concepts, it's just that they're not on the list on 12 defined by IB). A few examples: # 4 May 2022 - Stories. #6 May 2022 - Acceptable. #4 Nov 22- Indisputable. In these cases I often find that students will initially reach for a dictionary definition of the term, which usually takes them away from a ToK interpretation of the concept, and restricts the depth of their response. Further, weaker students find it difficult to apply the non-ToK concept to Knowledge Framework of the chosen AoK. The classic resent example was the concept of Story in #4 May 22. Many students found it difficult to interpret the idea of a story in Human Sciences, and to develop the notion of story in AoK History.
5. Clear claim or unclear claim?
All of the PTs include at least one 'claim', some PTs have multiple claims. Some PTs contain a single, clear, directional claim eg #5 Nov 2020: "Reliable Knowledge can lack certainty". In this case the student only has to deal with a single proposition, and the direction indicated by that proposition is clear. However, some PTs contain multiple claims Eg . #6 Nov 22: “If artists have freedom to interpret the past in ways that denied to historians, is this a benefit or barrier to our understanding of the past?" Discuss with reference to the arts and history (slightly changed to avoid copyright problems). With this PT the claim is a question in itself, that needs to be dealt with alongside the main thrust of the PT, namely the asset or obstacles to understanding the past. On top of this is the implicit assumption that an (the ?) aim of artistic knowledge is an understanding of the past.
Prescribed titles with a single, straightforward, claim tend to be easier for students to answer than those with multiple claims.
6. Freedom of Area of Knowledge.
Until May 2022 most Prescribed Titles give students a free choice as to which AoKs they want to write about, ostensibly this 'freedom' would seem to make it easier to answer these PTs than those that specify one (or sometimes both) PTs to be considered. However, in my opinion, the PTs which specify a PT are usually easier than those that give a free choice.
The Prescribed Essay Titles are actually asking students to engage in a discussion about The Knowledge Framework of the Areas of Knowledge. They are asking students to draw upon the knowledge issues arising from the Scope, Perspectives, Methodology and Ethics sections of the Knowledge Framework. Arguably, some knowledge issues are more 'obviously' relevant to certain AoKs than they are to others. When the Examiners are directing students towards a specific AoK they are , in effect, telling us that this knowledge issue is most pertinent in this specific AoK. It's directed guidance which makes it easier for the student to focus on the title, and make relevant links to the essay title. As such it makes it easier for students to access the higher marking bands, especially those students who struggle with ToK. Let's look at a couple of examples:
#5 May 2022: 5. In what ways* can we distinguish between good and bad interpretations? Discuss with reference to the arts and one other area of knowledge. (slightly altered for copyright reasons).
Obviously all AoKs involve interpretation of knowledge, however arguably interpretation is a more salient issue in AoK The Arts than in some other AoKs. In The Arts Interpretation of both the artist (the knowledge producer) and the audience (the knower) is it at the heart of the knowledge production process and knowing (the audience). By asking students to contrast AoK The Arts with one other AoK the examiners are giving students a big hint that they could write an essay contrasting an individualised approach to knowledge (The Arts) with a more standardised approach to knowledge (eg Mathematics, or Natural Sciences). The students could look at the function of the Area of Knowledge, or the acceptability of individualised interpretation within each AoK. They could look at standardised protocols of interpretation in an AoK such as Maths vs less standardised protocols in The Arts etc.
Prescribed Titles that direct students to at least one AoK for consideration give students a greater chance of focussing on salient issues. Therefore such PTs tend to be 'safer' (& maybe 'easier'), particularly for students who struggle with ToK.
A few side swinging Googlys (as in the cricketing sense of the word):
No explicit directive link to ToK:
In the past we used to see the occasional question that had no explicit directive link to ToK. These are becoming more rare in recent sessions, but I thought I'd include this warning here, just in case they reappear in future sessions. An explicit directive link to ToK is a phrase telling the students what to do with the stimulus, eg "Discuss this with reference to two Areas of Knowledge". Here are two examples of PTs that do not have an explicit directive link to ToK:
#2 Nov 2021
“Knowledge gained through direct experience is powerful but can be* problematic.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
#2 Nov 2020
“Too much of our knowledge revolves around ourselves, as if we are the most important thing in the universe” (adapted from Carlo Rovelli). Why could* this be problematic?
Neither of the PTs above explicitly tell the students that they need to refer to the ToK framework, specifically the Knowledge Frameworks of the AoK. I know that teachers will make this clear to the students, but it's still very possible that students may write a more descriptive and anecdotal essay, particularly those students who find ToK more challenging.
Truth.
I used to have a general rule that students should avoid using the word "truth" in my ToK classroom, and in their ToK Essays / Presentations (as they then were). The concept of truth introduced so much complication, and would often be used interchangeably with objectivity or validity. Now that Truth is one of the twelve core concepts in the current guide the truth can no longer "be avoided".
In May 2022 PT #2 put the concept of truth at the heart of the essay title, and many of my students chose to write this title. I had to do some significant extra teaching to help them to develop a range of definitions for the word "truth", and to develop a set of critical approaches to truth. My caution about the concept of truth is that many students treat is an external fixed reality. May 2022 PT #2 was getting to the heart of that mistake, and asking them to interrogate the idea of a separation between external 'truths' ("facts") and internal knowledge ("truth"). Those that chose this essay title did fairly well.., but I remain cautious when it comes to the "truth" !
Existential-type questions
Some PTs refer to the Knower, as such these questions could be interpreted as asking the student to comment upon the Knower as well as the construction of knowledge within an AoK. Commenting upon The Knower is, of course, a laudable aim (The Knower is after all the Core Theme in the current guide). However, for some students who struggle with ToK discussions about The Knower can easily become self referential and anecdotal. They can also fall into being a commentary on relativism - which rarely helps students to achieve a good grade in ToK. In the most concerning incidents discussions about The Knower can lead to 'existential type' responses which question the nature of being, and our function in the universe.
Examples of PTs which invite discussion of the knower:
May 2016
3. “The knower’s perspective is essential in the pursuit of knowledge.” To what extent do you agree with this statement* ?
May 2020
3. Is it of concern* that your personal circumstances influence how seriously your knowledge is taken?
If you want to watch a video on questions which will help students to understand the ToK Essay title click here.
Students who are looking for more help on how to write the ToK Essay can check out this Ebook.
Summary.
These general observations about factors which make PTs more, or less, challenging for ToK students have been gathered over many years of teaching & supervising the Essay, and marking it for IB. They are very broad generalisations, and of course there are going to be PTs, and students, that don't conform to the observations above. However, I hope that these observations help ToK students and teachers a little more when making the judgment about which ToK PT to write.
Do you agree, or disagree, with my observations? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
Daniel, Lisbon, Portugal.
August 2022.
this is not the original word in the PT, it has been changed to ensure that we don't break IB copyright, however the substituted word has broadly the same meaning, arguably.
What is the ToK Mindset? and how do we create it?
If we can build understanding in 4 crucial areas for the ToK Mindset we will improve understanding, and grades, in ToK. The challenge is how we build that understanding.
It's a warm Thursday afternoon, the last period of the day, and you have DP1 ToK in a warm and stuffy classroom. Attention is wandering, some students are drifting between drowsiness and distraction. You're trying your best, they're trying their best. However, three students, sitting near the front have steel like attention fixed on the task at hand. They're engrossed in lively conversation about the difference between perceived knowledge and evidential knowledge, they keep calling you over for clarification. They want you to explain some of the finer points of Kantian Transcendental Realism even though they know it's far beyond the demands of this course. These students have developed the ToK Mindset (and some!).
The challenge for the ToK Teacher is to help all students to develop the ToK Mindset. OK, we don't need all of our students to go as far as the 3 Neo-Kantians ! Our challenge is to get our students to a point where they can apply a rather abstract framework and set of principles to the lived world.
This is the third Blog post in this series, the first concerned Knowledge Issues, and the second is a lesson starter activity that you can use to link ToK Concepts with Knowledge Issues. Both previous posts will help to build background understanding for this post.
What is the ToK Mindset?
The ToK Mindset is the ability to apply the ToK Framework, and principles of ToK, to the world that we experience.
an experienced ToK Teacher.
How do we create the ToK Mindset?
4 areas of understanding need to create the ToK Mindset.
We can try to identify what it is that those students who understand ToK have that the other students have less of. I think that there are 4 areas of understanding:
Making the familiar unfamiliar means questioning taken for granted assumptions. Simon Sinek coined the phrase "asking why not what", and we can repurpose that for ToK. This is why I teach my students that the first rule of ToK is to "Question the question".
Three key concepts: Perspective, Context and Extrapolation, allow the students to understand their their lived reality is not a standardised and universal experience. These concepts allow them to build conceptual and abstract models. These are the thinking skills which enable students to understand that "other's with their differences may also be right".
The BLURS mnemonic helps students to develop arguments that are nuanced, and have the combination of complexity, depth and analysis required in ToK.
An understanding that knowledge is constructed. This seems self evident, but it is more complicated than it seems. Students can often say that knowledge is constructed without necessarily appreciating what that means. I come across this most frequently when we're looking at AoK History or Maths. In both AoKs students will refer to "the truth", or "what actually happened". When I remind them that "knowledge is constructed" they often don't see the inherent contradiction.
Conclusion.
If we can build understanding in the 4 areas for the ToK Mindset we will improve understanding, and grades, in ToK. The challenge is how we build that understanding. In the next blog post in this series I will look at the underlying framework for teaching which helps to build that understanding. It may also be useful to look at the ToK Skills Map (I welcome any feedback / suggestions on the Skills Map).
Daniel,
Lisbon, August 2022.
How can we teach ToK in only 100 hrs?(New to ToK #3 Speed (pt2))
How can we teach the IB Theory of Knowledge course in 100 hours ? I offer 3 strategies to teach the course in the limited time available.
The IB recommends that the ToK course is taught in 100 hours, many teachers find this to be too little time. This problem can be compounded because many schools struggle to allocate even the minimum recommended time. In today’s blog I want to suggest 3 ways for you to successfully deliver the course in 100 hours.
#1 Go Slow to go fast
Your first instinct might be to try to cover the curriculum as quickly as possible, to rush through the Areas of Knowledge and the Optional Themes. However, I believe that the way to speed up curriculum coverage is actually to do the exact opposite, slow down rather than try to speed up - which may seem antithetical to begin with.
“Go slow to go fast” means focus on deepening student understanding early in the course, don't worry so much about curriculum coverage. If you build the key ToK skills early in the course then the students will be able to learn the content much faster later in the course.
The key to go slow to go fast is to identify the important skills which are necessary for student mastery of the ToK framework, there are many blogs and videos coming up on ToK skills, not least the next one in this series.
In summary - focus on building ToK skills not covering content early in the course.
#2 Abstraction & Reification (Kolb’s Learning Cycle).
Why do some students (& teachers) find ToK so much harder than other subjects ? I would say that one of the reasons is that ToK requires us to abstract from, and reify, the real world context. EG in the real world it’s a coffee mug, but in ToK it’s knowledge with a specific Scope, Methodology, Perspectives and even associated ethics.
So how do we teach students to abstract & reify the real world ? The most effective model that I have found is Kolb’s Learning Cycle. It’s a 4 stage model of learning which helps students to move from the concrete real world to the abstract conceptual world.
I use Kolb’s learning cycle as the underlying framework for planning lessons, designing an activity for each stage. This process makes it far easier for students to move from "the real world" to the ToK world.
In summary - draw upon the expert constructivist models (such as Kolb's Learning Cycle) - their work is based in research.
#3: Making the Familiar Unfamiliar (Schematic Redefining)
We know that when we’re teaching ToK we’re teaching Critical Thinking skills, but what does that actually mean ? How do we operationalise that into a set of real activities and skills ?
Well a good starting point is to ask the students to constantly question their tacitly accepted beliefs. Very early on I teach my students that the first rule of ToK is to “Question the Question”.
This means that from the beginning of the course I focus on encouraging the students to question the premise of statements used in class & in IB Knowledge Questions and prompts. EG - what do we mean by culture ? How do we define new knowledge ? How do we define ‘Seek’ etc ?
Summary: focus on students developing questions more than answering them.
Let’s draw these 3 things together:
Go slow to go fast, Abstraction & Reification and Make the familiar unfamiliar. On their own none of these 3 things are rocket science - they’re not great innovations in pedagogy. However, when brought together, and used consistently your ToK students will be able to construct the content of the course themselves, thus enabling you to cover the syllabus far faster - in that way you can teaching ToK in 100 hrs or less.
Daniel, Lisbon, Portugal,
August 2022
How to Teach ToK (New to ToK Pt 3)
What are the fundamentals to lesson planning for Theory of Knowledge ?
When designing lessons ToK Teachers may want to focus on 3 factors:
the development of Skills
ways to speed up learning
group dynamics in the ToK class
When I started to write the "New to Teaching ToK" series I was always a bit worried about the third part - the 'what do you actually do ?' part. My concern was (is?) that no single ToK lesson is identical to any other lesson, and there's no simple formula for designing the lessons.
I used to place much more emphasis on making resources, and giving them away to other ToK teachers. However, I started to think that this isn't a particularly helpful approach for those teachers or for their students. The problem of 'pick up & give' lessons is that they haven't been designed for that particular group of students. Of course the teacher could modify the lesson so that it meets the particular needs of the students concerned, however that can be more work for the teacher than just writing it themselves from scratch, because the teacher hasn't written that lesson.
So, when I came to the "what do I actually do ?" bit I thought it best to go back to the principles by which I design lessons. I boiled this down to 3 main aims:
Skills Development - the longer I teach ToK the more I realise that it's a skills course, developing skills is everything. Once students have the skills they'll fill in the content themselves.
Speed - we have a maximum of 100 hrs to teach, and assess, the whole course. Accelerating the cognitive development & understanding of the students needs to be a focus of every lesson.
Group Dynamics - using group dynamics fuses together the skills development and speeding up cognitive development.
I made a video on each of these areas:
and there are far more details on each at
Group Dynamics blog post linked here.
Speed (Cognitive Development) blog Post linked here.
Skills Development blog Post linked here.
I hope that ToK teachers find this content useful (if you did a Like on WordPress or YouTube would be much appreciated), if you have requests for particular content please let me know (Daniel@TokToday.com).
thanks for reading, and have a great day!
Daniel,
Lisbon, Portugal. August 2022.
Are Group Dynamics your key to ToK success?
New to ToK #3: ToK Lesson Design (pt 1)
Does ToK require the use of a special lesson design?
Does ToK lend itself to a particular lesson model more than other subjects?
What is the relationship between how learning is designed and how skills are developed in ToK?
How you design learning in the ToK classroom is the single most important factor in determining the success of your ToK course.
In this blog I will explain the main lesson design models that I have iterated over my years of ToK teaching. These are models that I have found to be successful in :
Optimising engagement & group dynamics.
Optimising skill development.
Optimising understanding.
Group Dynamics in The ToK Classroom
I want to reemphasise the points made in parts #1 & #2 of this series regarding the importance of group dynamics in the ToK classroom. By designing learning which promotes building cohort you will increase the learning capacity of the class as a whole, and of the individuals in a class. More on this in the lesson designs to follow.
My Foundation ToK Lesson Design.
This is 'very' foundation, but it constitutes a model on which everything else can be built. The model moves the students into "ToK thinking" with a starter activity, and then slowly moves students up a ladder from the material, experiential world to the abstracted ToK world. The model contains 2 periods of reflection, and an energiser in the middle - for obvious reasons!
How long does this Model take?
This Foundation Model is essentially elastic, I have used it for sessions lasting 30 mins- 2 hrs. The longer the session the more task variety is needed in the blue sections of the model.
Whilst this model may seem overly simplified it can easily be overlooked. An experienced teacher recently told me that he couldn't keep his G11 class engaged for 80 minutes. When I asked him how he was structuring the lesson I found that there was no task variety, no multi-modal learning, no variety of learning groups, never mind starters and energisers. This was an experienced teacher who had just forgotten the fundamentals.
Think about Grouping..,
The added power in your classroom is the aggregate knowledge of the group, teaching ToK is far easier when you place the interaction of learners at the heart of your lesson design. To be honest, I have seen ToK Classrooms which involve a lot of watching (TED) videos, or reading long tracts of text. Whilst these can result in some good learning they're rather passive, not really an active inquiry which encourages students to construct their own understanding. Further, this group interaction will build the group dynamics which leads to improved student self regulation, and features of the Growth Mindset.
Design learning that unleashes the power of the group!
There're even more details available from the YouTube video on this topic:
The best ToK course structure flow chart ever (probably).
OK, the title of this blog would be deemed to be an "unsubstantiated assertion" by an IB Essay Examiner. However, if anyone has seen a better ToK course structure than the one below then please send it to me for comparative evaluation.
The best ToK Course Structure flowchart, ever (probably).
Click here for a large PDF of the flowchart.
The left side of the chart shows the factors to be taken into account when choosing how to structure your ToK Course.
The right side of the chart shows the 3 (+1) course structures which I looked at in my previous blogs / videos on ToK Course Structure.
The detailed blog on ToK Course Structure is linked here.
The long video (part 1) on ToK Course Structure is linked here.
The long video (part 2) on ToK Course Structure is linked here.
Why should ToK Teachers care about Course Structure?
Granted, course structure is not the most scintillating of topics for most teachers, particularly those new to the course. However, the way that the course is structured very much determines how it is delivered. The method(s) of course delivery are probably the biggest factor in determining the quality of learning, the student (& teacher) experience of the course, and the learning outcomes.
"How do I improve the ToK grades that my students receive ?"
I often hear ToK teachers asking how to improve their ToK grades. When we talk about why a particular cohort of students may have received lower than expected ToK grades we may turn to looking for flaws in the assessment system. Of course, the assessment system is applied in a standardised manner for all students, so if our particular students received lower grades relative to other students in the same cohort we need to look at factors other than the assessment system. I would suggest looking at the course structure in order to gain a better understanding of the longitudinal development of learning in the cohort.
If we get the course structure right we're 80%+ of the way to getting good grades in ToK. That's why I tried to make The Best ToK Course Structure in the World, ever (probably).
Daniel,
Lisbon, Portugal.
August 2022
New to teaching ToK? (Part 1)
What to do in the first couple of lessons.
Overview video in under 60 seconds.
If you're new to teaching Tok you may be wondering what to do in your first few lessons, you may have been to the IB Cat 1 and Cat 2 training, and yet you’re still wondering what to do in the first few lessons, ToK presents us with a syllabus which has no content, but it does have a framework. It is quite natural to ask what do I do with this ? where do I start ? and what should I be starting with?
This is the first in a 3 part series of blogs written to help teachers who are new to teaching ToK. I will draw on my (17) years of experience of teaching ToK to tell you what I do, what has been successful and why I do it. I will also give you some free resources that you can use in your first few ToK lessons if you choose to do it the same way that I do it.
The 3 blogs will provide you with a way to start teaching your ToK course.
Blog 1: What to do the first few lessons (this blog).
Blog 2: Ways to structure your ToK course.
Blog 3: How to actually teach ToK.
The detailed video of this blog.
The formal title of these first couple of lessons is “Emotional Orientation”, but we could subtitle it “teaching students not a subject”. This may seem obvious, and you’re probably a very emotionally intelligent and affectively sensitive teacher of your main subject, well we just need to ensure that we bring those skills and that approach over to ToK.
#1 Students not Subject.
I’m going to approach this with three main parts to it:
Emotional Orientation.
Group Dynamics
How to teach ToK
These three parts are obviously inter-linked, and they form a very particular approach to teaching ToK, an approach that I have developed over a significant period of being a ToK teacher.
Emotional Orientation of students not subjects
My first piece of advice to teachers who are new to teaching ToK is to remember that you are teaching students not a subject. If you successfully teach a hexagon subject you will be very aware of the importance of thinking about the students in front of you rather than the subject itself. Well, the same applies to Tok, however sometimes new teachers can become distracted by the ToK framework.
“The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
So in these first few lessons I spend the time getting to know the students in my class, I want to know them as individuals, what motivates them what are they interested in, what type of learning tasks they enjoy doing, what preconceptions they bring to the classroom and most importantly what knowledge and skills do they have that will help us to supercharge our TOK course. One of the common challenges that most ToK teachers face is that we don't have enough time to deliver this course, if your school gives you the IB's recommended time allocation it is only 100 hours, and some schools struggle to even give the full recommended time. In order to mitigate for time constraints we have to develop a course which draws upon the qualities, values, skills and engagements of the students. This needs to be a student led course, more than a teacher led course, by promoting student led delivery you accelerate learning, and reduce the pressure on time.
So where to start? : every human experience is partly an emotional experience.
The students are bringing their emotional orientation towards school, IB, ToK, you, etc . What you are interested in is what emotions do these students bring into my classroom ? and what are their core emotional frameworks ? and how can I shape their emotions so that they are positive about ToK?
Games!
So in those first couple of lessons I like the students to experience ToK as low-stakes, and enjoyable. I try to play a few games and get them moving around the classroom. The games are designed to allow me to get to know more about them. One of the key games that I play I call "Fact, Opinion, Belief and Truth". I have linked this resource below, you can adapt the resource for your own requirements.
In this game students have to classify statements as Facts, Opinion, Beliefs or Truths. This game seems to be overly simple, but of course students should quickly start debating how we define a fact, or a truth. Having both ‘Opinion” and ‘Belief’ in there as categories often leads to much debate. I have often found that students will appeal to me, as the teacher, to tell them the definition of one of the categories, and this gives me a great opportunity to tell them for the first time that it’s up to them to arrive at their own definition. This is a key moment for modelling ToK thinking, particularly if the students have come from a pre-DP curriculum based around pre-determined knowledge (such as iGCSE). You can bookend this game with students completing their own knowledge statements (such as “I know____ a fact”, and “I believe_______”.). By completing this both before and after the game we’re doing Reflection, without mentioning the word Reflection, more on that in later videos.
Other games that I use in these first couple of lessons will involve the ToK Concepts - especially Power, Truth and Responsibility. I link resources to these in the video description.
The objective of these games is two-fold - one to give students positive experiences of being in ToK (proactively address their emotional orientation to the subject), and secondly to give me an understanding of who I have in my class so that I can tailor lessons to their interests and skills in order to increase engagement, and overcome time pressures in the course. Which leads us into our second aspect: Group Dynamics.
#2 Group Dynamics
Each ToK class is different, and each student is different in every class to which they belong. The group dynamics of your ToK class are unique. You can influence these dynamics, you can shape them, these dynamics are your value added variable for success. Think of them as being a form of momentum which will carry you and the students along when things are tough. However, to take advantage of the unique group dynamics of your class you need to develop a good understanding of them in a range of different circumstances. During these first few lessons of the ToK Course you can design activities which will give you an insight into the group dynamics of your class, and the potential dynamics during a range of different learning activities.
Murphey et al (2012) use the term "collaborative agency" to describe the synergistic power of positively integrated groups working together to a common goal. The authors construct an argument that rather than taking the individual as the key unit for understanding learning we should take the group as the unit for understanding outcomes. Therefore we should start with the group if we want to positively effect such outcomes.
I will try out a few different group activities in these first few lessons to see how the students react. Such activities include competitive group games, creative group games, group challenges incl. Problem solving, group presentations and drama.
I want to make a special mention for the role of drama, Drama is, in my experience, incredibly powerful in the ToK classroom. By giving the students very time limited ad lib scenarios you are making them develop an understanding of perspective, purpose, context and role of knowledge producers, knowledge communities and the knower. You are also building positive group dynamics, and you have the added bonus that generally the students don’t feel like they’ve been to a heavy academic class, but have spent the lesson having fun doing some drama. ToK Today will bring you some videos specifically on how to use drama in ToK in the coming months.
In summary these first couple of lessons are your first opportunity to intentionally start building the group dynamics which will be so important to building the skills and ability for the students to realise success in the limited time available.
That’s a convenient segue into the final element of today’s video: Norms of Co-construction.
#3 Norms of Co-Construction.
We know that the best approaches to teaching and learning promote student agency and enquiry. This is only even more evident in ToK, where there’s no defined content, but the course requires students to develop a particular lens and then to apply that lens to the things that they are interested in in the world. As such, my aim for every ToK class is that we develop a norm of co-construction - that is that the students develop and deliver the learning for each other. The first few lessons are essential for establishing that norm. - how do we do this?
The games that I talked about earlier can be delivered so that students variously take the roles of participants, organisers, and assessors / judges. I will hand the board markers over to one or two students and tell them they’re in charge of running this section of the lesson. I will also put a few students in charge of judging the outcomes of the games. The games are pretty low stakes so there’s never any peer stress caused by this, and the students quickly expect to have an active role in the ToK classroom. Again, as we look at how to teach ToK in future videos I will come back to the Norms of Co-construction.
Summary
So, there we have the first 2-3 hours of ToK teaching as I do it. In summary - intentionally address the emotional orientation of the students to ToK, start building positive group dynamics, and start establishing a norm of co-construction.
If you’re an experienced ToK teacher you probably do these things anyway. However, I felt it valuable to make this video for colleagues who are new to teaching ToK because I don’t think it’s Self Evident in the Course Guide, and the IB Workshops that I have attended have focussed on What to teach, but not How to teach it.
Daniel Trump,
Founder of ToK Today.
Resources.
If you've made it this far you very much deserve some free resources! These are some of the resources (for playing ToK Games) that I mentioned in the long video (you may have to adapt them for your local circumstances):
Thunks (this is just a starter, you can find many more at this link)
References.
Sagan, C., Druyan, A., Malone, A., Sagan, C., Soter, S., Andofer, G., & McCain, R. (2013). Cosmos. Random House Inc.
Murphey, T., Falout, J., Fukada, Y., Fukuda, T. (2012). Group Dynamics: Collaborative Agency in Present Communities of Imagination. In: Mercer, S., Ryan, S., Williams, M. (eds) Psychology for Language Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137032829_15