Essential Understanding:
Subject teachers can incorporate TOK into their subjects by helping students explore their subject through conceptual lenses.
Session Objectives:
- To introduce subject teachers to the kind of conceptual teaching and learning that occurs in TOK.
- To help subject teachers identify important concepts in their subject area and to demonstrate activities through which subject teachers can help students explore their subject through the use of concepts.
- To assist subject teachers in finding appropriate places in their existing curricula where they already investigate concepts in their subject or where they can easily embed such an exploration.
- What counts as good evidence for a claim?
- Does what is seen to constitute “good evidence” vary from culture to culture?
- How can we decide between the judgments of experts if they disagree with each other?
- What counts as good evidence for a claim?
- Are intuition, evidence, reasoning, consensus and authority all equally convincing methods of justification?
- Do historians have an ethical obligation not to ignore contradictory evidence?
- In what ways is factual evidence sometimes used, abused, dismissed and ignored in politics?
- Does what is seen to constitute “good evidence” vary from culture to culture?
- explicitly identifying key concepts in TOK unit plans
- encouraging students to make links to concepts being covered in other DP subjects
- encouraging students to make use of tools such as concept maps or mind maps to help them see connections and relationships.
Concepts:
The following 12 concepts play an important role throughout the TOK course. You may already have some understanding of these concepts, through our discussions in TOK you will deepen your understanding of these concepts and learn about their role in knowledge creation.
Concepts form building blocks out of which knowledge is constructed. Every discipline and area of knowledge have concepts which work as foundations in them. The 12 concepts mentioned above are relevant and important for knowledge in general. They may also be important in specific areas of knowledge.
One of the requirements of knowledge questions is that the questions must draw upon TOK Concepts. The concept could be explicitly used in the knowledge questions:
Or these concepts could be present implicitly in the knowledge questions. E.g.
The concept of ‘certainty’ is implicitly present in this question.
Focusing on these concepts would ensure that students are keeping their focus on knowledge and not on the subject-specific content. Although these concepts can be discussed individually, when they are discussed in relation to each other, the students are more likely to get an in-depth understanding of the processes involved with knowledge.
Teaching for conceptual understanding is a powerful teaching strategy that can help students to build the capacity to engage with complex ideas. There is also a strong link between concepts and moving students to higher-order thinking; for example, developing conceptual understanding helps students to move from concrete thinking to abstract thinking.
One way in which these 12 concepts can be threaded throughout the TOK course is by using them explicitly within the wording of knowledge questions. For example, the concept of evidence could be explored through knowledge questions such as:
Other useful strategies include:
(Theory of Knowledge - Teacher Support Material - 2020)
What is Conceptual Understanding?
Key TakeawayWhat is the function of truth in your subject area?
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Open Drive DocumentExploring TOK Concepts in DP Subjects
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PadletIdentifying Concepts in DP Subjects
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Open Drive DocumentQuestions, Comments, Suggestions
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Open Drive Document