Subject teachers can embed TOK thinking into their subject areas by helping students to reflect on their own development as knowers in that subject.
Knowledge and the Knower
In TOK, students and even teachers are referred to as knowers. Through the core theme students reflect on their own knowledge and their perspective as a knower. They think about where their beliefs and values come from, what shapes their knowledge, how their membership of different communities influence their knowledge and their perspective. How their knowledge is constructed, critically examined, evaluated and renewed by communities and individuals. They also reflect on how their interaction with other individuals and the world influences their own knowledge.
The core theme allows students to critically examine the claims they encounter. It provokes students to think about how they can distinguish between the claims that can be contested and the claims that cannot be. Students learn not to accept claims at their face value, and have a constructive doubt response to the claims they come across. They also realise that in many situations it is not possible to have absolute certainty.
The core theme beautifully connects with the IB learner profile and provides students with a lot of opportunities to reflect on the tools and faculties they have to gain knowledge. They also realise the power and limitations of these tools in the process becoming aware of their underlying assumptions and biases. This all makes them an open-minder knower.
The task: identify the location of a geocache in Nova Scotia.
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Open Drive DocumentExcerpt From Approaches to teaching and learning in the Diploma Programme
Reflection
Like metacognition, reflection is a thinking skill that plays a particularly essential role in learning. The value of structured reflection activities in education is widely recognized, and elements are commonly incorporated into learning programmes in various forms. These activities may be written (for example, reflective essays, reading logs, case studies), oral (for example, presentations, video diaries, discussion) or artistic/creative (for example, photos or other images capturing scenes that can then be used to promote discussion). They may also encompass elements of more than one form (for example, student portfolios). Online tools such as blogs (reflective journals), wikis (collaborative web pages), digital stories and podcasts, interactive micro-blogging and social networking also offer great opportunities for reflective activities.
It is crucial that reflective activities are meaningful for students, and do not become mechanistic and formulaic. Effective reflective activities should challenge students to think more deeply, and students need to be explicitly aware of the role of the activities. This does not necessarily mean introducing students to specific theories/models of reflection, although this can be helpful, but it does mean ensuring that sufficient time is allocated to appropriately designed reflective activities at all stages of learning—before, during and after. Another helpful approach can be to distinguish between different types of reflection. For example, the three elements of the DP core all have a slightly different emphasis in relation to reflection: in TOK, the prime emphasis is on cognitive reflection; in the extended essay, the emphasis is on reflection on process; and in creativity, activity, service (CAS), there is a more affective emphasis to the reflection.
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