If you’ve been following the conversations on the OCC and facebook forums, you’ve probably read, seen and heard people discussing approaches to teaching IB Psychology using terms like holistic, thematic and integrated. You might have even heard these terms on a workshop. For new teachers, this might be quite confusing, so in this post I’ll just quickly clarify what these …
There’s no difference between “evaluate” and “discuss.”
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 …
Travis’ IB Psychology Course Outline – Old Syllabus
You can see more outlines on these two posts: IB Psychology HL in <180 Hours IB Psychology SL in <125 Hours Download my course outline here. You can also find other teachers’ outlines that have been posted on our facebook group for teachers. Feel free to post any questions about this outline or my course. Travis’ IB Psychology Course Outline …
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, …
5 reasons to be wary of choosing the development option
This post was originally called: “5 reasons why I wouldn’t choose the development option,” but I’ve changed it so it’s less scary for those teachers who are keen on the option. If you’re contemplating which options to go for in the new course, I personally wouldn’t be rushing into choosing development as one of them. I’ve only recently come to see just …
5 reasons why I think “depth” is better than “breadth” in IB Psychology.
When planning to teach (or study) individual topics in the new IB Psychology course, you might find yourself faced with the question: do I go for depth or breadth? For example, should you teach (or learn) three effects of hormones on behaviour, or just one? The new course has supposedly been designed to allow the choice of either approach. However, in …
What does “breadth or depth” mean?
This post accompanies my other post about why I think it’s better to aim for depth over breadth in IB Psychology. What is depth? Depth refers to studying a topic by looking at only one or two examples. Examples Studying “Biases in thinking and decision making” by focusing only one on example, e.g., confirmation bias. Studying the effects of one …
“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 …
Teaching Tip: How to cut content and increase understanding
When it’s time to teach the new course, if you’re a bit savvy in your curriculum design you can exploit overlaps, cut content, and best of all – enhance student understanding of psychology. How do we do all this? In this post I’ll walk you through some helpful hints and show you the value of constructing relationship chains. Keeping it Simple …
IB Psychology (HL) in less than 180 hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options, it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course content in more depth and in less time. Below you can see how I intend on teaching my HL Psychology class in less than 180 hours with the help of my textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. What I should point out …
IB Psychology (SL) in less than 125 Hours!
By teaching the course holistically and integrating the core and options it’s possible to teach the IB Psychology course in more depth and in less time. Here are two possible ways you could teach SL Psychology in less than 125 hours with the help of our textbook, IB Psychology: A Student’s Guide. Course Option #1 with Human Relationships …
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. …
How to download the new IB Psychology Guide….2027 edition
Since it’s a common question, I thought I’d explain the steps to downloading the new course guide. I would publish it here, but that would be a copyright infringement. I will ask permission from IB if I can publish it, but for now it’s best to navigate through the new site for yourself. Step One: Log in to MyIB (Here) …
Sample course outlines
Here is a doc’ that I quickly put together to highlight some options for different course structures using the themantic approach. Please note these times are approximations. In fact, the time allocations are generous. For example, the Criminology unit has 27 “lessons” but allows for 35 hours. I’ve always allocated more hours than lessons, to allow for teaching writing skills, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …