(by Eileen Dombrowski, from OUP blog) Today I offer you morsels from a book I’m reading as a delectable snack for your mind. Beautifully written, it reminds me that, in our course, we look at areas of knowledge not just for their description and analysis but also for their wonder. In many ways, I feel TOK to be a celebration of what we can know, and what we do know — almost, at times, in spite of ourselves. Let this reflection on science by Carlo Rovelli give you a bit of refreshment as you guide your students to the kind of vast overview that we aspire to take in IB Theory of Knowledge! Continue reading
(by Eileen Dombrowski, from 
Dombrowski, Rotenberg, Bick. Theory of Knowledge IB Course Companion. Oxford University Press, 2013.
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Hi from Eileen!
- analysis arts cause classification cognitive bias concepts/language confirmation bias critical thinking definitions emotion ethics evidence facts fallacies history human sciences imagination implications indigenous knowledge intuition knowing how knowledge claims knowledge questions language literature mathematics media memory methodology natural sciences perspectives psychology reason sense perception shared knowledge sources statistics symbolic representation truth ways of knowing
Dombrowski, Rotenberg, Bick. TOK Spanish translation. Teoría del Conocimiento, Libro del Alumno. Oxford University Press, 2015.
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Recent Posts
- 2018 TOK blog posts compiled for download
- Facts and feelings: knowing better by knowing ourselves
- TOK Book Review: The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake.
- Engaging TOK with the world…but softly
- TOK double vision: lofty overview but critical engagement in the world
- Retraction of major research on eating: a failure in scientific methodology, or a corrective in the process?
- “Crisis of authentication”: true art, false art, and the science of detection
- TOK Ethics: balancing detachment and engagement
- “Deepfakes” and TOK: more trouble ahead for critical thinking?
- “Stay cool. TOK teachers can handle this.” Astrology & belief.
- “Art is dialogue about difficult subjects”
- Want to download TOK resources? I’m getting myself organized.
- Sense perception: Yanny or Laurel?
- A TOK class for exam month: mathematics, nature, art, technology…and peaceful contemplation of beauty
- “But then I checked the facts… “
- Exercise for awareness: facts, feelings, and changing your mind
- Biases, fallacies, argument: Would you argue with a T-rex?
- (Dis)trusting statistics: a one-page guide
- Facts matter after all: rejecting the “backfire effect”
- History: writing the past, drafting the future
- “Fake news”: updating TOK critique
- “How am I supposed to appreciate it?” Art, science, and some silly assumptions
- Download TOK resource: 2017 TOK blog posts, collected
- “2017, a good year”: Wasn’t it?
- “Those experts!”: cartoon, class discussion activity
- Signed language, symbolism, and reflections on inclusion
- Do Nobel prizes distort public understanding of scientific knowledge?
- SPOT and the cloak of invisibility: cognitive biases
- That event in the past: what do we make it signify in the present?
- Sharing knowledge – effectively!
- Standing at the Centre of the World: TOK class discussion (with handout)
- PS to “This is the nature of science.”
- “This is the nature of science.”
- Indigenous Knowledge: not a separable area of knowledge
- Controversy in the Canada Day Party: analyzing perspectives for understanding
- Love, betrayal, and physics: “Everything goes better with narrative”
- Consuming the news: Is knowing harder than dieting?
- Love, luck, literature, and logic: Who will win the lady?
- “Moral robots” and that messy human factor
- Red lines and “complex moral duality”: TOK and ethics of witnessing
the essential question of knowledge
The question “How do we know?” drives inquiry. When we ask it with the stress on the last word – know — it opens up overview questions on the very nature of knowledge and the forms it takes. When we ask it with the stress on the first word – how? – it takes an analytical edge applied to methods of giving answers. In this blog, we follow this question — sometimes seriously, sometimes lightheartedly — through issues and stories of our day.
