Like almost everyone else in Maths education, I have recently decided to broach the ‘mastery’ word. It does feel a bit odd to do so, given that it’s been around at least since at least the 60’s, and I’ve never felt a need to use it before – despite having been an advocate of the […]
Read moreDiffering perspectives are easiest to see when they come into conflict. As a result, it’s tempting for Theory of Knowledge students to seize on conflicts as topics for presentations — and for us as teachers to use them as class examples to illustrate differences in perspectives. As I’m about to do here! I worry a […]
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Oh no! More suggestion, in an article I’m reading, that gaining reliable knowledge from the media might be even harder than sticking to a diet! Just as we’re assaulted with tempting displays of candy and chocolate as we head for the supermarket check-out, we’re faced with screaming headlines, awful photos, and our own fear and excitement […]
Read more “Civilians Attacked by Chemical Weapons!” Few headlines spark as much outrage. If a TOK class engages students in the questions of knowledge connected with this kind of horrendous event, it can help them feel the importance of the intellectual tools that the course provides for probing into – and reacting to – such events. A reflective piece in the current edition […]
Read more Well, we’ve done it at last. We’ve hit the Big Time. Suddenly the topics that we chat about every day in class – such as concepts of truth and reliability, the nature of “facts”, methods of validating or rejecting knowledge claims, and the dynamic and formative role of perspectives – have come into the glaring […]
Read more “That’s what I think. And I’m entitled to my opinion.” This kind of declaration can be the end of the road for any exploration or exchange of ideas. Up goes the wall. Behind it, the speaker entrenches a view and refuses to examine it. In a course such as Theory of Knowledge where we encourage […]
Read more Our intuitions can take us in leaps to some crazy places. And yet, if we’re going to consider how we really build what we claim is knowledge – in real life rather than in some tidied and rational abstraction – we do have to look at some of those crazy places and the pre-rational cognitive […]
Read more “Scientific truth is a moving target,” wrote the editors of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) a decade ago. “But is it inevitable, as John Ioannidis argues …that the majority of findings are actually false?” In the decade since the editors posed this question, the psychological sciences have been shaken by further challenges to their credibility, including some widely reported controversies. It was August of this […]
Read more (guest post by TOK Course Book co-author, Mimi Bick) Do you live in a democratic country? If you do you’ll have noticed that leading up to major elections, the media is filled with what experts think will happen when the real day arrives. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head. Sometimes they don’t. Is […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) The statistics are horrifying. Every minute, a child dies from malaria. In 2013, 90% of the world’s malaria deaths occurred in Africa and over 430,000 African children died before their fifth birthdays. And there are plenty more statistics where these came from : In 2013, there were about 198 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty […]
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