Tag: IBPD

TOK Tuesdays

Autism and Scientific Beliefs

Howard Burton

In what ways does the media we consume influence our scientific beliefs?

In the Ideas Roadshow TOK Clip called Autism and Vaccines, UCL developmental psychologist Uta Frith describes how the hypothesis that childhood vaccines are linked to autism, while initially plausible, was subjected to rigorous scientific testing and found to be false.

We’ve developed seven Knowledge Questions directly related to this clip, below are three of those:

  1. How do emotions influence our belief in the validity of scientific explanations?
  2. Under what circumstances can we distinguish between environmental or genetic causes of a particular phenomenon?
  3. At what point can we justifiably conclude that a hypothesis accounting for the development of a specific psychological condition is invalid?

Below is a screen shot of what the resource page for this TOK clip looks like on Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal. The new PDF that comes with this clip highlights how this resource has been updated to be fully aligned with the new TOK curriculum: the related AOKs, how it directly connects to the new Knowledge Framework – Scope, Perspectives, Methods and Tools and Ethics – in the form of a Knowledge Question, three additional sample Knowledge Questions, related IA prompts for the TOK exhibition and citing suggestions for the TOK exhibition and essay.

If your school does not have an institutional subscription to Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal you can now sign up for an individual teacher or student subscription. Annual individual subscriptions cost only $99 and provide unlimited access to all resources that are part Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal.

All Ideas Roadshow’s TOK resources are digital – they can be seamlessly used for online or in-class teaching without the need to change your lesson plans! 

TOK Tuesdays

A Supreme Example

Howard Burton

Under what circumstances can modifying our assumptions of the social world result in more valid models of human behaviour?

In Ideas Roadshow’s TOK clip called A Supreme Example, Tufts University philosopher Brian Epstein describes how many people’s perspectives on the social world are prejudiced by a hidden assumption that he takes issue with and uses the example of The Supreme Court to illustrate his point.

“…. So if you look at the example of the nine people on the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is a lot more than those nine people. There’s a way of doing a kind of thought experiment in philosophy where you try to understand, ‘Does this object just consist of these parts?‘. What you do is, you take those parts and you move them to a remote environment and you see if that object still exists or still behaves in the same way. It’s obvious – if you take those nine people and you move them somewhere where there’s not this enormous United States infrastructure, then they’re powerless. The power of the Supreme Court: the fact that they’re making decisions, even the actions of the Supreme Court, for instance striking down a law, voting in a certain way, that consists of a lot more than just those nine people.”

Below is what the resource page for A Supreme Example looks like on Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal. As you can see, this video resource comes with a detailed PDF which highlights the related AOK, connections with the new Knowledge Framework – scope, perspectives, methods and tools, ethics – related IA prompts, three Knowledge Questions that are directly relevant to this clip, citing references, TOK overlaps with other DP subjects, and more:

If your school does not have an institutional subscription to Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal you can now sign up for an individual teacher or student subscription. Annual individual subscriptions cost only $99 and provide unlimited access to all resources that are part Ideas Roadshow’s IBDP Portal.

All Ideas Roadshow’s TOK resources are digital – they can be seamlessly used for online or in-class teaching without the need to change your lesson plans!