Content, contexts and concepts – planning for this new course can make your head spin. Once you get into it, it’s actually quite straightforward. The following course map might be helpful even if you’re not planning on teaching with our new textbook. It could give you some ideas.
I often joke that 90% of my teaching is marketing. It’s not far wrong – I think getting students excited about what they’re going to learn, and myself being excited to teach it, is a massive key to an awesome classroom. I heard the phrase “vibe architect” today and I thought it kinda describes my approach to teaching. I don’t want to stand at the front of class and announce we’re about to start a unit on “Human relationships.” I’d far rather say, “we’re getting into our study of Criminology, Couples and Cults.” This is why my units (i.e. chapters) have different names. You’ll see below, however, that they map onto each other quite nicely.
Download: Course Map with IB Psychology.
The IB’s Contexts
Here you see each chapter of mine is designed to cover a specific topic in each context.
Table 1: The first 9 units cover the four contexts. They also cover the content, as you’ll see below.
Content
It makes sense to embed the content from the three approaches (and research methods) into the teaching of the contexts. In some cases, by the end of the course the students will have a range of options to choose from when preparing for their Paper 1 SAQs.
The Biological Approach
The Criminology unit is designed to be an enticing hook into the course while covering the bio approach. Because the topics are covered elsewhere, it also takes the pressure off – if students don’t “get it” first time, they’ll have another chance in later units.
Table 2: My approach to teaching IB Psychology involves putting the subject first and the exams second. But by carefully planning out the course to have plenty of revision time left before exams, students can choose the example they like the best.
The Cognitive Approach
The two chapters “Memory” and “Manipulation” cover the cognitive approach at the same time as covering all content in the “Learning and Cognition” context.
Table 3: The cognitive approach is covered at the same time as teaching “Learning and Cognition.”
The Sociocultural Approach
If you’re new to teaching IB Psychology, you might fear that students will be confused if they’re learning these topics in units that aren’t specifically called “the sociocultural approach.” Don’t worry – they don’t get confused. In fact, they learn these topics better when they’re taught in genuine contexts. By teaching the content through the contexts, you also free up more revision time at the end of the course. This is where students categorise and review the content, and pick the examples they want to use for the exams.
Table 4: Because there’s no extra time allocated by the IB to cover the approaches, it actually makes more sense to embed them into other units.
Sample Course Outline here.
Paper 2
The IB Psychology assessments are now overwhelmingly focused on research methods. Paper 2 is all about methods, with the first section on the class practicals and a second on an unseen study. A lot of people will be tempted to start their course with a thorough unit on research methods. I did this years ago as well. However, I found it was far easier to teach this content after students had already learned about a range of studies. For example, you can give them note cards with brief summaries of a heap of different studies, then get them to categorise them based on their methods. This reviews the course content while teaching research methods at the same time. You can also use studies they know to explain key concepts. It’s far easier than trying to teach the key studies and methods at the same time.
With this strategy in mind, I have a research methods chapter that includes content for the class practicals and other relevant research methods content.
Having 7 lessons specifically about the concepts gives students a chance to find the best content to write about these concepts.
Paper 3 (HL Only)
In my opinion, the new assessment structure has made HL a far easier course than SL. This is simply because the 90 hours allocated for Paper 3 is far more than is necessary. Whereas previously the HL/SL distinction was seen in all three exams (Paper 1, 2 and 3), Paper 1 and 2 are identical for SL and HL students. Paper 3 doesn’t actually require that much more content knowledge since it’s based on a source paper. My intention is to teach the basics of data analysis as outlined in the chapter title page below, and then use heaps of time practicing past papers.
There’s minimal content knowledge needed for Paper 3, which gives HL students a big advantage.
You might be wondering where do the HL extensions – technology, culture and motivation fit into this? Well, these are designed to help students answer Question 4 in Paper 3. However, this is a problematic area of the curriculum for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s impossible to teach all the possible specific content that might be needed to apply to that question. With three extensions, four contexts and their sub-topics, it’s impossible for us to know what might be relevant to the source material. Moreover, the use of personal knowledge is an option for this question – students can (and should) use most of the information given to them in the source paper.
In my course, I have designed three short units to cover the three extensions. I’ve also tried to plan them so they review the content from the contexts as well. For example, the first lesson on “Media and violence” goes well with Criminology and “Romantic relationships” works with Couples. This means HL students can review the content for Paper 1, which extending their content knowledge for Paper 3 as well.
You might notice there’s a lack of symmetry – I’ve included a research methods review instead of a second lesson for Human Development. The main reason for this is because I struggled to find a relevant second example for each one, due to developmental psychology not being my strongest area. I’ll endeavour to work on this and add lessons in an updated edition of the book. I also thought it a good chance to review methods since these are key to Paper 2 and 3.
In a nutshell…
This course intends to teach cool psychological content to build a base of knowledge. From there we develop an understanding of the research methods that were used to discover that knowledge which can be applied in the internal and external assessment. Then HL students go deeper into the data analysis and extend their knowledge of the content even further. Simples.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.