The Most Overlooked Part of the New Extended Essay 

November 21st, 2025

This week I want to shine a light on something that I think is one of the most important additions to the new Extended Essay guidance from the IB, and it is something that, honestly, I don’t think most EE Coordinators, Supervisors or IB Coordinators have fully realized yet. 

I am talking about the Interdisciplinary Frameworks. 

These were originally designed as a starting point for students who choose the Interdisciplinary Pathway of the new Extended Essay, but I want to make a strong case for something larger. 

These frameworks are so thoughtfully built, so intellectually rich, and so human in their design that every student, whether they choose the Interdisciplinary Pathway or the Subject-Focused Pathway, should begin their thinking with them. That is how powerful they are.

Five Big Ideas That Explain Why Students Want to Write

Here they are straight from the Extended Essay Subject Guide: 



Take a look at the image of those beautifully overlapping circles—ha!

Power, Equality, Justice. Culture, Identity, Expression. Evidence, Measurement, Innovation. Sustainability, Development, Change. Movement, Time, Space. 

Five big ideas.  Five intellectual entry points.  Five places to begin a meaningful conversation with your Advisee about what actually matters to them. 

These frameworks are not simply organizational tools created by the IB. They are not marketing tools. They are the big picture human themes behind everything our students choose to write about. 

They are why student's are doing their research.  And to me, that is the most important part of the entire Extended Essay.

Why These Themes Are So Human

When you sit with these words for even a moment, you realize something very human is happening here. 

The IB explains that these frameworks help students position and shape their ideas. They allow them to start with something big, something personal, something connected to their lived experiences. They encourage students to draw on a “broad, diverse range of ideas” based on their personal interests. They exist to help students define the context that will guide the topic they want to explore. 

As Supervisors, this is exactly where our process should begin.

A Quick Example From Economics

Let me give you just one example from my own world of Economics. Imagine a student who wants to write an Extended Essay about fiscal stimulus designed to increase employment in the United States. On paper, they are writing about unemployment or aggregate demand. But at its core, they are writing about something deeper. 

They are writing about equality and inequality, about opportunity, and the distribution of income. They are writing about the forces that shape the lived experiences of real people. 

And these Interdisciplinary Frameworks give language to that. 

They help students understand the deeper themes—migration, inequality, identity, innovation, sustainability—that most likely drive their curiosity in the first place.

Why These Frameworks Matter for Every Subject Group

This is why I feel so strongly that these frameworks are not only useful for students choosing the Interdisciplinary Pathway but also they are exceptional starting points for any student writing a Subject-Focused Extended Essay in any of the Subject Areas--Psychology, Biology, Maths, Economics, History, Environmental Systems and Societies—it does not matter. 

These frameworks give students exactly what they struggle to find in the earliest stages of the process: a sense of purpose and direction. 

We have all experienced that moment when a student sits down, opens a blank document, and says, “I want to research something… but I don’t know what.” These frameworks solve that problem. 

They guide students toward questions that matter to them. They help students understand why their topic matters. They help them see that a research question does not emerge from nowhere. It emerges from a larger human conversation.

A Beautiful Reminder From the IB

I also love the way the IB articulates this in the guide. They write that the number of possible broad topic areas “is limited only by the student’s capacity to imagine these ideas that they would like to research.” 

That is such a beautiful reminder of what the entire Extended Essay process is meant to be. It is not a compliance exercise. It is not a box to check. It is an invitation to explore something meaningful, something that touches a deeper part of who they are, and something that is worthy of their time.

How to Launch the Process for the Class of 2027

So as we begin launching the Extended Essay process for the Class of 2027, I encourage you to start here. 

Before the research question. Start with a simple conversation rooted in these Frameworks. Ask students which of these big ideas feels closest to their lived experience. Ask them what they care about. Ask them what pulls them in. Start with the themes that actually matter to them, because when a student begins with meaning, the rest of the process becomes clearer. The research becomes deeper. The writing becomes stronger. And the entire Extended Essay journey becomes far more rewarding.

These frameworks give students a reason to write. They give us, as Supervisors, a compass for the work ahead. 

And when we begin with purpose, everything else falls into place.

See you next week.




Opportunities to Empower IB Teachers and Students... 

As I mentioned last week, I will be traveling to work with the American School of Barcelona on a two-day on-site visit at the beginning of December. Then Kurt and I will be doing customized Supervisor Trainings on the Extended Essays for Colegio Suizo de Mexico, Pan American School Bahia in Brazil, and Academia Cotopaxi in Ecuador in January, as well as a five-day trip to Hong Kong to work with Victoria Shanghai Academy.  

If your school would like a tailored training on the updated Extended Essay guidelines, we’d love to help—onsite at your campus or live online—just send me an email at [email protected] and we’ll work together to make it happen. 

Effectively Supervising the New Extended Essay - February 7th, 2026 - This focused and practical workshop is designed to help teachers confidently navigate the updated Extended Essay framework for the Class of 2027. Together, we’ll explore what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and how to effectively guide students through both the Subject-Focused and Interdisciplinary pathways. 

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Brad Cartwright

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