Theory of Knowledge Demystified

Theory of Knowledge Demystified

August 30^th, 2024

This week, let's take a look at one of the most misunderstood and creative courses to teach in the IB Diploma Programme, Theory of Knowledge.

No matter if you’ve never taught this course before or if you have years of experience, hopefully, this will demystify much of it for you.

Steeped in lore and seemingly obtuse descriptions of it, understanding exactly what the heck Theory of Knowledge is will make you a more informed and empowered IB Teacher.

It’s a thought-experience class.

That’s not edu-speak for something. That is literally what Theory of Knowledge is.

It’s a class that asks the teacher to create experiences in class that force students to think.

About themselves.

That’s what it is.

Every class should be designed around creating an environment where students are asked to think—and not just about anything—but about why they know what they know, and how it got in their heads.

We’ll get into the specifics of the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course in a second, but if you have it in your head that teaching TOK is about creating thought-experiences, you’ll be good.

You get it.

It’s a thought-experience class.

But here’s the thing, Theory of Knowledge is often misunderstood by students, by fellow teachers, and even by administrators.

So, let’s start with what TOK is not:

It is not a philosophy class
It is not academically rigorous
It is not guided by a traditional textbook
It is not a content-driven course
It is not a sequentially taught course

Yeah, so what is it?

Well, I’ll say this….

It is unlike any course I have ever taught.

But before we break it down into its core interconnected parts, let’s take a look at what the IB says about the course:

"The TOK course provides students with an opportunity to explore and reflect on the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing."

The nature of knowledge and the process of knowing. That’s pretty cool, but what does that exactly mean?

As I’ve told students over the years, if you substitute the word “information” for the word "knowledge", it can make a bit more sense.

So, it’s a course on the nature of the information we have in our heads and the process of how and why that information got there.

The IB continues…

"In TOK, students reflect on the knowledge, beliefs, and opinions that they have built up from their years of academic studies and their lives outside the classroom."

Check that out.

The course is meant to be a place where students think about the information they have in their heads, their own beliefs, and their own opinions that they have created from their time in school and just otherwise being alive. That is cool.

See, it’s not a philosophy class.

It’s a class on why kids know what they know and how it got there. And the way an effective teacher gets students to arrive at some understanding is to create thought-experiences where students are asked to think about what they know and how it got there.

How are we going to do that?

Well, the IB provides us with a clear path to get there.

"The course centers on the exploration of knowledge questions, which are a key tool for both teachers and students."

These are answerable questions about knowledge itself, such as:

“What counts as good evidence for a claim?
“Are some types of knowledge less open to interpretation than others?”
“What constraints should there be on the pursuit of knowledge?”.

As you can see, the student (the knower) is asked to produce this information from their brains, and from their own experiences, but in a way that might be new to them. That is why we, as teachers, must provoke and prod and create lessons to make them think about their own opinions and perspectives.

Thought-experiences.

The Five Interconnected Parts

Ok, so that’s the big picture stuff, now let’s look at the five interconnected parts that make up the course of Theory of Knowledge. By the way, if you see any quotes below that’s because I took the words straight from the IB Subject Guide.

The Core Theme: Knowledge and the Knower
The Optional Themes
The Areas of Knowledge
The TOK Exhibition
The TOK Essay

Let’s break them down one by one.

#1. Core Theme: Knowledge and the Knower

As I mentioned, this core theme—the one all teachers must teach—gives students a chance to think about what influences their perspective, where their values come from, and how they understand and interact with the world.

The cool thing is that this section of the course also asks students to think about different groups of people, and why they may think the way they do, why and how they create, question, judge, and update the knowledge that their group and the individuals within it create.

Here is where the IB introduces two very important and enduring parts of the course:

Knowledge Questions: Key Characteristics
- Knowledge Questions are big-picture questions around which the course is taught.
- They are great because they keep us from being trapped in narrow areas of thought related to different disciplines of study.
- They Are About Knowledge: They are literally questions about how knowledge is produced or created or acquired or shared or used.
- They Must Be Answerable. Or as the IB says, contestable. Meaning that they may have one, two, three, or multiple answers. They are open questions meant to provoke thought.
- They Must Be About TOK Concepts: They must also evoke the language and terminology of the TOK course—not subject-specific concepts, but the language of TOK.
- Here a few examples of Knowledge Questions taken right from the Theory of Knowledge Subject Guide:
  - How can a model be useful even if it is obviously false?
  - What ethical constraints should there be on the pursuit of knowledge?
  - Does some knowledge belong to particular communities of knowers?

The Knowledge Framework: How to Break Down “Knowledge” into Smaller Parts
- As the IB puts it, “the Knowledge Framework encourages a deep exploration” of the TOK curriculum.
- The Framework is made up of four elements:
  - Scope - This element explores the nature and scope of the different themes and knowledge.
  - Perspectives – This element addresses the influence of perspective and context on knowledge creation.
  - Methods and Tools – This element revolves around the practices and methods used when considering knowledge.
  - Ethics – Is just what it sounds like. It addresses the ethical considerations that impact knowledge production.

#2. The Optional Themes

The Optional Themes are, well, optional, meaning that teachers get to choose two of these five optional themes to be taught after the completion of the Core Theme, Knowledge and the Knower. Under each optional theme, you’ll see a description I pulled from the IB—they say it so efficiently.

Knowledge and Technology

“This optional theme focuses on issues relating to the impact of technology on knowledge and knowers and how technology helps and hinders our pursuit of knowledge. It examines the ways that technology can be seen to shape knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and exchange, and even the nature of knowledge itself.”

Knowledge and Language

“This theme provides an opportunity for students to reflect on the role that language plays in our lives, and the influence it has on thought and behaviour. It also encourages students to draw on their personal experience of language-learning as part of their DP studies.”

Knowledge and Politics

“This theme provides an opportunity for discussions about the practice of politics and our everyday interactions with politics in the world around us. For example, this theme is intended to provide an opportunity to engage with high-profile contemporary debates and examples, such as those around “fake news” and “post-truth politics”. It considers where our political views and values come from, and how these inform and influence other areas of our lives. It encourages students to consider the role and origin of their own political beliefs and positions, as well as exploring issues relating to how groups make decisions that affect large numbers of people.”

Knowledge and Religion

“This theme provides an opportunity for students to think carefully, critically and respectfully about knowledge and religion, and to reflect on the significant impact that religion has on how we view the world. Religion is often regarded as a sensitive area in which discussions should be had with caution, in part because people have very personal and deeply held convictions regarding religious matters.”

Knowledge and Indigenous Societies

“This optional theme provides an opportunity to undertake a more detailed exploration of knowledge that is principally bound to a particular group, culture or society. It focuses on knowledge that is deeply embedded in the culture and traditions of particular communities of knowers, and how what might be seen as “traditional” indigenous knowledge and societies operate today.”

So your task as a teacher is to pick your favorite two, and then use the "Knowledge Framework” to lead students to think.

And to think.

All while building and constructing—and perhaps destructing—Knowledge Questions either you create yourself, or with time, that your students write themselves.

These Optional Themes are contemporary and new and really accessible for students to dive into.

It’s really cool.

#3. The Areas of Knowledge

In short, the Areas of Knowledge are a sort of categorization of the subjects/courses that the students take as part of their path through the IB Diploma Programme. Or as the IB puts it, “Areas of Knowledge are structures within which much human knowledge is organized. In these areas, there are often socially established methods for producing knowledge, as well as norms for what counts as a fact or a good explanation.”

Translation: It's how knowledge is organized in our heads. Kinda cool.

In no particular order, here are the five Areas of Knowledge:

The Human Sciences
- These are the disciplines such as economics, social and cultural anthropology, psychology, geography, and political science.
The Natural Sciences
- These are the sciences as we normally would think of them—Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and the like.
The Arts
- The Arts are made up of Theatre, Dance, Film, Visual Arts, Music, and Literature. (Yes, you read the right, literature is part of The Arts.)
History
- In this sense, History is considered to be any exploration into the past.
Mathematics
- And, Mathematics is, well, the study of math.

Students are required to cover all five Areas of Knowledge as part of their studies in TOK. And here is where you find your fodder to hit and practice and go deep with your students when it comes to understanding the meaning or “theory” of the knowledge that humans have in their heads.

Within each of these Areas of Knowledge (AOK), students must be asked to form knowledge questions considering the Knowledge Framework of Scope, Perspective, Methods and Tools, and Ethics.

If you think about it, it makes sense. The IB has set up a framework through which to investigate the organization of information in our heads. That’s pretty cool. And it works.

Now, what are the two (and only) tasks that a TOK student is required to produce?

#4. The TOK Exhibition

This thing is awesome.

I love the TOK Exhibition.

But when I first read about it—it was new for the Class of 2022—I thought it was the lamest thing ever.

Then I taught it.

A couple of things to say right off.

First, the purpose of The Exhibition is for students to make connections to their real-world, not some abstract notion of the “real-world”.

The second is you need to think about the meaning of the word exhibition—meaning a display, say, in a museum.

So here’s the task in simple language. Students take three objects from their lives and write three separate 300-word commentaries (950 words total) that link each object separately to a…

wait for it…

...a prompt given to them by the IB.

Say what?

That’s right, the IB gives all IB students in the world the same 35 prompts. Students pick one. That becomes the “title” of their exhibition. Then they find three objects and write three separate commentaries that link those objects to the prompt. The total word count can’t be more than 950 words.

It is awesome.

Here are five examples of the 35 prompts:

To what extent is certainty attainable?
Are some things unknowable?
How can we judge when evidence is adequate?
Does all knowledge impose ethical obligations on those who know it?
What counts as knowledge?

The Exhibition is where you see students making connections and links perhaps beyond what you might have thought of yourself. That's happened to me a lot.

It’s important to note that The Exhibition is the Internal Assessment of the TOK course. This means that teachers grade the work internally at the school and then submit a sampling to the IB for moderation.

Yes, the objects can be digital. :-)

#5. The TOK Essay

The heralded TOK Essay. Students really feel like they’ve arrived when they start writing their TOK Essay. It is a pretty cool moment in the course for everyone.

Here it is in a nutshell.

The IB gives all students on earth six titles. Every student picks one title. Then write a 1600-word essay to serve that title. Since the titles are given by the IB, they are called “prescribed titles.” Fancy, right?

That’s the task.

Of course, these titles are stated in the form of a Knowledge Question and usually direct students to answer the question using one or two Areas of Knowledge.

The Essay is externally assessed by the IB, so each student’s essay will be submitted to the IB for grading.

To give you some context, here are the Six Prescribed Titles for May of 2024:

Is subjectivity overly celebrated in the arts but unfairly condemned in history? Discuss with reference to the arts and history.
How can we reconcile the opposing demands for specialization and generalization in the production of knowledge? Discuss with reference to mathematics and one other area of knowledge.
Nothing is more exciting than fresh ideas, so why are areas of knowledge often so slow to adopt them? Discuss with reference to the human sciences and one other area of knowledge.
Do we underestimate the challenges of taking knowledge out of its original context and transferring it to a different context? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.
Do we need custodians of knowledge? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.
Are we too quick to assume that the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest? Discuss with reference to the natural sciences and one other area of knowledge.

Pretty cool, right?

And these 18-year-old kids tend to love it too.

You’ll enjoy teaching it, but you’ll enjoy reading the essays even more.

So there it is...

The Theory of Knowledge course simplified down to its five core pieces. I hope that was helpful.

But please, please, please do yourself a favor—and your students too—and don’t get caught in the weeds when teaching this course.

Yes, the TOK terms and language matter.

But if your goal is to create a lasting impression for the students, then just think, “How can I create really stimulating thought-experiences each day in class for these kids.”

If you do that, they will love the course.

If you do that, they will do well on the TOK Exhibition.

If you do that, they will do well on the TOK Essay.

But most importantly, if you do that, your students will have a better understanding of themselves and the world around them for the rest of their lives.

This course, if taught well, is that powerful.

See you next week.