Thank you to everyone who has been posting and writing to me asking if I’ll be writing a new textbook for the new IB Psychology curriculum, due to published early 2025. The answer is: OF COURSE! With the new subject brief being published by the IB, it has allowed me to start writing (IB Psych Subject Brief).
Northern hemisphere schools will begin teaching the new curriculum in August 2025. Therefore, our proposed timeline is:
- July ’24: Writing has begun (e.g. “Intro to Psychology)
- Feb ’25: IB Psych Guide is published. Travis continues writing based on the new guide.
- YouTube and Blog posts published to help understand the new curriculum
- Intro to Psychology digital downloads will be available for free! (Sample of new book)
- Mar ’25: Registrations of interest open to sign-up for textbook updates and mailing list, sneak peeks, etc.
- April – May: Preview of the textbook and teaching support packs (TSPs)
- May ’25: Textbook available for pre-order from our store.
- June’ 25: First unit (+ intro) published digitally with TSPs.*
- July-August 2025: “IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide 2nd Ed” published and shipped.
- August 2025-Dec 2026: Travis will release teacher support packs (TSPs) for all units covered in the textbook.**
- February 2027: “IB Psychology: A Revision Guide 2nd Ed” and other review materials published in time for first exams in May 2027.
* First Two Units to Be Published in Print and Digital
I want you to be able to go into your holidays next summer knowing you can relax and come back in August 2025 with the first 8-10 weeks of your lessons already planned and prepared, with the digital textbook chapter for yourself and students, all lesson plans, workbooks and activities ready to go. If you’ve used my TSPs before, you’ll know what to expect.
This will, I hope, significantly ease your stress about changing into the new curriculum. It also allows teachers who haven’t used ThemEd materials before a chance to try the themantic approach, which is more than just teaching thematically. It’s about the careful organisation of content in manageable and relatable chunks.
Haven’t tried our teacher support packs? Download a free sample of the ENTIRE IB PSYCH course here.
Content is King in the themantic approch. That’s because knowing simple content is at the heart of all critical thinking and conceptual understanding. I know that’s an unpopular opinion among some, but it’s a demonstrable fact. Try it: write out a paragraph of what you would consider a demonstration of critical thinking and/or conceptual understanding in psychology. Now review it – notice how much knowledge you needed to write that paragraph. But I digress.
** Teacher Support Packs
It takes me about 3-5 hours to create one lesson’s worth of materials that go into a teacher support pack. This includes thinking of and creating the activities, writing out the CHACER lesson plan, creating the materials, the workbooks and the supporting PowerPoint slides. Therefore, it will take time to publish materials for a 150-240 course. We appreciate your patience with this and hope the materials will be worth the wait.
Thank You
I can’t express sincerely enough the gratitude I feel from the messages I receive from you, my colleagues, about teaching IB Psych. We’re all here helping each other and to know that what I do in my classroom for my students is helping a teacher or student on the other side of the world is one of the best feelings I’ve experienced as a teacher. It’s why I am absolutely loving being on the keyboard again and starting on the 2nd edition of the textbook and I can’t wait for next year. Cheers.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.