Preliminaries

TOK diagrams

The traditional TOK diagram

Figure 1

Teachers and students may find figure 1 useful as a pictorial representation of the TOK course.

Because the course is centred on student reflection and questioning, the diagram places the knower(s), as individuals and as groups, at the centre.

Surrounding the knower(s), four ways of knowing are identified, which permeate an exploration and interpretation of the world: the receipt of stimuli through sense perception, affected, perhaps, by an emotional and spiritual dimension labelled as emotion, formulated and expressed through language, and shaped by attempts, through reason, to seek order and clarity.

Within the perimeter, areas of knowledge are identified, which represent a classification of knowledge into subject areas, many of which the student pursues in the Diploma Programme. Six such subject areas are included: mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, history, the arts, and ethics. No solid barrier, however, separates the ways of knowing and the areas of knowledge, because it can be maintained that the questions “How do I know?” (pertaining to ways of knowing) and “What do I know?” (pertaining to areas of knowledge) interact.

These three elements of the diagram correspond to three of the major divisions of the guide that follow: knowledge issues, knowers and knowing; ways of knowing; and areas of knowledge. Teachers may wish to structure their TOK courses accordingly.

The order in which the topics may be approached is flexible, however, and many entry points and sequences are possible. Teachers becoming acquainted with the TOK course for the first time may feel more confident if they begin with topics with which they are already familiar. Nevertheless, experimenting with conceptual structures other than this diagram, but dealing with the same TOK questions, may equally well fulfill the course aims and enable students to meet the objectives, and is encouraged.

The linking questions are intended to provide not only links for a course based on the above diagram, but to open up possibilities for approaches using alternative structures. It is left to teachers to design their courses within whatever frameworks they prefer.

Other possible TOK diagrams

Figure 2

Figure 3

Teachers and students may find it useful to consider the different implications, advantages and disadvantages of these other representations. For example, does the explicit “openness” of figure 2 to other ways of knowing and areas of knowledge imply a different view of knowers themselves? Or, in figure 3, does our disciplinary knowledge not only influence but actually constrain how we can observe, understand and act upon the world?

Are there other, better ways of depicting these knowledge relationships, perhaps ones that express different cultural understandings?