My natural disposition is to be a bit of a jumped up pr*#k who’s a bit too full of himself, so I’m trying to be more Jonathan Haidt and less Jordan Peterson these days. With this in mind, I recently went on a mental gratitude walk through the new guide and realised five things I love about it. #5: Learning …
Tips for Teaching Concepts in IB Psychology
Originally posted on MyIB forum and adapted here in case it helps. The biggest challenge facing IB Psychology students and teachers in the new curriculum is the introduction of the SIX CONCEPTS: change, measurement, perspective, causality, bias and responsibility. This adds a lot of research method content to an already content-rich course. So here are some ideas I’m playing with …
Travis Dixon’s New Textbook for the New IB Psych Curriculum: A Timeline
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 …
The Command Term Conundrum
Allow me to explain the IB Psychology command terms: Explain means explain if it’s in Paper 1, but not if it’s in Paper 2, unless of course it’s coupled with another level three command term (e.g. discuss), then it does mean explain. And outline doesn’t really mean outline, it means describe, unless the question (or mark scheme) is actually asking …
Let’s STOP the research methods madness!
“What was the research method of (x’s) study?” Along with, “Is this a good EE question…”, it’s the most common question IB Psych teachers ask. But we shouldn’t have to and we need to put an end to the research methods madness. Why? Well, let me count the ways (or if you’d rather just read some exam tips, scroll to …
How to solve the reproducibility crisis in Psychology
The “reproducibility crisis” (or “replicability crisis”) is the term used to describe the recent discovery in psychology that many classic studies are failing to have their results reproduced. In fact, the whole of psychology, especially social psychology research, seems to be in a crisis regarding its credibility as a source of knowledge. Other fields like economics and the sciences are facing …
Understanding IB Psychology with 3 Easy Questions
The IB Psychology course can be a confusing beast and while the official IB Guide is there to tell us what we need to teach (as teachers) and study (as students), it’s not always clear. So I came up with a way of breaking down the IB Psychology course into three simple questions. Thinking about IB Psychology in the following …
IB Psych Results (M19): A Reflection
It’s that time of year when the results come out and some of us are over the moon, while others are left scratching our heads thinking “what did I do wrong?” The many comments about results flying around Facebook suggest that there is a bit of a divide this year with some people being very happy with their results and …
IB Psychology – Grade Boundaries New Curriculum (Feb 2019)
Are you wondering what you need to do to get a 7 in IB Psychology?It’s a bit tough to say exactly because as of now (February 2019) we have not had any exams for this new curriculum. But as I’m marking my students’ mock exams I have also created the grade boundaries that I will use for IB Psychology until …
An idea for the next IB Psych’ curriculum…
Originally posted to the MyIB Psychology forum, May 18th, 2018 One thing I think is missing from the new IB Psychology guide in the guidance column is some suggested studies. I know Christos and others would like to see a prescribed list of studies, but I can see some issues with this (e.g. it doesn’t allow for adapting one’s …