3 easy ways to teach critical thinking in ToK

In Theory of Knowledge (ToK) critical thinking is not just a buzzword but a foundational skill that can significantly impact students' understanding and their ability to score well in ToK. But what exactly does it mean to "teach critical thinking"? Many of the teachers that I work with have asked for more help with this.

Understanding Critical Thinking in ToK

Critical thinking in ToK can be distilled into two primary elements:

1. Evaluation of Arguments: This involves identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. It's about scrutinising the evidence, reasoning, and conclusions presented.

2. Development of Alternative Explanations: Beyond just critiquing, critical thinking also encompasses the ability to propose different explanations or viewpoints.

While there are numerous facets to critical thinking, focusing on these two skills can significantly aid students in excelling in ToK.

Teaching Critical Thinking Through Knowledge Issues

One of the most effective ways to cultivate these critical thinking skills is by engaging with knowledge issues. A knowledge issue refers to any factor that might influence knowledge - be it in its acquisition, development, production, or evaluation. Key knowledge issues relevant to ToK include reliability, validity, selectivity, predictability, hierarchy, inference, misrepresentation, and various biases.

These issues are intrinsically linked to the 12 core ToK concepts, with each concept potentially serving as a category under which specific knowledge issues can be grouped. For instance, the concept of culture could encompass knowledge issues like misrepresentation, inference, and confirmation bias.

Practical Approaches to Teaching Knowledge Issues

Here are three effective strategies for teaching knowledge issues in the ToK classroom:

1. Grouping Knowledge Issues Under ToK Concepts: Start by having students categorize knowledge issues under the 12 core ToK concepts. Provide them with a list to get started, and encourage them to add their own. This activity boosts familiarity with ToK concepts and deepens understanding of knowledge issues as students discuss and justify their categorizations. For lesson materials that could be used for this activity click here.

2. Applying Knowledge Issues to Real-World Examples: Introduce students to a selection of knowledge issues, then present a real-world case study. Ask students to identify relevant knowledge issues and explain their relevance. This approach helps develop key ToK skills necessary for both the Exhibition and the Essay. For lesson materials that could be used for this activity click here.

3. Using Edward DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats: Adapt this cognitive framework to encourage alternative thinking. Assign each student or group a "hat" that represents a specific way of thinking (e.g., "Facts" for the White hat, "New Ideas" for the Green hat). Present a real-world problem for analysis through the lens of their assigned thinking direction. This activity fosters an understanding of perspective, context, and the intentions of knowledge producers and knowers.

For more in depth thoughts, and further learning materials, on teaching critical thinking in ToK click here

Conclusion

Teaching critical thinking in ToK doesn't require endless watching of TED videos, nor extensive texts. By focusing on ToK skills and creating engaging, activity-based learning experiences, teachers can effectively impart critical thinking skills. For more ideas and resources, feel free to explore further or reach out with suggestions and inquiries.

If you have any content suggestions or questions, don't hesitate to contact us at Daniel@ToKToday.com.

Daniel, Lisbon, Feb 2024

Stages for Teaching the ToK Essay

Teaching the Theory of Knowledge (ToK) essay is a challenging yet rewarding endeavour that requires careful planning and thoughtful instruction. The ToK essay is a critical component of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme, demanding students to reflect on the nature of knowledge and how we know what we claim to know. Drawing on my experience of guiding students through the ToK essay in 22 exam sessions, I've distilled my approach into five key stages that have proven effective. These stages are designed to optimise the teaching process for the ToK essay, ensuring both teachers and students are well-prepared for this intellectual undertaking.

1. Planning Not Writing

The most crucial insight I've gained is the importance of prioritising planning over writing. Students should devote a significant portion of their time to unpacking the essay titles, exploring the concepts, and crafting knowledge arguments. This preparatory stage is vital for a successful essay, making the writing process smoother and more productive. I advocate for a planning-to-writing time ratio of roughly 80:20, encouraging students to engage deeply with their ideas before committing them to paper. This approach ensures that students are thoroughly thinking through their arguments and structuring their essays coherently before they begin the actual writing.

2. Delay Choosing Titles

A common mistake students make is rushing to select their essay title. Delaying this choice until later in the planning phase allows students to broaden their understanding of ToK concepts and apply these insights to various prescribed titles (PTs). This strategy enhances their conceptual flexibility, enabling them to craft more nuanced and comprehensive essays. By postponing the selection of essay titles, students can explore a wider range of ideas and approaches, ultimately choosing a title that resonates with their insights and understanding of ToK.

3. Problematizing Concepts, Knowledge Issues & Knowledge Arguments

To achieve high marks in the ToK essay, students must adopt an analytical, evaluative, and critical stance towards ToK concepts and the knowledge framework. Many students begin with a settled view of ToK, which can limit their ability to critically engage with the essay's demands. By problematising ToK concepts and encouraging critical examination of knowledge issues—such as reliability, validity, and falsifiability—students can develop a more sophisticated and questioning approach to knowledge. This critical engagement is essential for constructing compelling arguments and achieving excellence in the ToK essay.

4. Groupwork Teamwork

Given the typical class size for ToK, individualised teacher support for each student's essay can be challenging to provide. Leveraging the power of group work can offer peer support, advice, and guidance. Establishing writing groups for students tackling the same prescribed titles can foster a collaborative learning environment while adhering to academic integrity rules. Promoting the essay as a collaborative process can alleviate individual anxiety and ensure a supportive learning community where all students progress together.

5. The Draft Deadline Is the Big Deadline

Emphasising the draft deadline as the primary milestone can significantly impact the quality of the final essays. By treating the draft deadline with greater importance than the final submission deadline, most of the "heavy lifting" can be completed early on. Some schools celebrate this stage with a Draft Deadline party, highlighting its significance. A well-developed draft sets the stage for refining essays from middle to higher mark bands, focusing on enhancement rather than basic completion.

These five stages offer a comprehensive approach to teaching the ToK essay, providing a framework for students to develop their ideas thoughtfully and critically. For teachers embarking on this educational journey, these strategies can facilitate a more engaging and effective learning experience, helping students to navigate the complexities of the ToK essay with confidence.

Teachers can get a free teaching schedule overview at this link.

If you are a teacher who would like help with delivering the ToK Essay, or you're a student who would like help writing your ToK essay, please contact me: Daniel@TokToday.com

Stay ToKTastic,
Daniel, Lisbon, Feb 2024

Halloween ToK Triple Bill

If you're getting into that Halloween spirit, or if you're a teacher and your students are getting into that Halloween spirit, we present The ToK of Halloween triple bill. The ToK of:

• Dracula

• Frankenstein

• Unexplained things

The ToK of Dracula and Frankenstein

The two gothic horror books are considered through the lens of ToK. We use the techniques and frameworks to analyse these books that students could use to develop knowledge arguments from objects in their ToK Exhibitions.

The ToK of the unexplainable.

This third element of our ToK of Halloween is a little more esoteric (but also more substantial) than the first two. In this third element we're focussing on the ToK concept of explanations. We look at a range of issues relating to explanations (e.g. the quality of explanations, the purpose of explanations, the implications of explanations). We do this using the work of Graham Hancock (Lost civilisation hypothesis). The story of the development, and possibly increasing acceptance, of his work has many ToK themes incl. the nature of evidence, gatekeepers, power hierarchies, paradigms etc etc.

If you have any suggestions for the ToK of Halloween next year please let me know (Daniel@ToKToday.com), and if you have any suggestions for any (non-halloween) related content also feel free to get in touch.

Enjoy your halloween season!
Daniel, Lisbon, Oct 23

Priest's religious knowledge - do they believe in God?

Today's post can be used as an RLS for The Core Theme Knowledge & The Knower, and as RLS for AoK Human Sciences, and the Optional Theme Knowledge and Religion. It's about Priests who don't believe in God, and was the most popular post on my old ToK Blog (ToKTrump). There are obvious links with the role of Religious Knowledge in this research.

The Core Theme: Knowledge and The Knower is a very broad unit encompassing a wide range of knowledge questions. It can be a little unwieldy if not focussed onto some key knowledge questions, or a set of themes. I have slowly developed a sense that my student's most illuminating learning in this unit is firstly that knowledge is constructed rather than give, secondly that that process of construction is highly contextualised, and finally that it is not experienced as contextualised by the knower.

It's difficult to find the original study today, however I did find:

A review in The Atheist's Quarterly on JSTOR linked.

A summary on the website Why Evolution is True linked.

The world view of the knower is not experienced as contextualised, but is their "known world". We can draw upon Husserl's view of "Lebenswelt" or lived world here.

Why is The Priests who don't believe in God pertinent to ToK ?

Unstructured interviews of 5 non-believing priests carried out by Dennett & LaScola (2010) are a fascinating, and rare, insight into people who hold one set of beliefs, and yet live their lives by another set of beliefs. This dissonant state gives rise to a compelling set of insights for ToK. Whilst this example may not be 'typical' for most knowers, arguably it is in this somewhat extreme, contrast that we can uncover some of the processes of knowing that are experienced by all of us as knowers. Some of these implications include:

• We can hold contradictory knowledge (and beliefs) at the same time.

• Performativity of knowledge is both evidential and significant ( a behavioural element of knowledge).

• Internal ethical justification of knowledge occurs when the knower is presented with contradictory or inimical knowledge/beliefs/values.

• Even deeply held beliefs and values can change when the knower is challenged with opposing arguments/beliefs/values.

• When deeply held beliefs/values are changed the knower may not change their public behaviours according to the newly held beliefs.

• Beliefs & values (as forms of knowledge) can be known in many different ways by different knowers.

How to use this in ToK:

Core Theme: Knowledge & The Knower.

A quick skim through the KQs of the Core theme Knowledge & The Knower we can immediately see links to many KQs, particularly those dealing with the knower's knowledge in relation to others through interactions. I have allocated KQs to groups of students and asked them to use the research to explore their allocated KQ.

AoK Human Sciences.

The study can be relevant to all of the Hum Sci Knowledge Framework. Of particular interest to me is the link to perspectives and research methods. Specifically the validity vs reliability debate, and the value of extrapolation from a small (& we assume unrepresentative) sample.

Optional Theme - Knowledge & Religion.

Obviously there are a range of interesting KQs which could be explored using the Dennett & La Scola study. Of particular interest is the link between faith & religious beliefs, the role of culture's influence on religious beliefs, the relationship between reason and religious beliefs, etc.

For more ToK Lesson content for Knowledge and the Knower try this link.

For more ToK Lesson content on AoK Human Sciences try this link.

Conclusion.

The Dennett & LaScola research focuses on an atypical and unusual situation in knowledge. However, maybe it is in the strong contrasts found in the unusual cases that we can better understanding the framework and underlying processes of the knowledge held in all other cases.

If you would like more content like this (focussing on useful RLS), or have suggestions for further content please don't hesitate to contact me - Daniel@TokToday.com

Wishing you a great day!
Daniel, Lisbon, Jan 2023

Bibliography & References.

• “Atheists Anonymous.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 34, no. 3, 2010, pp. 77–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41000971. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

• whyevolutionistrue. “Dennett and LaScola Study of Nonbelieving Clergy.” Why Evolution Is True, 18 Mar. 2010, whyevolutionistrue.com/2010/03/18/dennett-and-lascola-study-on-nonbelieving-clergy/. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

AoK Natural Sciences: A whole Unit of ToK (Free)!

I'm currently writing a new set of lessons for teaching AoK Natural Sciences, and I came across this set of lessons from my old teaching website that I used when I was teaching in Bangkok. There are a lot of resources linked into these lessons, and it's beautifully presented - so I thought I'd offer it out there to the TokToday community (for free).

The focus of the unit is on the organisation of knowledge in AoK Natural Sciences

I think I was having fun with the presentation when I put this together!

My teaching pace and focus with my current ToK students is a bit different to the classes that I put this module together for, so I prefer to rewrite the unit than just use this old unit. However, there's a lot in here - so it may be of use to ToK Teachers reading this blog. If you're pushed for time, and need something ASAP it may be something that you can just pick up and use.

I will publish my new lessons on AoK Natural Sciences in the next week or so, I am focussing on a more active and accessible set of activities.

Other resources which may be of use are:

Jahn & scientific anomalies (a useful RLS).

A presentation about Natural sciences.

If you found these lessons useful, or have suggestions for upcoming content that you would find useful, I would love to read your comments below.

Have a great day!
Daniel,
Lisbon, Jan 2023

Scientific Anomalies & the production of knowledge.

What can scientific anomalies tell us about the production of scientific knowledge ? Today's blog post outlines a real life situation that can be used as an example in AoK Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and various themes. We can use it to explore a few key ToK ideas:

(i) Why is knowledge categorised into AoKs, and are those divisions useful ?

(ii) Is the scientific method inherent to producing scientific knowledge ?

(iii) Does Peer Review ensure the reliability of knowledge ?

(iv) Are there self-sustaining gatekeepers imposing a knowledge hierarchy within the AoKs ?

Starting points - Robert Jahn at Princeton.

You can read background on Professor Jahn's academic history at Wikipedia - he was undoubtedly a very accomplished academic in Physics. What is of interest to us is his research in Parapsychology.

Image Citation: “Robert Jahn, Pioneer of Deep Space Propulsion and Mind-Machine Interactions, Dies at 87.” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/11/30/robert-jahn-pioneer-deep-space-propulsion-and-mind-machine-interactions-dies-87.

Research in Parapsychology.

In the 1970s and 80s, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, led by Robert Jahn, conducted a series of experiments on the so-called "anomalous effects" of human consciousness on physical systems. Essentially he was looking at an effect called Psychokinesis - the ability of the mind to affect the external physical world. These experiments, which were largely funded by the US military, aimed to investigate the possibility that human consciousness could affect the behaviour of random number generators, machines that produce sequences of random numbers.

The experiments conducted at PEAR were designed to be highly controlled and rigorously scientific, and they followed the scientific method in their approach. However, the results of these experiments were not always in line with expectations. In some cases, the results seemed to indicate that human consciousness could indeed affect the behaviour of random number generators, but in other cases, the results were inconclusive or seemed to contradict previous findings.

These anomalies at PEAR raised questions about the nature of human consciousness and its potential relationship to the physical world. Some critics argue that the anomalies observed at PEAR were the result of flaws in the experimental design or data analysis, while others suggest that they may indicate the presence of unknown forces or phenomena that are not currently understood by science.

Despite the controversy surrounding the experiments at PEAR, the work of Robert Jahn and his colleagues has contributed to our understanding of the relationship between human consciousness and the physical world. Their research has provided valuable insights into the potential capabilities of the human mind, and has sparked further investigation into the mysteries of consciousness.

How can we use this in ToK ?

ToK Question:

(i) Why is knowledge categorised into AoKs, and are those divisions useful ?

The Knowledge Frameworks of the AoKs describe why knowledge is categorised into AoKs. We look at the Scope, Perspectives and Methodology of knowledge to decide how it should be categorised into AoKs.

However, there is some dispute about these divisions (eg see the work of Basil Bernstein as explored by Suellen Shay). Jahn's work clearly shows a crossover between the Physical and Human Sciences. It also shows a deep integration between the two science AoKs and AoK Mathematics.

It could be argued that whilst the AoKs may provide us with a convenient model to organise knowledge in ToK they don't necessarily bear much correspondence with the construction and application of knowledge in the real world.

ToK Question:

(ii) Is the scientific method inherent to producing scientific knowledge ?

The Scientific Method and Scientific Knowledge are often presented as being mutually inclusive elements. ie scientific knowledge is scientific because it is produced using the scientific method. Whilst this may be the case for the vast majority of scientific knowledge there are cases in which the scientific method has not been used to produce scientific knowledge. The main reasons for this would be that either the knowledge has been discovered (sometimes accidentally), or the knowledge does not avail itself of scientific testing (such as rare events / phenomena), or the technology does not yet exist to apply scientific testing procedures.

Jahn's work was testing something beyond the normal scope / parameters of the physical sciences. It is possible that we are yet to develop the technology to test the sort of energy fields that he was interested in. The ToK point here is that knowledge production is, to a degree, limited to the technology available at the time (eg we couldn't test the effects of ultra violet lights on plants until we were able to identify and control ultra violet lights).

ToK Question:

(iii) Does Peer Review ensure the reliability of knowledge ?

Jahn showed a small significant effect over a large number of trials. Such findings would have the potential for changing the basic premises of Physics. However, his methodology was widely criticised by many of his peer physicists at the time (again you can read about this on Wikipedia). Further, many Peer Review bodies refused to review Jahn's research on the basis that it did not constitute 'science' (see this article).

As such, this does appear to show that Peer Review ensures reliability of knowledge. However, there are two immediately apparent drawbacks to this system. The first is that peer review ensures reliability within the scope by which reliability is defined at that time, in that particular discipline / AoK. The ways in which reliability is defined and tested may change by context, time and purpose.

The second concern (implication) is that the narrow definition and application of reliability may be marginalising valuable new knowledge which does not stand up to peer review. Research into such new knowledge may not be further developed due to dismissal at an early stage of development.

ToK Question:

(iv) Are there self-sustaining gatekeepers imposing a knowledge hierarchy within the AoKs ?

Jah, and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR), experienced marginalisation and even ridicule by the scientific community, as well described in this article from the Harvard magazine Crimson,and this article from The New York Times.

We could look at such reactions as stemming from a body of practitioners who agree upon the scope and methodology of knowledge production within their AoK. On the other hand we could also consider their reactions as ensuring their hold over power and authority within their AoK - a classic gatekeepers hierarchy.

The work of Professor Jahn and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab, provides ToK students with a rich seam of insight into the production of knowledge at the highest levels of scientific research. It is particularly useful because the participants were willing to step away from that which is deemed to be conventional in their field. It is in the contrasts with normal operations that we can sometimes best see what constitutes normal operations.

Daniel,
Lisbon, Dec 2022

More on AoK Natural Sciences at this link.

Art and Ethics

A lesson for DP1 Students on Art & Ethics which can be placed within Area of Knowledge The Arts, and any of the optional Themes, particularly Knowledge and Language, and Knowledge and Politics.

Lesson Objectives.

By the end of this lesson you should have:

• Considered the relationship between artistic freedom and ethics.

• Considered issues of denotation and connotation of knowledge.

• An introduction to 3 of the main schools of Ethics.

Starter Activity.

Here we introduce 3 of the main schools of ethics.

The PDF version of the file is available here.

Group Learning.

Each group will be given a case study.

Your objective is to prepare a short presentation (maximum 4 slides) answering the following 2 questions:

• What are the ethical issues arising from the production, or display, of this artistic knowledge?

• Is it possible to resolve these ethical issues ?, if so, how

Your Presentation should have the following slides:

1. Context (e.g. what is the artwork?, who was the artist?, When was it created? etc).

2. Controversy. (e.g. What & why was there controversy associated with this artwork? What were the ethical issues? etc)

3. Justification ? (e.g. Is the artwork justifiable in either artistic or ethical terms?)

4. Resolution ? (e.g. Is it possible to resolve an artistic & ethical conflict? and if so how?)

Group 1: Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp

Resources:

Context & reasons for controversy from The Tate Gallery, London.

Short video explanation of controversy.

Extra hint: Part of the ethical issue here is about Gatekeepers & the context of art.

Group 2: Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) by Ai Weiwei

Resources:

Clear explanation of what & why.

Context & a short explanation of controversy from The Guggenheim.

The case for Ai Weiwei's piece Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (Video)

Extra Hint: the ethical issues here relate to duplicitous values.

Group 3: My Bed (1998) by Tracey Emin.

Resources:

Context & Controversy (4 min read)

Tracey Emin explains the origin of My Bed, and its meaning to her (video).

Extra hint: The ethical issues here partly concern what the work means to the artist (connotation) vs how others interpret the work (denotation).

Group 4: Piss Christ (1987) by Andres Serrano

Resources:

Context & explanation by Andres Serrano

Context & controversy from Artland Magazine

Andres Serrano explains the piece in The Guardian

Extra hint: One of the ethical issues that the artist draws is between popular culture, meaning and that which is defined as art.

Group 5: Helena (2000) by Marco Evaristti

Resources:

Quick video explaining the work.

Explanation of the work, and intention of Marco Evaristti

Evaristti's explanation of his work (search down for "Helena).

Extra hint: The role of the viewer (or audience) is, arguably, the focus of this work.

Group 6: Statue of Edward Colston (1895) by John Cassidy

Resources:

Wikipedia article giving outline.

Guardian article giving context & controversy.

Interesting video of the outcomes of the controversy.

Extra hint: The issue of whether we should judge the past by the standards of today is salient here.

Group 7: The Parthenon Marbles (5th Century BCE) by Phidias

Resources:

Video explaining the Parthenon Marbles and the controversy.

Wikipedia article giving an overview

Extra hint(s): There are ethical issues concerning originality, and cultural appropriation here.

How do we avoid the use of Essay Mills?

Essay Mills are private companies that offer essay writing services to students. There has been a proliferation of these companies in recent years (see this Guardian article for example). Their main focus has been the higher education sector, however it can be assumed that their services are also available to IB Diploma students. The question for ToK Teachers is how can we deter our students from using Essay Mills ?

During, and after, the 'act' processes - do they beat essay mills ?

The use of the following processes to retain academic integrity is fairly widespread in ToK:

Using Construction monitoring tools such as Google Docs: The teacher can monitor the essay as it is being written by the student.

Plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin.Com: This software is best used by the student during the writing of the essay. Giving the student the power and freedom to use the software helps them to avoid any potential plagiarism issues. It also helps them to find papers that have been written using the same terms that they are using.

There are a couple of concerns with plagiarism detection software:

1. Using it after the essay has been submitted.

2. If it is only used after the student has submitted their essay it is being used as a cure rather than a prevention. The 'after-submission' method doesn't teach the student best practises for avoiding academic integrity problems in the future.

3. "What % is acceptable ?".

4. I often hear teachers (& students) asking what the "acceptable percentage" of similarity is when looking at a Similarity Report. This question demonstrates a misunderstanding of what the software is doing. A report can have a high similarity rating just because it repeatedly uses a phrase from the prescribed title which is often used in other papers. This doesn't necessarily mean that the student has plagiarised the essay, they are merely repeatedly referring to the Prescribed Title (which is good practice). Conversely, a report can have a very low similarity percentage yet the essay contains a whole paragraph which has been copied word for word from another source - this is a serious breach of academic integrity despite the report having a low similarity rating.

Writing in controlled circumstances: When a teacher suspects that an essay may not be the student's own work there is the option of asking the student to write a new essay under monitored & controlled circumstances. Obviously this is opens up a whole range of problems - the student is not developing the essay under the same conditions as other students, the student doesn't have a long period of time to develop the essay, and it is very demanding on school resources.

None of the "during & after the act' processes above avoid the problem of students using essay mills.

The essay monitoring system (sometimes called "Check Check out") is open to the student adding the milled essay piece by piece. Plagiarism detection software will only pick up an essay if it (or parts of it) has been copied from elsewhere. If the essay mill writes an original essay then this will not be picked up by the software (however, there is evidence that essay mills are recycling essays - which is obvious a great potential threat for our students). Finally, asking students to write under controlled conditions opens the school up to all sorts of allegations of unfair treatment etc.

There is only one viable educational method to counter the scourge of essay mills - the development of Self Regulated Learning Skills.

Self Regulated Learning definition: Self-regulated learning is a cyclical process, wherein the student plans for a task, monitors their performance, and then reflects on the outcome. The cycle then repeats as the student uses the reflection to adjust and prepare for the next task. The process is not one-size-fits-all; it should be tailored for individual students and for specific learning tasks (Zimmerman, 2002).

It's a fair assumption that we all know those students in our classroom who have self regulated learning skills and qualities. I don't need to describe how those students take charge of their learning in ToK. I think we can all agree that those students are not going to use Essay Mills. However, if you need more details see the end of this blog.

How do we teach Self Regulated Learning Skills in ToK ?

Most research shows that the basis of self regulated learning is critical reflection, and in turn the basis for critical reflection is self reflection. In order to integrate self, and critical, reflection into the ToK classroom we can use the basic teaching structure of David Kolb's Learning Cycle:

Kolb's Learning Cycle provides us with a framework for developing self regulated learning in the ToK classroom.

1. Time
   We can't start to deal with academic integrity of the ToK Essay when the students start to write the essay (or even worse, after they submit the essay). We need to address it from the first day in ToK through the use of self reflection. Self Regulation does not appear over night, but over a long period of time.

2. Domain Specific
   Self Regulated Learning Skills are domain specific - therefore just because a student is a self regulated learner in another DP subject doesn't necessarily mean they will be so in ToK. We need to show them how to be a reflective and self regulated learner in ToK.

3. Self Confidence.
   Students turn to Essay Mills because they have low confidence in their own abilities to write The ToK essay. Therefore we need to ensure that our students have the self-confidence and capacity to write the essay. We do this by slowly scaffolding ToK Skills, and the use of self reflection throughout the course.

For more on ToK Skills see this blog (& video)

For more on using Kolb's Learning Cycle see this blog (& video).

In the coming months I will have more content showing the use of Kolb's learning cycle as the lesson framework for ToK lessons. In the meantime you may want to look at this lesson.

If you have any specific requests for resources please let me know at Daniel@ToKToday.com.

Daniel,
Lisbon, September 2022

References

• Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70.

Characteristics of Self Regulated Learners:

What we know

Research (see reference list below) shows that teaching self-regulated learning skills enhances student learning. Self-regulated learning is:

• a goal driven process

• encompasses skills that can be learned through observations or modelling.

Self-regulation skills include:

• goal setting

• reflection

• self-management of on/off task behaviour.

Self-regulated learners are aware of:

• their strengths and weaknesses as a learner

• the learning strategies that they can manage and use

• strategies they can use to motivate their learning and stay on task.

• (From Victoria State Education Dept) Like & Reference: at this website

ToK Essay Activator Questions

The ToK Essay Activators are questions that students can use at the beginning of their ToK Essay Planning Process. They are a way to start to understand the essay title. They’re the foundation of thinking.

The video explanation of this resource is linked here, and below.

The beginning of the process

The firstl stage of thinking about the ToK Prescribed Titles is foundational for success later in the process. Unfortunately, this initial stage is often an overlooked activity. Giving students individual thinking time to form their own understanding of the ToK Essay is crucial. Forming a solid personal understanding of the essay early helps when they hear other people's interpretations of the essay in the later stages of essay writing. If students who don't have a solid personal understanding of the essay they may be tempted to use other people's interpretations. Accordingly they will then, probably, find it harder to develop in terms of analysis, evaluation and implications. The higher order analysis of knowledge arguments is easier for the student to develop if the original knowledge argument has been developed by the student themselves. This is why spending individual time at the beginning of the essay process is foundational for future success.

ToK Essay Activators are a set of questions that students can use to improve their understanding of the ToK Essay.

The ToK Essay Activators are questions that students can use to guide their thinking. They are useful at the beginning of the process. The questions help to develop personal knowledge arguments relating to the prescribed title.

The ToK Essay Activators are available (for free) at:

PDF Version link

Google Slides Version link

Google Slides as PDF

Students who are looking for more help to write the ToK Essay check out our Student Support Page, and the Ebook "How to write the ToK Essay in 6 easy steps".

Notes on May 23 ToK Essay Titles are coming soon (Mid September), and will be available from this link.

There are also some great tips at this blog.

If there are further resources that you would like me to develop do not hesitate to get in touch. I can also help with curriculum planning: Daniel@TokToday.com.

Daniel, Lisbon,
Aug 2022

What makes some ToK Essay Questions more difficult ?

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.

Critical Thinking - how to teach it.

Before we get into how to teach critical thinking it may be useful to tell you that this is the third blog in this series. The first looked at Knowledge Issues in ToK, the second is a starter lesson activity connecting knowledge issues and ToK Concepts. The third post proposes The ToK Mindset. You may want to jump back & read those posts to contextualise this one.

Critical Thinking - a jumping off point.

OK, I'm not going to be able to cover the whole of how to teach critical thinking in one blog post, but it's an essential topic to start to cover on these pages. Firstly, critical thinking is one of the Aims of ToK (3rd bullet point on Pg 7 in the current ToK Guide). Secondly, all of the aims implicitly rely on the student's ability to think critically. Thirdly, it's at the heart of The ToK Mindset - which is the foundation to improving grades in ToK.

The ToK Mindset is 4 domains of understanding which underpin success in ToK. These 4 domains are a good starting point for defining the type of critical thinking required by ToK students.

Reflection is not distraction.

When IB brought in the current version of the Extended Essay they gave 17% of the total marks available to Reflection. Concerned about the subjectivity of this criteria I asked the workshop leader how he recommend we teach 'Reflection', he skirted around the issue. I asked him the same question a few more times (yes, I'm THAT workshop participant), he told me that teaching reflection wasn't part of the workshop, and gave me a few other fob offs. IB hadn't defined how Reflection was to be taught in the DP, therefore I decided that I needed to define the process for my team of DP teachers.

Much of the literature places self reflection as the first stage of developing critical thinking skills. There are many different strategies for developing Self reflection, just a few are:

• Journalling (keeping a ToK journal is a popular activity in many ToK classrooms).

• Think - Pair- Share.

• Two Stars and wish.

• Reflection Breaks during the lesson.

• Visible Thinking. Routines.

It's not my place to tell you which method of reflection you should use, whatever methods work best for you and your students is the way you should go. The function of this blog is to look at the role of reflection in developing critical thinking skills.

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle.

David Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle (aka "Kolb's Learning Cycle") is based on gestalt psychology. The Learning Cycle has been demonstrated to be significantly effective under empirical testing. It has been widely used for over 30 years in inquiry and constructivist models. MY EE workshop leader (mentioned earlier) should have directed me towards Kolb's Learning Cycle. This is the basic model that I use to plan ToK Lessons. It is an effective structure for developing critical thinking skills because it builds self reflection. (You can find out more about the cycle from David's own website: Learningfromexperience.com)

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle can be used as an effective framework for planning ToK lessons which improve personal self reflection, and therefore improve critical thinking skills.

Kolb's Learning Cycle in ToK Lessons.

We can place the 4 stages of the learning cycle into a 'typical' ToK Lesson:

Concrete Learning.

This is the challenge that we start the lesson with. It could be a Knowledge Question drawn from the syllabus, or related question we've drawn up ourselves. We give the students a concrete experience to use to start to explore this question eg: a drama activity, a card sort, analysing text, building a model from newspaper etc.

Reflective Observation

During this period we ask the students to reflect upon the processes used to solve the challenge set at the beginning of the lesson. This reflection can be both individual and group reflection. It is usually very effective when it is integral to the original challenge. For example if the original challenge is holding a round table debate the adjudicators of the debate can lead on the reflective observation. The last stage of this observation is to identify some learning principles which we will take into the next stage of learning.

Abstract Conceptualisation

This is the 'teacher inventiveness' stage. We need to find a way to show the students how the learning from the first two stages applies in the abstract and conceptual ToK World. This could take the form of modelling an application of findings from the first stage in the ToK World. Alternatively it could be done by providing the students with a heavily scaffolded task.

Active Experimentation

This is the stage when the students take the real world experience (of stage 1), and apply it in the ToK World. This is the stage when we set the "ToK World task", which is more likely to be a knowledge question from the ToK Guide. The students take the principles arising from the reflection in stage 2 and apply them in this stage.

We have to teach students to translate real world experience into the ToK World.

Kolb's Learning Cycle helps students to move from "the Real World" to "the ToK World". This is a key step on the way to developing The ToK Mindset. If Kolb's Learning Cycle is used repeatedly as the underlying model for ToK lessons more students will be able to successfully transition their knowledge from the real world to the ToK World.

In the coming months I will post lessons that follow the structure of Kolb's Learning Theory. At this stage you can see the lesson linked here on Art & History which uses the learning cycle as its framework. A video on teaching skills in ToK (a wider perspective) can be found here.

If you would like me to develop specific materials for a particular topic/AoK/theme/purpose please don't hesitate to contact me at Daniel@TokToday.com.

Daniel,
Lisbon, August 2022

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.

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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.

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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.

What, no Knowledge Issues? (link to ToK Concepts?)

Should Knowledge Issues have a specific role in the current ToK Course. In this short blog I argue that Knowledge Issues still serve a specific and crucial role in ToK.

The latest version of the ToK Study Guide (first exams 2022) replaced the idea of "Knowledge Issues" with 12 ToK Concepts. The concepts are fused throughout the course, and can be applied in all Areas of Knowing and Themes. The Concepts help students to develop a deeper, and more critical, understanding of knowledge construction and the issues associated with it.

However, underlying the 12 ToK Concepts there are further issues of knowledge construction. In former iterations of the ToK Guide we called these "Knowledge Issues". I think it's still useful to teach the students about some of these knowledge issues, and ideally for them to bring those knowledge issues across from their Hexagon Subjects. These knowledge issues are useful because they help students to further understand how the concepts influence the construction of knowledge, how the concepts are limitations and constraints on that construction, and to understand why we develop different types of knowledge.

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On the left are a few examples of Knowledge Issues, this is by no means an exhaustive list - there are many many others. I only include this list so that you get some idea of what I'm referring to when I use the term "Knowledge Issues".

It is well note that the IB does not use the term 'Knowledge Issues' in the current Study Guide, and that there is no expectation that we teach students either the term, nor the processes indicated here referring to that term. However, the 'Knowledge Issues' can be fairly domain specific, and students will be learning about these in their Hexagon Subjects. Therefore, if we want to help students to identify the ToK aspects of their Hexagon subjects it is useful to unpack the ToK Concepts in terms of the knowledge issues inherent to those hexagon subjects.

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Knowledge issues connect knowledge construction issues in the Hexagon Subjects with the 12 ToK Concepts.

Ideally, we would encourage (equip) students to identify the knowledge issues that are apparent in their Hexagon Subjects and bring those across to their ToK studies. We can help them to do this by working alongside their hexagon teachers because often students don't realise that the knowledge issues that they are learning in the hexagon are also relevant in ToK. Those hexagon based knowledge issues can then be grouped under the ToK Concepts, thus integrating ToK and the Hexagon (which is both the aim of ToK, and something that we have to find evidence for when it comes to IB / CIS Evaluation).

You may be wondering why I'm not just posting content. If so here's a quick video explaining my views on content.

In the next blogpost I will show you a simple lesson activity to connect the Hexagon Knowledge Issues with the ToK Concepts.

Daniel,
Lisbon, August 2022

Photos to Concepts - Lesson Starter Activities

I like lesson starter activities to be fairly low cost for both students and teachers alike, low cost in planning time, stress and brainpower. If I try to start a lesson with an article from an esteemed publication (like Nat Geo or The Atlantic) I find student energy can dip down pretty quickly.

My students sometimes need to be 'eased' into the ToK Mindset at the beginning of the lesson.

So, the two lesson starter activities that I present today meet the criteria of super-low cost in terms of planning, stress and brain power. Simple they may be, but they can also be very powerful in helping students to learn ToK. Their power comes in the ensuing discussion rather than in the complexity of the planning. - Take a rest ToK Teacher !

Picture - Concept Lesson Starter Activity.

This starter activity is super straightforward. You simply show the students a random photo of anything (you can use a random picture generator such as this), and ask them the question

"Which ToK Concepts are represented by this photo?"

Of course any ToK Concepts can be linked to any photo if you are able to construct a good argument, and that is the essential value of this activity. This very simple, no planning, activity has led to some of my best ToK lessons over the years.

"Which ToK Concepts are represented by this photo?"

Obviously the learning comes from how you develop the discussion about why the students chose certain concepts rather than others..

Develop discussion.

Learning:

• Students become familiar with ToK Concepts.

• Students learn how to link concepts to objects (exhibition)

• Students learn how to use ToK Concepts in arguments

The close up Macro lesson starter.

Like the starter above, this starter activity is pretty self explanatory. You start the lesson by showing students a close up macro photograph, you ask them to guess what the object is. As you slowly reveal more and more of the photo the students write their guesses down, as the object is slowly revealed. It’s useful for them to look back, once the object has been revealed, to see how many different things they thought that object could be.

Example of super macro image on the right, and 'revealed' object on the left.

There are some great examples of the type of objects that can be used on this website.

This simple activity can be used to teach perspective, of course every student knows that if you look at things from different angles your experience of them changes, (your knowledge of them changes). This activity could be used to ask why, if we know about perspective, do so many of us cling to absolutes in many circumstances ? Perspective is a much more complex concept than it first appears. Perspective changes knowledge. This activity is just rooting the word perspective in ToK, it’s making  it domain specific (a big thing in the Self Regulated Learner literature). 

Perspectives are the basis for arguments - which are one of the key ways to access the higher marks on ToK Essay & Exhibition.

So, here are 2 apparently simple activities,  but they have the potential to take students a long way in ToK knowledge & ToK thinking. In my experience these starters can often extend across the whole lesson. They are simple activities which have the potential to be very complex.

There's another ToK lesson starter activity for you here.

If you try either of these starter activities I'd love to know how they worked out, and how they could be improved for the future. If you have any requests for other learning resources please let me know (Daniel@TokToday.com).

Daniel,
Lisbon, August 2022.

New to ToK #3: Using ToK Skills to improve learning.

Skill Development

It took me a few years of teaching ToK to realise that developing ToK Skills is far more important than teaching the Framework, Knowledge Questions, or even the Concepts. OK, maybe I'm a slow learner, but I wonder how many other ToK teachers have realised that it's mainly about skills?

How many times does the word "skill" or "skills" appear in The ToK Study Guide?

The word "Skill" or "Skills" appears only once in the whole body of the ToK Subject Guide (First Exams 2022) - Well, OK it appears 12 times, but 10 of those are in the generic "this is the Diploma" stuff at the beginning, and the word appears once in the references. Only one occurrence of the word "Skills" in the body of the ToK Guide? Does this mean that Skills aren't important in ToK?

Are skills important in ToK?

Ok, there are some "Aims of ToK" outlined on page 7 of the Study Guide, I often hear these cited as the skills for ToK. They do, indeed, provide us with a good starting point for identifying the skills for success in ToK, but they are very wide and overarching. Maybe too broad and overarching for scaffolding ToK to make it accessible for all learners, maybe too broad for explaining to learners what they need to do to improve their attainment in ToK.

At ToK Today we aim to have a very close focus on skills needed for ToK, we aim to operationalise the skills so that we can say exactly what it is that students need to be able to do to realise the ToK goals and to achieve success in the ToK assessments. We're going to break down the Aims of ToK (Pg 7 of ToK Study Guide, 2020) down into a set of skills and their associated learning activities. The next part of this post is an example of such. However, this is not an exclusive, not definitive process. We need your input on this. I would love to hear what skills you think are required to be successful in ToK, and how to utilise this. The Thai ToK Teacher's Network group have already given me their insights on this. I thank them for their contributions thus far.

Operationalising an Aim of ToK into skills and learning objectives.

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The above diagram is just an example of how we can translate one of the 6 Aims of ToK into a set of specific skills, and then develop a set of learning activities to form a lesson. O

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ToK Skills 2.0

(as of Aug 2022).

If you would like a PDF version of this skills map click here

I would be very grateful if ToK Teachers would contribute to this skills map by suggesting skills that are not currently included on the map.

For more on ToK Skills (related to Grp Dynamics), and how to use them, click here.

Over the coming months ToKToday will model many more skill based learning enquiries in ToK. If you have requests, or comments, please contact me.

Daniel Trump
daniel@TokToday.com

Women in STEM: Core Theme Knowledge & The Knower

This could be used as Starter or as a whole lesson. This activity is written for students in the first few weeks of the ToK Course. It is based in the Core Theme Knowledge & The Knower, and it starts to explore the difference between that which is known to the knower in comparison with that which is known to the knowledge community (previously 'the difference between personal & shared knowledge'). It could also be used to introduce the idea that knowledge is created for a purpose.

Knowledge Questions:

• Can other people know us better than we know ourselves?

• Is the truth what the majority of people accept?

• Are there types of knowledge that are specifically linked to particular  communities of knowers?

ToK Skills:

• Identifying Knowledge Issues

• Interpretation & Analysis

• Evaluation

The Scenario:

You are a reporter for a news outlet. You have been given a 30 second time slot to report on the under-recruitment of women to STEM subjects in university. In your research you have interviewed 4 different groups, however you only have time to show 1 interview in your news report.

What to do:

Read the Interview summaries below and then discuss the questions as a group, and jot down your group answers.

Interview Summaries (NB - these are all fictional !).

1. DP Students who are applying to university.
   This group (both male and female) felt that women were encouraged to apply for STEM subjects. The young women felt empowered in their choices, and supported if they wanted to apply for STEM.
   

2. Vice Chancellor at an 'elite' STEM university.
   The Vice Chancellor said that she wanted to make more offers of places to women applying to study STEM, but her university did not receive enough applications from women. In response they are spending money on encouraging more female school leavers to apply, and running a girls only summer school with STEM admissions tutors for G10 and G11 students.
   

3. CEO of Pharmaceutical Company
   The CEO doesn't care whether his company recruited male or female graduates, he just wants the best graduates. However, he felt that the elite STEM university should not be spending money on trying to get women to apply, they should be using that money to improve research at their university.
   

4. Government Statistician.
   The statistician has analysed a lot of data, and has found that women are less likely to apply to study STEM than men. However, they have found that women who do apply for STEM are more likely to be offered places at more competitive universities than men with the same grades.

ToK Questions for your group to consider:

a). Which interview provides you with the most valid knowledge relating to female applications to study STEM at university ?

b). Which interview provides you with the most reliable knowledge relating to female applications to study STEM at university ?

c). Comparing interviews 1 and 4, they are contradictory, is one wrong ?

d) What are the wider knowledge implications raised by your answer to c) ?

e) Which interviews are more representative of the views of the knower, and which are more representative of the knowledge community ? (place them on a continuum)

How can we teach ToK in only 100 hrs?(New to ToK #3 Speed (pt2))

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.

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“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)

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

Click here for a full size version of the diagram.

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:

• Group Dynamics

• Speed (Cognitive Development)

• Skills Development

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 :

1. Optimising engagement & group dynamics.

2. Optimising skill development.

3. 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.

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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..,

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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:

What do we know (so far) about the ToK Exhibition?

The first set of ToK Exhibition results are in, and the clouds of mystery that have previously shrouded the expectations of this new assessment are starting to clear somewhat. We are yet to receive the Subject Report (which will hopefully further clarify expectations), but we can glean some things from this first set of moderated commentaries. At my school we entered 45 candidates, none of the sample were subject to moderation (the ToK Examiner agreed with our grading), and our range was from ‘fairly low’ up to 10/10.

What I present here are the thoughts and decisions of our ToK team as we worked through what we thought was expected from the ToK Exhibition. It would appear that these decisions were upheld, but before we fall into a pile of complacent conceit a few disclaimers are warranted:

1, My observations come from only 1 set of results, and this is the first cycle of this particular assessment. One set of 45 results is not sufficient to make reliable cause and effect statements. Further, rumour & folklore amongst DP teachers would have it that IB are more lenient the first time a new form of assessment is run.

2. It is highly possible that we “just got lucky” with our moderator,or that we were on the verge of moderation with some pieces, and just snuck over the no-moderation line. Many times in the past I have seen little rationale to moderation decisions in subjects across the Diploma. It’s rather irrational (and self serving) to call out moderation decisions as nonsensical when they go against your students, but to take them as an indication of your ‘greatness’ when they go in favour of your students.

3. The illusion of causality could be at play here. It may be that our student’s work was not moderated despite the decisions that we made regarding what we assumed was required for The Exhibition.

With the disclaimer out of the way let’s look at context:

We were a very experienced 4 teacher ToK Team including 1 ToK Examiner & workshop leader, and 2 of the other teachers being examiners in other DP subjects. I mention this because being an examiner in any DP subject gives you an insight into how the published assessment rubrics are actually applied to student’s work. I think that most DP examiners would agree that there are a number of implied ‘givens’ which may not be explicit in the published assessment rubric.

Secondly we have all attended numerous ToK workshops over the years that we have been teaching the course, and 3/4  of us attended ToK Cat 2 in November 2021 in the hope of upskilling ourselves for The Exhibition. Further, we had run our own collaborative ToK Exhibition upskilling workshops in school. The thinking presented here comes from those in-school ToK collaborative workshops.

Decisions regarding the Exhibition May 2022 Session.

1. Treat the Exemplars with caution.
   During the Cat 2 Training (Nov 21) that we attended the workshop participants undertook a blind marking procedure of the exemplar commentaries which are published in the Teacher Support Materials section of the Programme Resource Centre. Most of the workshop participants gave significantly lower marks than those awarded by the Chief Examiner, participants who had been ToK Essay & Presentation Examiners were particularly surprised by the high marks given by the CE to the exemplars in comparison to those given during the blind marking exercise.
   
   Back at school, after the workshop, our team reflected on what had happened during the workshop, and we all noted that we had seen a similar pattern in both new ToK assessments, and new assessments in our hexagon subjects. That pattern is that the exemplars for new assessments tend to be very generous, and the actual results that students receive from the first exam session are usually much lower than the corresponding exemplar marks (for coursework of the same quality). Further, we noted that some of the examiner’s comments for the marked exemplars on the PRC were extremely brief (eg see Exemplar C), far briefer than the teachers' comments that we had been writing for ToK Presentations in previous sessions. Therefore, we decided that we needed to unpack the assessment instrument to devise a structure for the commentary rather than be led by the exemplars.
   

2. Unpacking the Assessment Instrument - differences to the exemplars.
   Definitions:
   We noted that none of the exemplars had explicit definitions of concepts or key terms, the sort of definitions that we would expect in the ToK Essay. However, we felt that it is difficult for students to make a clear link between the object and the IA prompt, and to write a clear explanation of that link, without such explicit definitions.
   
   Further, we felt that it would be difficult for students to justify the contribution of the link to the overall Exhibition without those definitions. This links to point 3 - the role of arguments in the Exhibition. Finally, it would be easier for students to explain the real world context of the object, and to use evidence to support points if they had clear definitions of the concepts and key terms in the prompt at the beginning of the commentary.
   
   Therefore, we put ‘Definitions’ as the first stage of our Commentary Structure, and asked all of our students to define the concepts and key terms as the first sentence(s) of their commentary.
   
   We were concerned about this decision, as none of the exemplars contained a ‘definitions section’, it’s not in the assessment rubric, and there’s no instruction from IB to do this. However, all of our students who scored 7-10 on the May 22 Exhibition had a definitions section at the beginning of their commentary that they returned to, as appropriate, during the piece.
   
   I reiterate the point that those students may have scored highly despite the definitions section rather than because of it.
   

3. Real world context ratio
   We noted that exemplars B-J contain far more ‘real world context’ content than ‘ToK content’ than we are used to in The Essay, and previously in the presentation. My rule of thumb guide is 80% ToK: 20% real world context for the essay, the higher scoring Exhibition Exemplars range from 35-60% real world context content . We thought that it would be very difficult for students to both make the links between the object and the prompt, and to justify the contribution of the object in terms of knowledge in 950 words. The process of abstraction from the real world to the knowledge world is at the heart of ToK, and we were wary of the notion that this would be abandoned in this assessment.
   
   Therefore we decided to build a structure which focuses more on the knowledge characteristics (issues?) arising from the object’s link to the object rather than on the real world context of the object. We are somewhat taking a chance that if students talk about the knowledge issues of the object they will cover the requirements for identifying the real world context of the object.
   
   The first Drafts of the Commentary had far more real world context content than we were comfortable with. This was expected (and is the norm in the essay, and previously with the ToK presentation). The feedback on the Draft Commentaries focussed on reducing the real world context, and increasing the ToK content.
   
   The commentaries that scored 7-10 marks contained far more ToK content than real world content (close to the 80:20 ratio). Again, we should not necessarily read causality into this.
   
   A note on the binary categorisation of ‘ToK Content’ vs ‘Real World Context’ with reference to The Exhibition (and maybe the essay). I have heard from WSL, and maybe from the Curriculum Managers, that this division is a false one, or at least should be more nuanced. The view being (I think) that The Exhibition should be a tool for students to develop the skills required for abstraction in the Essay. Further, that as the Exhibition is based around the Core and Optional Themes which are more ‘real world’ based than Areas of Knowledge. Therefore the Exhibition should contain more real world context, and crucially - make the link between the real world and the ToK world. My concern is that the knowledge requirements to move into the two higher marking bands are such that with a limited word count students must focus on the ToK content to attain a higher score.
   

4. Perspectives (aka Arguments, aka Knowledge arguments).
   
   We noted that the exemplars on the PRC do not contain explicit knowledge arguments like we might see in the essay, or previously in the Presentation. The instruction to the students is that they show how ToK manifests itself in the world around us, and we felt that this might be more easily achieved by students if they were taking a more perspective (or argument) based approach. The vast majority of the IA Prompts can be answered using a diverse range of perspectives, and therefore lend themselves well to a perspective (or argument) based approach.
   
   Further, and crucially, we noted the requirement in the top marking band is to identify, and justify, the particular contribution of each individual object. We felt that this is probably more easily achieved by students if we ask them to identify 3 perspectives (or arguments) arising from the IA prompt at the beginning of the Commentary, and then to choose 1 object to demonstrate each argument.
   
   Again, I worried about this decision as there is no explicit instruction in the assessment rubric to do this. However, I know that it is easier for students to write a justification if they are making an argument than it is to write a justification without a wider framework. Further, it would be easier to differentiate the contribution of each object using a specific argument linked to that object than it would be without the explicit argument. 
   
   All of the commentaries moderated at 5-10 marks used this 3 argument structure. Again, we need to heed the previous warnings regarding causality here.
   
   The rough structure that our team arrived at is below. We used this with our students to guide them in the writing of their commentaries.

Link to a (FREE) PDF of the above diagram.

A short note on the nature of the commentary.

As far as I understand it the ToK Exhibition Commentary should be a write up of the commentary that the students give (gave), or use to guide them, at their ToK Exhibition. This possibly implies that the Commentary should be a more narrative piece. It could be levelled that the analysis and structure presented here today are not in the spirit of typing up a commentary from an Exhibition. However, as ToK remains a pass-fail component of the Diploma I adopt a ‘take no chances’ approach. 

Daniel Trump,
Lisbon, Portugal.
July 2022.