Before I explain why an evaluation and a discussion in a student’s IB Psychology exam answer would look exactly the same, I should first mention that Christos Halkiopoulos was aware of this long before I was and has been saying this for quite some time. It was only recently when I gave this some more thought that I realized I …
Teaching Tip: Research Methods
When I first started teaching IB Psychology I followed the syllabus pretty much as it was laid out in the guide, beginning with the biological level of analysis. I even taught the LOs as they appear as well. But after a couple of years I realized that teaching the ethics, principles and research methods first in a unit (as they …
Why every lesson should have a guiding question.
The answer to this will probably seem pretty obvious, but there’s a little more to an effective guiding question than meets the eye. I like to keep my planning simple and a good guiding question is just one way I try to do less, but do it better. What is a guiding question? In the themantic model of curriculum design, …
Example Essay: Technological Techniques
I’ve been playing around a bit with scaffolding for essay writing, and from what I’ve found, a general guideline for essay structure is as follows: Introduction Core argument Supporting evidence (min. 2 x studies). Counter argument Conclusion Of course, this is just a template and sometimes the structure varies. For example, you might have one study supporting the core argument …
“How many studies do I need?”
By far the two most common questions IB Psychology teachers (and students) ask are: Is this a good EE question? and… How many studies do I need? You can read my answer to the first question about EEs here. In this post I want to address the second question in two ways. First the short answer, that I know many people …
“Is this a good EE question?”
There’s only way way we should be answering this question, in my opinion. And the answer should always be… “Well, it depends.” Let’s first assume that the question in question addresses some kind of relationship between one or more variables and individual human behaviour (or mental processes). If it does this, it’s suitable for psychology. If not, it needs amending. …
Sample SAQs: Memory Reliability
Here are two versions of the same sample answer from this year’s (May, 2017) IB Psychology exam. The question was: Describe one study investigating memory reliability. The annotated short answer response (SAQ) shows you the answer, plus my comments as to why I think this is a mediocre response. Then we have this second excellent annotated example SAQ, which does a better …
When the IB asks the wrong question…
In the most recent IB Psychology exam the wrong question has been asked. And I’m not talking about the “etic” question, either. I’m referring to the SAQ from the cognitive level of analysis: Describe one study investigating the reliability of one cognitive process. This is obviously the wrong question to ask and may result in poor student performance, unless you’ve trained your …
Why teach themantically?
Why teach thematically? If you think about it, teaching by the core approaches (or levels of analysis) in a linear way IS a thematic approach – the themes are biology, cognition and socio-culture, and then the themes are abnormal psych, health, etc. These themes tie together topics so by the end of the unit students have a broad conceptual understanding. …
Alternative Essay Rubric
Here’s an alternative rubric that I use when marking my student’s work. At the core of the themantic approach to teaching is the recognition that learning moves from surface to deep learning. The three levels of learning (aka three levels of thinking) are descriptors that can lead to more objective marking and clearer feedback for students. These levels work at a …