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Demystifying TOK w/ David Spooner · IB Unplugged

0:00
Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators
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that tackles your submitted questions and challenges by connecting you with
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experts and peers who share their ideas and stories from real classrooms.
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Hi everyone, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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I'm John Patton and I'm Courtney Marline.
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Today we had the chance to speak
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with David Spooner about TOK
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How it exists within and outside of that classroom itself.
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And it was an
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incredibly interesting conversation,
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which I think you're really going to enjoy.
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David Spooner has been teaching TOK
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philosophy and English language and literature since 1999,
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in a variety of countries including Ghana, the UK, Spain, Finland,
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Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Italy and now he's currently based in India.
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He's been an IB workshop leader since 2004,
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and he has a range of examining experience as well.
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In addition to this, he's been an IB verification and visitor
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and consultant for schools wishing to adopt the diploma program,
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and has collaborated with Kognity on a variety of projects.
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When he's not indulging
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his passions of traveling, rock climbing, hiking, photography or lying on a beach
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doing nothing (my personal favorite), he is still enjoying teaching.
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So yeah, I agree.
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It's been a great conversation with him talking about,
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demystifying TOK, and really why it's not so mystical
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after all, which I think is a really nice breath of fresh air.
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He has a really pragmatic approach to like, this is not complicated.
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This is just teaching students to be thinking about why they know
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what they know and really bringing it back down to these core pieces.
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Yeah, I also I really liked that we were talking about what makes a good TOK teacher.
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And again, it wasn't having this breadth of experience or having any kind
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of certain, background in either their teaching or their learning.
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But it's about this, this humility, this approach
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to really caring about your students
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and thinking about how they are going to learn in the different subjects
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and really just bringing things down to having these important conversations.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I mean, from a practical standpoint, for me, what really stood out is like,
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there are ways in which you can you know,
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TOK has lots of flexibility in terms of how you want to approach it.
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But one of the things that really stood out
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was the way he spoke about, you can bring other subjects into TOK,
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and kind of use that as your vehicle by which you're teaching that, like,
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how do we know these things?
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But we also, you know, the conversation also expanded into like, how can TOK
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exist in the other specific subjects themselves
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and make that a little bit more accessible for those subject teachers,
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and of course, also for the students as well?
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Yeah.
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So with that, I think it's time to bring David in
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and we hope you’ll enjoy this episode.
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Hi, David, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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We're so happy to have you here today.
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Hi, Courtney.
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Thank you for inviting me.
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I'm honored.
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I'm nervous, but I'm honored.
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We are in good hands here, having you as one of our guests.
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We've worked with you many, many times in the past
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doing a lot of work on TOK, critical thinking.
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So I'm excited to talk to you today about demystifying TOK.
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So we like to start with, all of our guests to answer a few warm up questions.
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And the first one that we ask everybody to give a little bit
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of background to you and how you are,
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in the place where you are now is. Yeah.
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Why education? Why did you choose education?
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Oof! Why education?
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My mother is still asking me that question to this day.
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And to be fair, most of my head teachers,
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once they get to know me, are still asking me that question.
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I think there are there are two reasons.
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One is the the much more kind of prosaic,
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post-hoc, intellectual rationalization.
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Right? Why am I still in education?
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I'm a child of the 70s, I guess.
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And in the 70s and early 80s,
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I read a lot of,
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pedagogy.
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People like Ivan Illich (”Deschooling Society”),
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Paulo Freire (”Pedagogy of the Oppressed”) and
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the (”Pedagogy of the Oppressed”) stuck with me even to this day.
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I think, as you know, Courtney, it's still the signature to my email
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and his line was,
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there's no such thing as neutral education.
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Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity
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or freedom.
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And as, a nonconformist myself, that resonated.
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And I find myself working with 16, 17,
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18 year olds who are naturally, nonconformist.
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And if I can help to arm them with an understanding of how much freedom
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they have, and in the next 40, 50, 60 years of their lives,
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then that's why I do
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why I continue to do what I do.
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The autobiographical reason is much more prosaic.
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I was a disaster at school.
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I finished grade ten with one
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iGCSE to my name.
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And I had to leave school for a while
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because I didn't have the qualifications to continue.
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So I went to work and I went to work down a coal mine.
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And because that was the major source of employment where I lived
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and you've seen me, I'm a stick insect and I'm, I'm really short.
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So I was never going to last in the coal mine.
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And so I went back to the school
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after about six months and said, please let me in.
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I would like to try again, please.
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Yes. That's right.
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Please, I begged and the head of sixth form,
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was also the person who had been teaching me to rock climb,
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and he accepted that I could have a second chance,
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provided, I also went to night school,
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during my two years of senior school.
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And, basically, I wanted to be him.
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He was tall and handsome.
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He had a drop dead gorgeous wife.
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He'd read all the right things that I wanted to read.
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And so my real reason for wanting to become
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a teacher was because I wanted to be Mark Greenough.
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Unfortunately, I'm five foot nothing.
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So the tall, handsome part of it was never gonna happen.
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Yeah. Oh, no.
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Oh, man. I just also love the..
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It sounds like a silly way of threatening
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your child to be like, if you don't do well in school, you're go into the mines.
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Yeah, like, that's some incentive there.
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I mean, I don't know if either of you have ever been down a coal mine,
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but they're not the most salubrious places.
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No, no, it's, a place to go to think.
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Right.
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Well, it's literally, Socrates's cave.
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Yeah.
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I've never actually thought about that John before,
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but I think you've put me on to, my next great thought.
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Working down a coal mine
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is how Socrates became Socrates.
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There you go. There you go. Yeah.
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I like what you were mentioning at the start.
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There with regard to, like, education either creates more freedom
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or it essentially creates more like regulation.
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Essentially, you're sort of like driving society in the way that we want to put it.
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So I guess with that in mind, from your position, how do you see
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education evolving and changing over the course of the next decade?
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What might that future of secondary education look like?
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I suppose,
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if I were talking with two people other than yourselves,
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I’d probably have to say something like artificial intelligence, yada yada,
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blah blah blah is going to change the way education is conceived of.
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And I’d probably have to throw in a few made up statistics.
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About 99% of jobs that students are going to get haven't yet been invented.
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But I'm not going to say that because
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I have too much respect for the both of you and for education.
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Quite frankly, I don't think much is going to change, but something has to change.
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Years ago, when I had managed
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to beg my way back into senior school, I had to study Charles Dickens’s.
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(”Hard Times”).
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And chapter two has always stayed with me.
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Dickens writes this,
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scorching satirical critique
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of a utilitarian education system.
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He described students as vessels
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into which knowledge has to be poured.
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And here we are in 2025.
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And if you read that description
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that is satirizing, nothing much has changed.
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And yet the world around us,
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is changing exponentially with every year that passes.
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So we have in the IB
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a couple of beautiful models for how, the diploma itself could evolve
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with the Middle Years program and the Primary Years program.
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We have, a model also with the combined Sciences
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project in the diploma, which could act as a blueprint
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for what the diploma program and other similar programs
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like the AP system in the States, British A-levels,
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the CBSE here in India, how they need to change.
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Until,
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however, all of those systems come out from under,
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the diktat of Ofqual,
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the universities are always going to be able to dictate
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to secondary and senior schools what we need to do.
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What I would love to see evolving
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is that we start to tell universities,
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what they need to do to change, and we need to start telling them
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who, what kind of students we're going to be sending them.
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So my fear is that nothing much will change.
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But, we're in a kind of marginal line.
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We are the last bastion
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of defense of education.
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And so something has to give.
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Something's got to give.
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But I'll be dead in about ten years.
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So I have no idea.
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No I guess it's not your problem anymore.
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Right. Exactly. Good luck guys.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And you've done, you've taught quite a few different subjects
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through the IB over the years.
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And I think that we've worked most closely with you for theory of knowledge.
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You've worked on cognitive resources, you've done workshops, things like that.
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And so when we were talking
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about what we could focus this podcast episode
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on, we ended up landing on this idea of demystifying TOK.
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And, the word demystifying was chosen quite deliberately.
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And I'm just wondering what you find so mystical about TOK,
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that we were going to then demystify it.
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I find nothing at all, mystical about it.
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I think, at the root of TOK.
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it's really very simple.
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The problem is that over
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the various, iterations of the course, since the days of Alec Peterson
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in the late 1960s, early 1970s,
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what has happened to the IB itself?
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What has happened to the state of international
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secondary education?
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Means that,
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the description of what TOK is, the guides
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that have been published for TOK
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have made it seem like this,
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kind of esoteric thing that one needs to have read
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an entire Library of Alexandria
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in order to understand.
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Sometimes the way it's
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presented, in workshops,
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not TOK workshops, so much as subject workshops
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where they have to do a TOK bit
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makes it seem either impenetrable
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or beyond the can of
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most subject specialists.
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And so it ends up
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becoming, for colleagues,
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including some TOK teaching colleagues,
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as well as students,
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this thing, which is kind of,
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there's some ephemeral aspect to it
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that nobody can grasp.
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And that understanding,
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I think, has been not necessarily promoted
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but allowed to gain traction.
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Yeah. But at heart
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TOK is really simple.
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It's asking one question.
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How do you know what you claim to know?
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And the job then of a
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TOK teacher becomes to remind
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everybody, students and colleagues alike that fundamentally,
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that's the only thing we're interested in talking about in TOK.
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The fundamentally in every other subject.
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That's what, teaching colleagues,
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and students of chemistry or physics or whatever it might be.
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That's all they're interested in discussing as well.
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I was, like everybody,
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I'm a member of about a gazillion professional
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WhatsApp groups and social media groups.
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And I was telling
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some of my colleagues on these groups that I was going to be joining you
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for this podcast and how nervous I was and whatever.
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And I, gave a taste of some of the questions that I thought
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you might be asking me and saying, you know, what do you think?
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Why do you think they've called it demystifying TOK?
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And, one colleague wrote to me that TOK is a byproduct
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of the combination of all of the subjects.
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And, I took a step back
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and I thought, is that the right way to think about TOK?
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Is it a byproduct of chemistry,
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literature and so on, or is it, in fact, at the very heart
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of chemistry and literature and so on?
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And the fact that my colleague made that comment,
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and saw
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TOK as being some kind of offshoot
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of all of the other proper academic subjects,
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proved to me that we have allowed it to become this mystical thing
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that only the cognoscenti
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are allowed to understand.
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And, we've gotten away from this,
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this understanding that certainly Alec Peterson had,
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the birth of the IB, that it's a very simple question TOK asks.
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How do you know what you claim to know?
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And I think when you know, when educators or coordinators,
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if we might be giving a presentation to our students,
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you know, when we have a deeper understanding of exactly that question
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and how that is really the foundation of all of our subjects,
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it changes the way that we can perceive it.
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So, as you say,
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if you look at any particular syllabus or guide for any of the courses,
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often it'll be like, here's a TOK link and here's a TOK link.
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And so it can feel like, oh, this is an add on to what we're supposed to be doing.
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And then oftentimes like even in presentations with students,
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or sometimes you hear people
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trying to describe the course to people who don't know anything about the IB.
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And the number of times
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I'll hear somebody say, oh, it's kind of like a philosophy course.
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It's almost like, well that makes it even more distant,
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you know, it feels like it's not really tangible anymore.
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And instead, you know,
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just coming back to that fundamental thing you just said, you know, how do we know?
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And really that becomes the basis of all the things that we are really learning,
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which I think is, is far more accessible.
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And I think if we start with that, then it becomes a little bit more,
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part of everything that we're doing.
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And with that in mind, I mean, you know, obviously you've been in the IB world
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for, quite a bit of time, I think around 20 years now, or possibly even more.
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I wonder, could you guide us through your TOK journey?
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Like, how did you first get involved?
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I mean, obviously, I'm going to attest that every teacher is a TOK teacher,
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but how did you first get involved?
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Like really taking the reins and and finding this is my actual like my
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my heart.
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They I love this subject and really want to do this.
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I want to be identified as like TOK all the time.
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What an interesting question.
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I mean, I,
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I suspect like most TOK teachers,
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I was just given it,
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in one of my first international schools in Greece,
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they took a look at my degree philosophy, and they said, right, Spooner,
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you know, this is, your back, right? And,
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I took a look at the the guide, the syllabus, and I thought, yeah, I got this.
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I've got degrees in philosophy.
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This is right up my alley.
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And I spent a year with that kind of arrogant confidence
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that only, philosophy teachers can have.
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And then at the end of my first year of teaching it,
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I was sent to my first IB TOK workshop.
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And at the end of that week, they were a week long back then.
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Because thank you, John, for reminding everybody I'm as old as the hills.
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I have a job to do.
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You know, I gotta kind of get that out there.
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Fair enough.
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I realized at the end of that week that I've been doing it
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wrong for the whole year and that I fundamentally misunderstood.
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TOK, because I too
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read Theory of Knowledge, which is a branch of philosophy.
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And I thought what you need in order to teach this is philosophy,
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and it's it's completely not registered on my radar
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that the reason there's an IB diploma philosophy course,
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separate to TOK
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is for a reason.
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That's philosophy.
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This is not.
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So I went back to school, and I completely,
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re-engineered how I was thinking about TOK.
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And subsequent to that, I became at some point,
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an IB TOK workshop leader.
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And I kept meeting lots of
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TOK teachers, some new, some seasoned,
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and they all helped me that experience of trying
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to help other teachers to understand TOK, help me completely recalibrate.
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The purpose of TOK.
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And we are where we are now.
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I'm currently reading,
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a newly published book called
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Open Socrates, by an academic called Agnes Callard.
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And I'm only about 30 pages in, but her take is unique.
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She was asking the question, how did Socrates
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the man become Socrates
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The idea? And the
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the simple revelation that Socrates had.
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Was that all you need,
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in order to become Socrates,
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is to admit your intellectual humility and to admit that
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whatever it is you think you know, you still have to demonstrate
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that you have good reasons for knowing it.
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And without having red colored
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book 20 years ago, I think that was what I began
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to learn after my disastrous first year of being a
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TOK teacher, that I.
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I assume that the purpose was, for me
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to teach stuff to kids
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rather than take stuff that they had been taught or were learning
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about in chemistry or French or whatever,
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and subject it to Socratic interrogation.
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I still don't know whether I'm succeeding.
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That’s to be determined.
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But I think to that point, that's
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always something that you talk about in your workshops.
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It's not about the content of TOK.
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I mean, it shouldn't necessarily always be about the content
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in any of the subject classes either.
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But really about the the impact of learning
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TOK, not just to your other classes, but as a learner and all of that.
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And so I'd love for you to kind of talk about that.
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The impact of the TOK style thinking and learning
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that it can have on these students.
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You mentioned content and one of the beautiful things,
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but also one of the mystifying things about TOK is that it's content free.
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If I look at the,
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the aims and objectives for the TOK course,
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we’re supposed to,
22:59
build on,
23:02
the content that students
23:04
are learning about in their other IB diploma subjects.
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So the stimuli for discussion,
23:13
should be taken from,
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the stuff that students are learning about
23:19
in the other IBDP subjects.
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So there is no TOK content.
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What there is, is reflection on content
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that they're being exposed to in their other subject classes.
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When I teach TOK
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there's nothing that I use the stimulus material that they haven't
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seen in their economics class or in their physics or biology classes.
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It's just that we're looking at it in a different way.
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So I hear this phrase sometimes
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that you just use, Courtney, TOK style thinking,
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I don't think there is such a thing.
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Over and above,
24:09
the fact that there's, nothing,
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chemistry style thinking about doing chemistry,
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there's thinking about chemistry,
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and there's not thinking about chemistry.
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And as long as we're thinking about
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the foundational assumptions,
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the axioms, if you like,
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that chemists, physicists,
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literary experts, visual artists have, then
24:43
that could be described as TOK style thinking.
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But hopefully the visual arts teachers and the chemistry teachers
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are also thinking about and discussing
24:56
the foundational assumptions and axioms in their own,
25:01
subjects.
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So I don't think there's anything
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TOK thinking e about what we do in TOK.
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Certainly, you know, just having that position of like how do I know this,
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you know, and kind of having that rattling in your head whenever you're approaching
25:21
any kind of thing, it probably shifts the way that you might approach it.
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I mean, like if you think of other types of curricula
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where, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, you know,
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the student is a vessel and I'm going to pour some knowledge into them.
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And in many curricular settings, it's like, okay, now pour it back
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and show me that you've received it.
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Right. It's that sort of idea.
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But you know what I really appreciated about what I would say to you?
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Okay, style of thinking, I guess.
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Or just like thinking with more of a critical mind.
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It's just like, how do I know this?
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And I guess, you know, if that question is constantly permeating
25:53
not just your subjects, but then it suddenly permeates
25:56
every aspect of your life, then I think that that creates a better,
26:00
more peaceful world, because you end up with people
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who are more critical about the knowledge they're acquiring.
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They understand their own position as a nowhere, and they then are critical
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of their own position.
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Really.
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Like, I know these things and I know this to be true,
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but that's also because of the background I've had.
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And I think, I mean, yes, as a biology, you know, I'm a biology teacher.
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I can
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I can infuse that quite a bit with like, scientific theory and that's with me.
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But there's more.
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I mean, again, you you've used one of my bad noir phrases, right?
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Critical thinking.
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And as Courtney knows, to her cost.
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I don't believe there's any such thing as critical thinking.
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I think there's thinking and there's not thinking,
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but it depends what you're thinking about
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that determines whether or not that thinking is valuable.
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So as educators, again,
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I come back to this very simple, overarching question.
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How do you know what you claim to know?
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On what basis are you justifying
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your knowledge claim, if you like.
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And for me, that is thinking and there's nothing critical about it.
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It's just thinking. If you're not doing that,
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then arguably you're not actually thinking.
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You're just studying, learning,
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regurgitating accepted truths and so on.
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Does that include challenging your own biases then?
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So like if I'm just thinking and there's some value there,
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I am I just by like challenging the way that I think about something
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that still is just thinking itself, not necessarily being critical about that.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, I love playing devil's advocate,
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and I love trying to encourage my students
27:52
to play devil's advocate.
27:55
Because the best way
27:57
to test out the strength of your own, ideas and beliefs
28:02
and claims to know is by taking the contraposition,
28:07
and looking for holes and lacunae, in it
28:12
and looking for problems in it.
28:15
And only then, when you have
28:18
that kind of self examining Socratic.
28:22
I promise that's the last time I'll use the word Socratic
28:26
He’s getting a lot of cushion here.
28:30
He is. Yeah.
28:32
I didn't buy shares in it.
28:35
I should have done it.
28:36
But I might be old, but I'm not 2500 years old, so I missed the boat on that one.
28:42
If you're self examining,
28:46
then you are thinking,
28:49
if you're not, then arguably you're not even thinking
28:53
whatever it is you're doing is not thinking.
28:56
You might be concentrating, you might be reflecting,
28:59
but it's not necessarily thinking.
29:01
So absolutely.
29:03
The first person you have to hold to account
29:07
is yourself.
29:10
Today's KOGTIP was submitted by Veneta Hinkovska
29:13
from the American College in Sofia who says my top tip for using
29:18
Kognity is leveraging the strength tests to personalize student learning.
29:22
I assign targeted quizzes based on student weaknesses,
29:25
allowing them to focus on specific areas for improvement
29:28
while saving time on content they've already mastered.
29:31
I find this tip particularly helpful because it makes learning more efficient
29:35
and personalized by focusing on individual student weaknesses.
29:39
Kognity strength tests help reinforce key concepts
29:42
without overwhelming students with unnecessary repetition.
29:46
This targeted approach boosts confidence, maximizes progress,
29:50
and saves valuable class time.
29:54
I think so much of the the points that you're using,
29:56
the things that you're really promoting with TOK, is how embedded it should be
30:01
in the entire program, and the entire way of teaching and educating.
30:04
Do you feel like in a way, teaching TOK
30:08
as an individual subject kind of holds that back or makes it even harder.
30:13
Or do you think it's easier to, integrate into your other lessons?
30:18
In the other subjects?
30:19
Again, I'm a kind of iconoclast in this respect.
30:24
I mean, I go back to the original,
30:28
sort of founding intentions of TOK,
30:32
that Alec Peterson years, in the 70s and 80s.
30:38
The whole
30:40
raison d'etre behind TOK
30:42
was to eventually see it disappear
30:45
and to be subsumed, into other subjects.
30:51
But that never happened.
30:53
And, I suspect there are certain sorts
30:56
of structural reasons why it could never happen.
31:00
So at one on the same time,
31:04
I'm not a fan of integrating TOK into other subjects
31:09
in order to keep the spirit of TOK alive.
31:13
Rather, I flip that on its head.
31:16
I'm a fan of integrating
31:19
other subjects into TOK, in order to better
31:23
respect the spirit, the aims and objectives of TOK.
31:29
And having TOK
31:31
as a separate standalone subject
31:34
really sort of encourages
31:36
students and colleagues to see TOK
31:40
as this additional extra that,
31:43
I don't have to do TOK in my class because Spooner does it.
31:47
Right?
31:48
And there's a lesson there for Spooner to do it.
31:52
Right.
31:53
And as a consequence of that,
31:58
the argument in favor of giving it
32:02
more than just one and a half, bonus points and a cuddly teddy bear
32:07
and the whole matrix of the 45 points thing.
32:11
You get teddy bears?
32:15
If you do really well, you get a teddy bear.
32:18
He sends you a personal Finnish cuddly teddy bear
32:21
from the frozen wastelands of northern Finland.
32:25
I knew I liked him.
32:26
Well, I mean, it lends itself very much to a kind of.
32:29
I would be in a position where I would say, like,
32:31
TOK is probably one of the most important,
32:32
if not the most important thing that we're able to teach young people,
32:35
especially before they go on
32:36
to possible university life, or if they go just straight into the world of work,
32:41
like that general idea of how do I know these things?
32:44
And just really being, you know, questioning as they go that deep inquiry.
32:49
But, you know, then I sit here as,
32:50
you know, as a DP coordinator and I go, well, I recognize the E in the TOK,
32:54
in combination have a maximum of three points.
32:57
And I just think but it's, it's so much more important than that.
33:00
And I guess,
33:01
does it kind of belittle the course when we say like, oh, it's only
33:04
worth this.
33:05
I mean, the students then just kind of, that's just the add on.
33:08
That's the other thing. It's done and whatever.
33:10
I think 90, you know, 90 hours or whatever it is, that's it.
33:13
And now I can focus on my real subjects.
33:16
Does it kind of belittle it then when you pull it out that way?
33:20
I think it has come to belittle it.
33:24
My, I guess
33:27
where I take my succor from is the fact that,
33:31
and, you know, as educators yourselves that
33:34
whenever students return from university
33:38
or right to you years later, it's not what I taught them in
33:44
either my philosophy class or my English language and literature class
33:48
that they're remembering.
33:49
It's not even what I taught them in TOK
33:53
that they remember, but how I taught them in TOK,
33:56
and how their experiences of doing TOK
34:01
and and having TOK allow them to reflect
34:06
critically on what they were learning in their other subjects.
34:10
That's what they carry with them.
34:13
It's not the content that they learn in chemistry or Langen lit
34:18
that they remember.
34:19
They forget about that pretty soon after the exams.
34:23
But it's the pedagogical approach that makes it worthwhile.
34:29
Now try telling your average DP1 or even DP2 student
34:34
that they won't benefit from TOK until years later,
34:38
or they won't see the benefit until years later
34:42
and they will laugh in your face, quite rightly.
34:45
But I know this to be the case.
34:48
And so I'm indifferent,
34:51
I think, to the fact that it's only worth
34:54
one and a half points in the matrix,
34:57
and we've only got 100 hours, and students
35:01
sometimes see it as the sacrificial lamb that gets in the way.
35:06
I can't concern myself with those things,
35:10
and the only thing I can do is concern myself with the fact that at least
35:14
I have them for 100 hours over 18 months,
35:19
and at least I can help them see how TOK,
35:23
even if they're looking
35:26
at TOK, from a purely utilitarian perspective,
35:29
if I can help them see how that level of critical reflection can help them
35:35
in their IA’s or in their higher level
35:38
extension, options in other subjects,
35:42
if I can, embed in them those..
35:47
Okay, I'll,
35:48
I'll use your phrase, John, critical thinking skills that will
35:53
become useful later on.
35:57
Then that's what I'm going to do.
36:00
The extraneous stuff.
36:02
You know, it's only worth one and a half points.
36:05
I can't care about that.
36:07
It almost seems like attention exists then with like, because there's
36:10
will always be a benefit to just saying there's no points with this, right?
36:14
There's no points you're getting on.
36:15
This is just a fundamental skill that we're going to then apply everywhere else.
36:19
But like if you say that to a 16, 17 year old student,
36:22
they go, right then I don't need to care about this whatsoever.
36:24
So you add a little bit to kind of satisfy that sort of quantitative hunger
36:29
that exists with some people. But, you know,
36:32
I guess it's sort of toeing the line between the two.
36:34
If it moves, give it a grade. Right.
36:39
Yeah.
36:40
How do you get your your students to care about TOK, then?
36:45
Like you do get by in.
36:47
But how do you feel like because I,
36:49
I feel like that might be one of the bigger challenges for the new TOK
36:52
teachers who are already maybe a bit more insecure, like, how do you
36:56
how do you get that?
36:56
By in just from your own students, but then also from the other teachers too?
37:01
Well, a nice question.
37:03
You have to ask my students
37:05
about whether or not I get there by in
37:09
I could answer by simply saying I have,
37:12
a really charming personality.
37:15
I bend them to my will by sheer
37:19
force of that charming personality.
37:23
But again,
37:25
this kind of brings us back to to one of your, initial questions.
37:29
You know, what does my TOK journey look like?
37:32
I realized years ago that,
37:36
that the idea of integrating TOK
37:40
into other subjects was never gonna work.
37:43
So what I do
37:46
for those who.. those utilitarian students who want their
37:51
sevens in maths and physics and and that's the end of the world to them,
37:56
is by incorporating aspects of those other subjects into TOK,
38:01
making those the basis of TOK.
38:05
And by making them realize
38:07
that, for example, the upper mark bands in the higher level extensions
38:13
or the IA’s in their other subjects can best be achieved
38:18
by thinking about
38:21
the stimuli from those subjects in a TOK way.
38:25
Okay, you've you've beaten me and then you start talking about
38:29
TOK style of thinking.
38:33
I'm sold.
38:34
There you go.
38:36
I think good teaching includes
38:39
elements of like, here's how we've come to understand this.
38:42
How do we know this?
38:43
What we've, you know,
38:44
so whatever subject you're teaching that's in you, right?
38:48
That you become an educator because you're trying to essentially induce that
38:51
from other people and just figure out, like, how do we know this?
38:55
Let's think about that. Where did that come from?
38:57
So I would almost suggest that like TOK exists or that TOK
39:03
teachers kind of in every teacher that's out there,
39:06
how do we essentially kind of pull that out a little bit more?
39:09
Because I totally buy into what you're saying.
39:11
I want to take every other subject and bring it into TOK.
39:13
And I also think there's a good space where TOK can be present
39:17
in all the other subjects.
39:18
How do we kind of pull that out of those teachers as well,
39:21
who want to incorporate some of this stuff?
39:23
that want to do it quite well, but feel tied to the curricular.
39:26
I mean, it's, the TOK teacher,
39:29
or TOK Coordinator’s constant struggle. Right?
39:33
And this is why,
39:37
instead of organizing the teaching
39:39
of TOK, around the knowledge framework or the areas of knowledge
39:45
or the optional themes or whatever, we have 12 concepts.
39:49
And, all of those concepts,
39:53
are embedded, fundamentally
39:56
in all of the different subjects.
39:59
4 or 5 of those 12 foundational TOK concepts,
40:03
are the founding concepts for economics. A different 4
40:07
or 5 of them for the natural sciences and so on and so forth.
40:12
So the best place to make that connection with TOK
40:15
is right at the very beginning of a unit of study.
40:20
Why are you teaching
40:22
this unit of study in biology
40:25
or in business management or in ESS?
40:29
You're teaching it because you want to transmit certain concepts to them.
40:35
Where else do you come across those same concepts?
40:38
Well, in TOK, which is based on the concepts.
40:46
Begin,
40:48
the teaching of units with those, concepts.
40:54
But remind yourself or
40:56
rather ask yourself continually the question: why,
41:00
when I was a callow 18 year old, did
41:03
I choose to go to university to study chemistry or economics?
41:09
Now, there may be some kind of practical or utilitarian reasons,
41:14
but fundamentally, you, deep down
41:17
interested in,
41:20
the founding concepts of economics
41:23
or chemistry or whatever you were fundamentally interested,
41:28
for want of a better phrase, in the philosophy of the natural sciences.
41:34
So I think it kind of behooves every educator
41:38
to remind themselves of when,
41:41
the age of 19, they pack their bags
41:44
and went off to university to study history,
41:48
knowing that they would never get a great paycheck from studying history
41:52
or philosophy or literature.
41:55
But there was something fundamental about the nature of those subjects
42:00
and their power to explain the real world
42:03
that motivated them to choose that in the first place.
42:08
Remind students that that's what you did and remind students
42:13
of that remains at the heart of the stuff that they're studying.
42:17
Zygotes in and of themselves
42:21
are not really interesting things to study.
42:23
Right?
42:25
But what does the study of Zygotes
42:27
tell us about the natural world
42:30
and the human relationship with the natural world?
42:34
I mean, nobody ever went to die because of mathematics.
42:38
Nobody falls in love because of,
42:42
amoeba and knowledge about amoeba.
42:45
People fall in love because of concepts they choose
42:49
to fight and die for the nation,
42:53
not because of
42:54
of a factual stuff, but because of concepts.
42:58
It's concepts that rule our everyday lives
43:03
and those concepts are at the heart of both
43:05
the other deep subjects and at the heart of TOK.
43:10
So make that link at the beginning of every
43:15
unit of study or whatever it's called,
43:18
and remind students
43:21
that that is being dealt with in TOK.
43:27
I completely buy into that.
43:28
And I think that's something that at Kognity we really buy into also.
43:31
And that's why in all of our textbooks
43:33
we have the big picture at the beginning of every unit.
43:37
And then, you know, we'll talk to students, we get student feedback.
43:39
And all the time they're like, yeah, we don't read the big picture.
43:43
Right.
43:44
But this is supposed to make you care about it and like, yeah,
43:47
but it's not on the test. Right?
43:49
I mean, this is why you choose to teach Zygotes,
43:53
not because it's going to be an exam question,
43:55
but for some reason you love Zygotes.
43:58
So transmit that love for
44:00
amoeba or petri dishes, you know, let's do it that way.
44:04
Yeah, yeah,
44:06
but I love it that that becomes, like, the more exciting element,
44:09
I imagine, just as you said, if you kind of link it to the concepts,
44:11
if you link it to the bigger things that we can all care about as humans,
44:16
basically on this planet, then suddenly it becomes a lot more meaningful.
44:20
And I would guess, like regardless of if you are a brand new teacher,
44:23
just kind of doing TOK itself, or if you're quite experienced,
44:26
that would probably be a great place to start.
44:30
You know, start with like, let's get those concepts out.
44:32
Let's get kids excited about what we're learning in this respect.
44:35
Are there other sort of things
44:36
that you might suggest to like early teachers or like teachers
44:40
who are just kind of figuring out
44:41
that TOK, or for people who've been doing it for a long time
44:44
and like, here's ways that you can help to guide those younger teachers.
44:47
I mean, my short answer to that question, sadly, is no.
44:54
You're on your own, figured out.
44:56
Right? Get on with it.
44:58
I had to, so should you.
45:00
Yeah. That's a yeah.
45:01
I think that there are,
45:03
of course, that's the kind of sarcastic answer, but
45:07
there's a grain of truth in that
45:10
“no” as well, because we come back to the mystical question.
45:15
Right?
45:17
The way in which to overcome
45:20
the fear of TOK,
45:22
and to understand that you're already doing
45:26
TOK because of your reasons for having chosen
45:30
to become a teacher or a chemist or whatever in the first place, right?
45:36
Is because you don't have to know
45:39
all that much about other stuff in order to be a good
45:44
TOK teacher.
45:46
All you have to have
45:48
is that passion for asking that fundamental question:
45:52
How do you know what you claim to know?
45:56
And do you have good reasons
45:59
or just reasons for arguing X
46:04
what counts as evidence in your subject?
46:09
And how do you distinguish, any evidence from good evidence?
46:14
Now, all of that stuff is already being,
46:18
taught by you,
46:19
learned by students in your home
46:23
subject, if you like.
46:25
In TOK
46:27
that's the same set of questions that you're asking
46:31
just about a very disparate range of subjects.
46:35
If you're a history teacher, you don't need to know
46:38
a lot of complicated mathematics, because there will always be
46:42
some 17 year old smart kid who will delight
46:47
in explaining to the rest of the class in front of your face
46:51
how little you know about mathematics, but
46:55
run with it.
46:56
We're not there to learn about mathematics.
46:59
We're there to ask much more foundational questions.
47:03
So forget the fear, because there's nothing mystical about TOK.
47:08
And the questions, the only questions were interested in
47:12
in TOK, are questions that you are
47:16
already asking in your home subject.
47:20
So just ask those in TOK about different stimulus materials.
47:25
Yeah.
47:26
If you are kind of looking for let's say at your school
47:30
you are going to hire another TOK teacher.
47:32
And like you said, you don't go and study
47:35
how do I become a TOK teacher.
47:37
Usually it ends up
47:38
either throwing being thrown on you and your case or something like that.
47:42
But if you are really trying to get to the heart of it and you were hiring a
47:46
a TOK teacher, like what would you look for?
47:48
What would be kind of those really powerful things
47:50
that would make you confident that this person will thrive in this role?
47:55
That's an interesting question.
47:56
I've never thought about it before.
47:59
I know I didn't send it to you.
48:00
I'm sorry.
48:02
I would look for somebody who desired to become a mini me.
48:12
I'd look for somebody
48:13
who understood that TOK
48:16
is not a subject.
48:19
That TOK is not
48:21
a subject where there is stuff to be taught.
48:26
Who was comfortable enough in their own skin
48:30
to be able to deal with
48:32
challenging questions,
48:36
about the very nature of their own subject,
48:40
history or literature or whatever it might be.
48:44
And who was prepared to, work with,
48:50
uncertainty, epistemological uncertainty.
48:55
I mean, once again, we come back to Socrates, right?
48:59
I mean, why was it the oracle at Delphi
49:03
said to whoever it was that
49:05
the wisest man, on earth was Socrates.
49:09
He who professed to know nothing about anything.
49:14
And of course, we know the riddle,
49:17
of the the Sphinx at Delphi, meant
49:22
that the reason he's wise is because he knows he knows nothing.
49:26
And so I think I would weet potential
49:30
TOK teachers out, on the basis of the,
49:35
assumption or not,
49:37
about the strength of their own beliefs, if they appear to be, if they appear
49:42
to lack, intellectual humility, then they're never going to become a good
49:48
TOK teacher.
49:52
Becoming a better IBDP educator
49:54
is a daily practice informed through reading, research,
49:57
personal experience,
49:58
and episodes from IB Unplugged, like the one you're listening to right now.
50:02
But sometimes the show can go a bit too quickly,
50:04
or we simply forget some of the key points
50:06
once they're out of the car or back from our walk.
50:09
So to revisit the content in a condensed version, you can download
50:12
the episode summary at kognity.com/ibunplugged
50:16
You'll find useful links to other resources and exciting
50:19
bits of information that you can use immediately in your daily practice.
50:24
So now back to the show.
50:27
So I mean, we've spoken a lot
50:29
quite about how TOK
50:32
you can either take other subjects and kind of bring it into TOK,
50:35
or vice versa, how every educator kind of has that sort of TOK,
50:39
you know, position and yet,
50:41
you know, the same time TOK does exist as a course, has its own
50:44
particular course that does have specific learning
50:47
outcomes and ways of knowledge and areas of knowledge
50:49
and or ways of knowing and areas of knowledge and that sort of thing.
50:52
And so it provides a scaffolding that also has with it tons of choice for that
50:57
TOK teacher, in terms of how they want to approach it, how
51:00
they want to get those things through.
51:02
And so I guess in your experience, like what
51:04
what do you think is kind of
51:05
the most overlooked aspect or things that kind of fall
51:09
through the cracks, like people kind of reach
51:10
for the low hanging fruit and they say, yeah, this is the thing.
51:12
We're all going to get this.
51:14
What do we miss often when we look at that TOK course?
51:17
We see the word politics and we imagine it to have a big P, right?
51:22
A capital P, meaning governmental politics or parliamentary politics.
51:28
But if I go back to the old kind of feminist rallying
51:31
cry of the 1980s, the personal is political.
51:36
And if we kind of seek to understand
51:40
that knowledge and politics is not about parliamentary or
51:43
governmental politics, but about human interrelations,
51:48
then I think we can begin
51:51
to get much closer to the heart of TOK.
51:56
How do we understand human relations
52:00
and human behavior, within those relations?
52:05
And I think, by the same token, knowledge and indigenous societies
52:10
is another optional theme which is often overlooked.
52:14
We take a look at the word indigenous.
52:17
And we think flags, food and funny costumes.
52:21
Right?
52:22
And we reduce it to that.
52:23
Or being too scared to even go near it with a ten foot
52:27
pole of like, there's no way I'm going to be able to get this right.
52:31
You're right, you're right.
52:32
I don't want to be accused of cultural appropriation or, you know,
52:36
some, offense against a group of people
52:39
that I'd only heard of yesterday. So
52:44
why do I say that?
52:45
I mean, we were having a discussion in TOK
52:49
class a couple of months ago with my DP1 students,
52:53
and we started to think about,
52:56
the scientific method as an example
52:59
of an indigenous knowledge system because it's not universal.
53:04
It never was universal.
53:06
Right?
53:06
It's a product of the European Enlightenment.
53:12
And so there are different ways of looking at the relationship between,
53:17
inert and reactive materials.
53:20
There are certain cultures, including scientific cultures,
53:25
that don't make the distinction between the inert
53:29
and the reactive substances.
53:32
But the scientific method insists
53:35
that that's an absolute universal,
53:40
distinction.
53:41
Right?
53:43
The Linnaean classification system
53:45
in biology is not, value free.
53:50
It's not culture free.
53:52
And so if we take a different approach
53:57
to the themes of knowledge and politics and knowledge
54:01
in indigenous societies and begin to think about,
54:07
the way in which
54:08
those things we take for granted in other subjects
54:12
like Keynesian macro economics,
54:16
and think about whether they might be
54:19
an indigenous knowledge system or a product of an indigenous
54:24
knowledge system.
54:25
And in what ways might that be the case?
54:28
Then we begin to,
54:31
push back on some of the assumptions
54:34
that we have about certain other subjects
54:38
and that they're kind of objective infallibility,
54:43
It becomes the critical place where you can actually have
54:46
a true intercultural understanding. Right?
54:48
And you can develop a little bit
54:48
more of that intercultural understanding and respect,
54:50
which is, of course, right in that mission of the IB.
54:53
You know, so often we kind of get pulled into like,
54:55
for lack of a better term, a Western sort of approach of thinking
54:58
without recognizing that there's
55:00
a many different ways of knowing that are actually very valid.
55:04
And we need to be considering them as well.
55:06
Indeed. Indeed, without reducing,
55:09
the indigenous to a set of stereotypes
55:13
which I think we through, not necessarily through any fault of our own,
55:18
we see the word and we assume that that's what it must be dealing with.
55:24
So we go off on tangents, teaching about the language
55:28
of the Piranha Tribe in Brazil or,
55:33
dream time for Australia and Aboriginals
55:36
without realizing that the European Enlightenment,
55:41
which gave us the scientific method,
55:44
is as much a product of a particular, indigeneity
55:49
and a particular cultural time and place as anything else is.
55:55
And I think at the same time,
55:59
here's where I become critical of,
56:02
the IB learner profile attributes.
56:06
Can we possibly look at them as a product of a particular culture
56:11
and a particular set of assumptions about other cultures?
56:18
I'm always reminded of
56:19
that beautiful kind of ubuntu idea
56:23
I am because we are, whereas
56:27
IB learner profile attributes,
56:30
sometimes perhaps the whole mission of the IB itself
56:34
is very, egocentric.
56:37
And we can blame René Descartes, for this.
56:41
And I do, we can blame Sigmund Freud,
56:45
for not allowing Descartes to die in peace.
56:50
And this idea that great individuals
56:54
are responsible for great breakthroughs,
56:58
has allowed us to fail
57:00
to remember that every intellectual tradition
57:05
in whatever area of knowledge started somewhere
57:09
and started in a particular culture and a particular time and place,
57:14
and to try to separate
57:18
whatever the idea is from those cultural,
57:22
and intellectual origins.
57:25
Is like trying to take the egg
57:28
out of a cake which has already been baked.
57:31
Ooh, I like that.
57:32
I might use that again.
57:33
I was going to say, that's a good one. I'm going to use that.
57:37
I think,
57:39
you've now taught TOK in quite a few schools and in some schools,
57:44
I think you've been able to maybe thrive in the program more than in others.
57:48
And I'm not asking to name drop anything, but it more reflecting on
57:53
what are some of the the conditions or school cultural aspects
57:58
that make you feel like it creates a better environment
58:02
for TOK to thrive. and for therefore a TOK teacher to thrive
58:08
or teachers teaching TOK.
58:10
What a nice question.
58:12
And I think the short answer to
58:15
that is one that will resonate with
58:19
TOK teachers all around the world, I suspect
58:24
how education itself is seen
58:30
by, the local,
58:33
society, for want of a better word.
58:38
Has a great deal of impact
58:39
if education is respected,
58:43
then teachers are given a lot more leeway
58:46
to be the risk takers that the IB wants
58:51
us to model for our students.
58:54
So, as you know, Courtney, I spent six years, living and working in Finland.
59:00
And whenever educators say Finland,
59:04
we plug in to those, nonsense ideas about how
59:08
there are no exams and,
59:11
you know, every, etc., right?
59:13
You can't take the Finnish education system out of Finland
59:17
because the various variables
59:21
mean that it only works in Finland.
59:24
You can try and export some aspects of it, but the culture,
59:29
sorry, the society that you're importing into them
59:33
won't necessarily see those variables in the same way.
59:38
So in Finland, I was pretty much left alone to my own devices.
59:42
Teachers were pretty much left alone,
59:45
to be the trusted professionals
59:48
that we were.
59:51
As a result,
59:52
I think we were able to get on with the job.
59:56
And the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
59:58
Why does Finland end up towards the top of the Pisa tables with
1:00:04
monotonous regularity?
1:00:06
It's because something works in that climate, right?
1:00:12
In other environments
1:00:14
where, education is not held in such high esteem,
1:00:19
where educators are seen
1:00:22
as vehicles for delivering,
1:00:26
a string of sevens and sixes
1:00:28
to their charges, then that doesn't create an environment
1:00:34
where TOK can flourish because it becomes transactional.
1:00:40
Education itself becomes transactional,
1:00:42
and TOK even more so.
1:00:46
And so I think it very much depends
1:00:49
ultimately on how education and educators
1:00:54
are viewed by the surrounding, environment.
1:00:59
It's not a very sophisticated answer to your question,
1:01:02
I'm afraid, but I think at the,
1:01:07
as John reminded me at the tender age of 59,
1:01:12
I think this is the conclusion I've come to.
1:01:15
No, think it's a great answer.
1:01:16
And I think that sometimes the more straightforward answer is usually,
1:01:21
usually has a lot of
1:01:22
value in it, too, of this idea of stripping it all back of it's
1:01:26
not going to be all of the sophisticated professional learning development,
1:01:30
blah, blah, blah.
1:01:31
It's do you have the space to be able to be the risk
1:01:35
taker, to be able to do your job, to be able to work with the children?
1:01:40
And do we respect that position right?
1:01:43
Do we not just respect to the value, the idea of like, I'm going to be in
1:01:47
the space as an educator trying new things,
1:01:50
and that effectively comes right back
1:01:51
to what you were talking about earlier with regard to like
1:01:54
essentially a level of humility, like, I'm going to come into this and I'm going
1:01:57
to figure things out on my own, like I'm going to figure things out in the process.
1:02:00
I'm not expected to know all these things right away,
1:02:02
but if I can fundamentally come back to that question of like,
1:02:05
how do I know what I know?
1:02:06
And can I help other people figure that out as well, then really,
1:02:10
you know, you create inspirational moments
1:02:12
for young people to see the concepts that bridge all their different topics.
1:02:16
You create moments for teachers to recognize that they can teach TOK,
1:02:20
or they could bring that into their classrooms, etc.
1:02:23
and then obviously you create
1:02:24
like a community around that that says, now this is something we value
1:02:27
and we're not necessarily
1:02:28
just coming down to the utilitarian get those points, but rather let's create
1:02:32
young people who go on to, you know, be positive contributors to society.
1:02:37
This has been fun.
1:02:38
Not so nervous, huh?
1:02:41
It's that time. It's that time.
1:02:44
I mean, I could sit here all day.
1:02:45
I thought all of those were just warm up questions.
1:02:49
We just stayed in the warm up the whole time.
1:02:52
Yeah.
1:02:54
No. David, it's been really, really fun chatting with you.
1:02:57
I really appreciate your perspective.
1:02:59
And, Yeah, I really like the way that you were talking about
1:03:02
these things that helped me.
1:03:03
I feel like I grew quite a bit just listening to you, so I appreciate it.
1:03:06
It's been lovely. Thank you very much indeed.
1:03:08
I've enjoyed having to think about your questions before
1:03:12
I was able to formulate a response.
1:03:15
And I think the value of those questions, again, serves
1:03:20
to remind me that as educators, we got to be reflective practitioners.
1:03:25
Right?
1:03:26
And so if I'm not continually asking myself
1:03:29
the sorts of questions that you guys have, just,
1:03:32
thrown at me in the warm up, then.
1:03:38
Yeah,
1:03:39
I'm going to turn into the old fossil
1:03:41
that you think I have already am.
1:03:45
Certainly not.
1:03:45
Certainly not.
1:03:49
You're as old as you feel.
1:03:50
And you, you keep busy.
1:03:54
Yeah. Yeah.
1:03:55
Fantastic work over the years and you do a lot.
1:03:58
Oh bless you.
1:04:00
Well I mean we're members of the species Homo sapiens sapiens.
1:04:04
So once I stop using this,
1:04:07
I give up the right to continue being a member of the human species.
1:04:13
That's why I keep telling myself, my head teachers over the years
1:04:17
tell me that I'm, too much of a child, to
1:04:23
to remain in their employment.
1:04:24
So I've got to find a balance at some point between my actual age
1:04:29
and my age in here. Right?
1:04:31
I wouldn't worry about it.
1:04:32
No. Yeah, I don't, so I keep getting fired because I don't worry about it too much.
1:04:40
Yeah, well, let it burn out.
1:04:42
Yeah.
1:04:45
I'm an open book, John.
1:04:47
You can keep that. Yeah,
1:04:49
I've got that as much now I appreciate it.
1:04:51
Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much, David.
1:04:53
As always, it's such a pleasure to have these conversations with you.
1:04:57
It's a lot of fun to, Yeah, dive into these topics and not just have
1:05:01
that very technical conversation about this is how you teach these pieces of TOK,
1:05:07
but really, what does it actually look like?
1:05:10
What does it feel like, and how can we do this better?
1:05:13
This was a reminder of, what it's like to be human.
1:05:18
So thank you.
1:05:19
I've really enjoyed this.
1:05:21
Thank you David. Lots of fun here. Great.
1:05:23
Well, thank you so much and have a good rest of your day.
1:05:26
I can't wait for round two.
1:05:28
Yes. Us too.
1:05:30
All right. Take care. Thank you.
1:05:32
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast hosted by
1:05:35
John Patton and Courtney Marline and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
1:05:38
Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
1:05:42
If you'd like to submit a topic, request, or question, please do
1:05:45
so on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
1:05:48
Let's keep the conversation going
1:05:50
and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity, and joy.
1:05:54
See you next time.