The Case of Incorporating Religion into the IBDP Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Course
IBDP, Theory of Knowledge Nathan Haines IBDP, Theory of Knowledge Nathan Haines

The Case of Incorporating Religion into the IBDP Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Course

A few years ago, I was one of several teachers teaching the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course at an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Ethiopia. While reviewing the scores of our students that year, I was surprised by the poor result of a particular academically strong student; let’s call her Helen. Helen was Ethiopian and had joined the school on a merit-based scholarship. Upon reviewing her submission, I detected in Helen’s essay an effort to reconcile her religiously-infused Ethiopian culture and her personal faith with her four years of high school at a Western-oriented, secular school. This is exactly the kind of thinking the TOK course encourages. My hunch, however, was that Helen performed poorly, in part, because her TOK class failed to equip her to do that thinking well.

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