Teaching Tip: Why you’re struggling to keep up with the new curriculum...and what to do about it.

Do you feel like you’re just skimming over the surface of the content in the new IB Psych curriculum without enough time for each topic? In this post I’ll explain why it feels this way and provide some (hopefully) helpful tips. 

If you’re new to IB Psych, this feeling of flying through content to “cover everything” while your students tread water to keep up will be new. For those experienced with the old curriculum, it won’t feel quite as new but more like you’ve had to put the throttle down even harder. Why is that?

Teaching is rooted in the practical realities of time. When we plan a course, we can only use the lessons we’re allocated. If we use the IB’s hour allocations and one hour lessons as a guide, here’s what we need to cover…

Number Crunching

In the three approaches, there’s a total of 27 unique topics. At a minimum, we would want to spend two lessons on each of these.

• Approaches: 27 topics

We also need to cover the 39 topics (or “areas of study”) in the four contexts. However, 20 of these also appear in the approaches. For example, conformity, compliance and social identity theory appear in both the sociocultural approach (SAQ) and Human Relationships (Section B and C). We won’t need to teach these twice. That still leaves 19 unique essay-level topics for the contexts.

• Contexts: 19 topics
• Total = 46 unique topics for Paper One

If we spend only two lessons on each topic that means we’ve got a minimum of 92 teaching hours to cover the topics for Paper 1.

It appears we’ve got ample time. The IB allows 100 hours for this content, so we’ve got 8 lessons to spare. However, remember there are practical realities in teaching that we can’t overlook. Here are some of the things that we haven’t factored in.

1. Assessments

We need class time to conduct summative assessments. This is true more than ever in the age of ChatGPT and AI. Closed-book tests are fast becoming the only reliable source of assessment. Conservatively, we would want at at least one hour of class time to run one summative assessment for each unit. If we consider 3 approaches and four contexts, that’s 7 hours.

99/100 hours

2. Exam Explanations 

But hold the phone. We also need to explain to students how to answer IB Psychology exam questions. There are three different question types in Paper One: SAQs, ASAQs and essays. One hour on each of these and we’re at 102 hours. Do we give them a class time to do a practice? Sorry, no time.

102/100 hours

3. Assessment Revision 

Is it fair to have major summative assessments that have a real impact on students GPAs, IB predicted scores and their college applications without offering at least some class time to revise? If students have six subjects and none of us give them revision time, is that fair, realistic and reasonable? Personally, I don’t think so. Minimum we want to allow one class time of revision before a major assessment. So now we’re at 109 hours. Remember we haven’t given them any practice time yet.

109/100 hours

4. Concepts

Woops…we haven’t left any room for the six concepts students need to know for Section C essays. Would an hour each concept be enough? Nope. But that’s all we’ve got.

115/100 hours

This is why you’ve got that feeling of jet skiing across the curriculum while students struggle to keep afloat. We’re at 115 hours with only two hours of class time per topic, only 7 summative assessments and no class revision time. This is nowhere near enough time for us to teach this content. We know learning happens through repetition and rehearsal, making personal connections and deep processing. This means good teaching involves reviewing and revising what’s already been learned, not just brand new content every two lessons. This takes time. Students also need to read, write, process and produce. This takes time. To improve their skills they need practice and feedback. This takes time. But it’s all time we’re not afforded.

Old vs New

Let’s compare this with the old curriculum. There were 22 approach topics in Paper 1 and we were given 90 hours for SL students. In this new curriculum, we have more than doubled the content while reducing the time allocation.

We’ve also made the exam questions more complex. The applied SAQs (ASAQs) are more challenging than SAQs. The new essay questions with concepts are also more challenging than prior essay questions. Similarly, previously the essay style and structure were identical from Paper 1 to Paper 2. Now we have a whole new format for Paper 2 focusing on research methods with five new questions to prepare for.

The Solution?

Sadly, when it comes to the new Standard Level course I cannot see too many loopholes or overlaps to exploit. There’s heaps of flexibility in the HL course, however. In fact, I’d argue the HL course is easier than the SL one now. I’ll write about that in my next blog. In the meantime, here’s a few tips for SL and HL teachers to potentially lighten the load:

1. Cut out a context: Section C gives two choices of essay, so students can comfortably ditch one of the contexts and still be prepared. Be wary, though, that the context may still be used for Section B (applying knowledge of content), but as the focus of that question is on the content knowledge, a cursory knowledge of the key terms in the context should suffice.

• • For example, students knowing a bit about “attachment” would be enough to prepare for an ASAQ on this topic – they don’t need to know it at essay level.

2. Teach concepts late: Concepts are built on content, so there’s no advantage to wasting cognitive load and valuable time covering the concepts before students have learned the content. Moreover, the later in the course you teach concepts, the more relevant terminology they’ll know and be able to use. For example, confirmation bias is a great term to know. After students cover this in Learning and cognition, they can use it in essays on bias as a concept.

3. Teacher-led class practicals: My nature as a control-freak and the limited time SL students have, I would encourage the teacher to conduct the class practical, students in class are the participants and the class reviews the same practical for the exam. An extension for excelling students could be they conduct their own and do something different, but sadly we don’t have time (see above number crunching) to allow students to conduct their own.

4. Concepts and research methods: I’d also teach concepts as part of a standalone research methods unit that comes after at least two contexts are taught. This will give you the feeling that you’ve “taught” the concepts, when in reality you’ve only introduced the terminology. But there’s no other way around it – you don’t have the time. And that brings me to my best advice, and what I had in mind while planning out my course.*

Be Systematic and Cover-Your-Butt

“You never taught us that!”

That’s a terrifying phrase. It keeps us up at night. A student walks out of the exam, straight to our classroom (or 24 hours later since they’re compliant and don’t break the rules about the first rule of fight club IB exams – don’t talk about the exams), and tells us something on the exam we didn’t cover. How do we prevent this? In the new SL course there’s no way around the jet ski reality – to “cover” all the content we need to fly through it. Two lessons per topic. Hardly enough, but that’s all we’ve got. By planning the course with the timeframes in mind, we’ll ensure we “get through” everything before the exams. We’ll cover our butts and protect ourselves from student, parent or admin’ complaints about “content not covered.”

Frankly, that’s the best we can do. If we’ve got our syllabus planned out, the lessons sequenced, we can go back and show anyone where and when we taught each topic. If they complain they missed that lesson or there wasn’t enough time, you can run them through the above calculations – we simply weren’t given the time.

The purpose of this post isn’t simply to complain about “The IB.” It’s designed to console teachers who are struggling with the time pressures and content demands of the new course.

Pressure Makes Diamonds

I’m aware I’m Monday morning quarterbacking and I should have made all these calculations, posted all this feedback and communicated this all during the process of the creation of the new curriculum. Sadly, I was too overwhelmed professionally and personally to do this. I have to wear that on the chin. This post alone has taken over three hours to write.

I’m also aware in this post I’m my using pissy and moany self about “the IB.” I try not to be, but I guess I can’t help it. What I will say is that having taught the past four years in a low (to zero) pressure environment which is the NZ Psych curriculum, I miss the pressure of the IB and I’d swap too much content and exam pressure over too little any day. Why? It gives us a challenge. We’re natural problem solvers and every year we need to teach this stuff. Kids need to learn it. So we need to think of better ways to teach. How can I make this content stick? What resource can I make that will help? Moreover, we need to teach past the exams. We’re trying to instil a love of psychology, an inquisitiveness and curiosity, a habit of observing and asking “why?” We’re trying to teach them to know, to think, to question. So if we get to the end of the course and they can’t remember the components of the working memory model but they know what working memory is and why it’s important to them, we’ve succeeded, even if they don’t get a 7. We can’t teach them everything. But we can teach some pretty cool stuff.

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When you see me say “my course,” I’m pretty much referring to my textbook which is the course I’ve designed and written. I don’t like always saying “my textbook” cause it sounds wanky and self-promotey. It may surprise some, but I prefer not to come across as a self-promoting wnker. Now believe me when I say this from a helpful perspective, not a sales one, but if you’re looking for a way you can systematically and logically teach all the content, contexts and concepts in a way that “covers your butt,” is fun to do and you have all the materials ready, check out our store. The textbook and support pack bundle will be a good first place to start. The book is written lesson-by-lesson and all the materials are there.