Teacher Tip: First step to planning for the new IB Psych course

If you’re not sure where to begin planning for the new course, this post might help. 

Those of us used to teaching with the approaches and options combined, have a bit of a conceptual head start. However, it’s made incredibly easy by this new course which appears to be designed to be taught this way.

#1. Start with the contexts, not the approaches

Below you’ll see how the contexts naturally cover most of the approach content. I’ve highlighted in yellow the context topics that are also the same as the approaches.

If you’ve taught the old curriculum, you can start with your favourite option. You can probably use your old lesson plans. Hopefully this will take the pressure off – you know you’ll have the first unit ready to go at least. For example, if I reused my “Love and Marriage” unit for Human Relationships I know I’d be covering cultural dimensions, chemical messengers, communication and strategies for improving relationships.

If you’re brand new, pick the context that you’re most comfortable with. Get in touch and I can send you some of my old Love and Marriage stuff so you can get started. If you used my teacher materials in the old curriculum, rest assured I’m making all new ones for this time around.

#2 Fit remaining approach topics into contexts

The next step I’d recommend is to see how the remaining approach topics naturally and logically fit into the contexts. For example, I’ve coloured in yellow below the topics that are in the contexts already. I’ve then coloured in blue those that are essentially the same as a topic in the contexts, but slightly different. For example, in Health and well-being you need to teach biological explanations for a disorder. We can use the biological approach content to teach this. For example, the serotonin hypothesis of depression can be taught for chemical messengers, neurotransmission, animal research, animal models, and biological reductionism. Link that to the 5-HTT gene and you’ve pretty much covered the approach (and just learned what I’ve got in my unit on Depression).

The two left are emic and etic approaches, but these could easily fit in multiple places in the course. For example, I will teach them in relation to attraction – what is universally recognised as attractive (etic approach) versus culturally specific ways of studying attraction and mate preference.

WARNING: The big mistake I fear some people might make is blindly teaching approaches first, then having to unnecessarily double-up, get themselves in a muddle and run out of time.

#3 Watch me ignore my own advice

What you see in table 2 above is that the biological approach content isn’t in the contexts, with the exception of chemical messengers. This gave me a cunning idea – I really wanted to teach Criminology again in my course. It’s a fan favourite. But it just doesn’t work well with most of the Human Relationships content. Those topics are far better for personal relationships. For instance, Gottman’s four horsemen are more interesting and relevant in relationships than say communication patterns of aggression, I think.

So, I designed an 11-lesson unit on Criminology that covers all of the biological approach content. This is my first unit in the course (after a 5 lesson introduction). Then I cover all of that content again later in depression and addiction (for Health and well-being). Why teach it twice? A few reasons.

1. It completely takes the pressure of the start of the course. I know if students don’t “get it” right away, we’ll have another crack at these same topics later. Even if they just know the key terms from Criminology, this sets a fantastic foundation. Remember how overwhelming those first few weeks are for students starting IB.
2. Learning happens through rehearsal. I like connecting my topics thematically so they make sense, but I also like revisiting them in different places in the course. This allows regular review, rather than expecting what they learned in Week One of the course will be remembered 75 weeks later before the exams. For this same reason, I teach compliance techniques in a short unit on “cults” and then again in “manipulation.”
3. It’s also more fun. Criminology is always a student favourite. But you could do any topic. Let’s say you can’t choose between anxiety and depression for mental health, you could begin with depression and cover the biology, then do a different disorder later in the course. Or you could do the biology of mental health first, then the biology of physical health later.

But won’t I run out of time? Never fear. What you’ll see above is that human development has the least overlap with the approaches. If you look at Paper 1 Section C, you’ll see that they always get to choose from two questions from two different approaches. This means you can cut out or cut down what you teach from human development if you want to free up some time. For those teaching SL in one year, this could be a good option.

HL students can have plenty of time in the course, since 90 hours have been allowed for Paper 3. You can read how we can use that to free up another 20 hours at least in this post. 

I hope this helps.