If you’re reading this it’s probably because your teacher has sent you here after reading something in your essay along the lines of, “this experiment was a laboratory experiment and so it lacks ecological validity.” This throwaway sentence makes teachers and examiners groan (and not award you any marks, just so you know). So I’m here to help show you how to …
Tip for Cutting Content #3: Identities, Attitudes and Behaviours
Seeing as my last post about dealing with the cognitive extensions seemed to help, I thought I’d share this one. For some reason that I’m not too sure of, the new guide has got a trifecta of effects of cultural influences in the third topic: identities, attitudes and behaviours. On the surface this appears to be somewhat of a problem. …
Tip for Cutting Content #2: HL Extension – Cognitive Approach
Many people are worried about the amount of “content” in the IB Psychology course, but if you identify core concepts within the guide you can easily find overlaps, reduce content and enhance conceptual understanding in your students. Remember that all assessments will ask students about a core concept (i.e. a relationship between behaviour, variables, research or ethics). Let’s look at …
Biological Approach: Sample Exam Questions
With the new curriculum and the loss of the LOs, many teachers may be wondering about what the exam questions will be like. The answer is: much like the old ones. If you look at all the topics in the biological approach they are all related to the understanding of how variables can influence behaviour. The exam questions will reflect …
Social Identity Theory: A Brief Summary for Students
On the surface, Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory can seem complex as there are multiple parts and some of the ideas are really abstract. In our themantic approach we try to break it down, lesson-by-lesson so each of the major concepts of social identity theory are introduced gradually. Remember that one of the first questions you should ask when trying to understand …
Critical Thinking in the New Course
The following is adapted from an extract in the introduction to IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide Critical Thinking The IB Psychology course is aimed at developing an understanding of relationships: relationships between variables, behaviour, ethics and research methods. But students also need to be able to develop the skills to go further than understanding and to be able to reflect critically upon …
Internal Validity: And why I don’t teach it…
I’d love to hear how you feel about my rationale for not teaching students how to evaluate studies based on internal validity. There is one exception, however: their IA. I only introduce the concept of internal validity during the analysis of their IA results and procedures, as this is the only study I expect them to be able to make …
Rememberol
I like to use a basic, fictional study when introducing students to the concepts behind research in psychology. For this purpose, I pretend that I’ve designed a drug called “Rememberol” and that it helps students increase what they remember after they study. It’s a basic concept and the fact that it’s a pill enables me to use it to demonstrate …
Maintaining Perspective: My 5% Rule
This post is adapted from an earlier post. At the start of the school year I like to remind myself about My 5% Rule: I should expect IB Psychology to make up less than 5% of my students’ lives. About 98% of the time that I see my kids is when they’re in my classroom. I’d love to reduce that % …
Lesson Idea: Inferential Statistics
With 20 hours allocated for the IA and a lot to get done, I only have time in my course to plan one lesson for inferential statistics. In this time I want students to get a basic understanding of: how inferential stats differ to descriptive ones how to choose which inferential statistical test to use and most importantly, why inferential statistical tests …
How to cope with the options in 20 hours..Tip #1
With the new syllabus I do like the concept of having extensions to the core approaches: this is a well thought-out practical solution to deal with the many different SL/HL scheduling issues that IB teachers face. It gives us more flexibility in planning how we differentiate between SL and HL courses in the many ways we all approach the course …
C.H.A.C.E.R: The Themantic Lesson Plan
Our goal at TE is to make teachers lives better by making them simpler. Do less and do it better, getting back to basics, yadda, yadda. If we can help you reduce stress, it will have positive impacts on your kids (see this article about the correlation between teacher burnout and cortisol in students). Get all your lesson plans and …
Relationship Chains: The Framework of the Themantic Model
In an earlier post I outlined one of the core concepts of the themantic model of curriculum design: the building block. If a building block is an individual unit of information, a relationship chain is what is created when it’s significantly connected to another building block. Psychology is the study of relationships. Primarily, it’s the study of relationships between variables and behaviour. …
Building Blocks: The Foundation of the Themantic Model
Now that we’re beginning to launch the themantic model of teaching and learning, it’s probably a good idea to begin elucidating what the model is all about. But before you think that this will just be another bunch of edujargon or abstract pedagogical theory, it’s important to note that at Themantic Education we realise that any theory is only as …
SAQ Writing Guide
Updated Jan 25th, 2021 I’ve spent over ten years trying to devise good advice for students about how to write exam answers. You’ll see below an original post I wrote a few years ago (in 2017) with an attached “SAQ Writing Guide” as a word.doc that I thought would revolutionize teaching of SAQs. I was wrong. I’ve learned that specific …
Understanding Research “Methods”
Frankly, sometimes I get a little peeved when distinctions are made between research “methods” and “techniques.” This is a pedantic distinction and one that doesn’t have any influence on the broader conceptual understandings we want students to acquire in this course. From the May 2013 exam mark scheme the appropriate “methods” to discuss at the biological LOA (now called an …
Paper Three Questions 1a,b,c: Details
NOTE: THIS IS FOR THE NEW SYLLABUS! Remember that all three questions from Question 1 will be asked, so you need to be prepared to answer all three. There are 9 possible marks available for Question 1, which accounts for 37.5% of Paper One. The following is an overview of these three questions. 1a. Identify the method used and outline …
Sample Stimulus Material (Paper Three)
The most important thing to remember with Paper Three responses is that you know exactly what the questions might be. This makes it really easy to prepare. The difficulty is that you don’t know what the research stimulus will be, so it’s important that you get lots of practice at answering these questions with practice research summaries. Remember that the …
What is an “approach?”
The “Levels of Analysis” are out, and so are “Perspectives”, so now we have “approaches to understanding human behaviour.” But what does this mean? In short, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a term used to separate the IB Psychology course into meaningful units. I would define the approaches as a description of behaviours, as well as a set of variables …
New Syllabus: Major Changes
The IB has published the new subject guide, teacher support material and specimen exam papers. You can find all this information on the OCC. In my mind, here are the big changes: Learning Outcomes removed (Read more…) Options time reduced to 20 hours SL and HL now do the same Internal Assessment Paper 3 includes quantitative possibility HL have extensions …
No More Learning Outcomes
With the new guide the learning outcomes are out the window. While for many of us used to the old system of LO’s this may appear daunting, I for one am pleased to see the back of “describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour” and “explain emic and etic concepts.” These are poorly phrased, to say …
Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory
Why does my blog have three different posts explaining social identity theory? Because for the first few years teaching this theory I had to write it out for myself to fully comprehend it. It’s difficult to understand at first. My best advice is to always remember that its’ a theory of intergroup conflict (e.g. prejudice and discrimination), so think of real …
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Improve Exam Results
Work smarter, not harder: Improving exam results with a themantic approach Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to worry about exam results, and instead we could just focus on getting our students interested and engaged with what they’re learning about? Thankfully I think adopting a themantic approach to teaching the IB Psych’ course can do both. There are …
Why change to a themantic approach?
Why change to a themantic approach? Here are four of the key benefits I can see in switching to a themantic approach: It reduces the amount of content knowledge the students need to remember Less content means more time for developing critical thinking and other skills (e.g. writing, research, communication, collaboration, etc.) It increases depth of knowledge and understanding It increases options …
What is the themantic approach?
What is the themantic approach? The traditional and by far the most common way of teaching IB Psychology is to teach it in a linear way,., i.e. teach each approach (level of analysis) and the options topics separately. So, for instance, the course begins with Research Methods, then moves into the BLA (or approaches, as they’re now called), the CLA. And …