IB Diploma Programme: TOK Course Outline

Course description

TOK is a course about critical thinking and inquiring into the process of knowing, rather than about learning a specific body of knowledge. It is a core element which all Diploma Programme students undertake and to which all schools are required to devote at least 100 hours of class time. TOK and the Diploma Programme subjects should support each other in the sense that they reference each other and share some common goals. The TOK course examines how we know what we claim to know. It does this by encouraging students to analyse knowledge claims and explore knowledge questions. A knowledge claim is the assertion that “I/we know X” or “I/we know how to Y”, or a statement about knowledge; a knowledge question is an open question about knowledge. A distinction between shared knowledge and personal knowledge is made in the TOK guide. This distinction is intended as a device to help teachers construct their TOK course and to help students explore the nature of knowledge.

While there are arguably many ways of knowing, the TOK course identifies eight specific ways of knowing (WOKs). The WOKs have two roles in TOK:

• they underlie the methodology of the areas of knowledge

• they provide a basis for personal knowledge.

Discussion of WOKs will naturally occur in a TOK course when exploring how areas of knowledge operate. Since they rarely function in isolation, the TOK course should explore how WOKs work, and how they work together, both in the context of different areas of knowledge and in relation to the individual knower. This might be reflected in the way the TOK course is constructed. Teachers should consider the possibility of teaching WOKs in combination or as a natural result of considering the methods of areas of knowledge, rather than as separate units.

Areas of knowledge are specific branches of knowledge, each of which can be seen to have a distinct nature and different methods of gaining knowledge. TOK distinguishes between eight areas of knowledge. They are mathematics, the natural sciences, the human sciences, the arts, history, ethics, religious knowledge systems, and indigenous knowledge systems. Students must explore a range of areas of knowledge, and it is suggested that studying six of these eight would be appropriate. The knowledge framework is a device for exploring the areas of knowledge. It identifies the key characteristics of each area of knowledge by depicting each area as a complex system of five interacting components. This enables students to effectively compare and contrast different areas of knowledge and allows the possibility of a deeper exploration of the relationship between areas of knowledge and ways of knowing.

Syllabus Outline

ATL Skills

Thinking: Developing critical thought, posing problems, asking questions, explaining, evaluating, analysing, considering different points of view, integrating approaches and exploring how areas of knowledge are related to ways of thinking.

Communication: The ability to evaluate, analyse and discuss both in written and oral form.

Social: Collaborative work through class discussions, presentations, teamwork and debates.

Self-management: Setting goals, keeping up, managing time and tasks effectively

Research: Through the essay and oral presentation, knowledge questions are explored and evaluated with the help of research material, as well as the knowers’ own knowledge and personal experiences. Personal knowledge is linked with shared knowledge through this process.