A Proud member of ECIS
Empowering IB Theory of Knowledge students and teachers around the world
Our TOK and pre-TOK resources are time-saving, inspiring, and innovative, and will help you to place authentic critical thinking at the centre of your school’s learning journey
Innovative classroom-ready lessons for both TOK and non-TOK teachers
Subscribe HERE to our free monthly newsletter, and place TOK learning in a real-world context, and gather examples to help you write your essay & exhibition
Welcome to theoryofknowledge.net
TOK is an extraordinary course – and it requires an extraordinary resource to deliver it. We’ve been helping to make TOK a life-changing experience for students and teachers since 2009, and we have members in well over 100 different countries.
In a recent survey, 93% our members told us our resources save them time planning and teaching, 97% said they help to improve students’ understanding of the course, and 86% felt TOK essay performance was improved. Here are a few more unsolicited comments from a few of our members; you can read more on our testimonials page.
I have been teaching TOK for 17 years, and I wanted to let you know that I think the BQ resources I’ve been using so far this year are awesome! By exploring TOK concepts through well-chosen, unique and high-interest real-life situations, my students are engaged in ways they haven’t been before.
Debbie, NEW YORK
Thanks so much for your resources. I just got through my first lot of students and 5 out of 14 got As! I did every webinar and used all of your resources and I recommend your site daily for the confidence it gave me to get going with the course.
Katrina, JAKARTA
Your self-guided help is tops… I am almost getting better work with them working remotely than when we were together. Perhaps being forced to do their own thinking first, then only getting other perspectives when we GMeet to go over the week’s assignments, is creating a higher quality of reflection. Anyway, I just want to say a huge thank you (again).
Michael, MAASTRICHT
I cannot thank you enough for the knowledge and immense insight I am gaining into TOK every time you mail me some fresh ideas and perspectives. Already I have gained more confidence in imparting the new syllabus and my students are tremendously inspired by the lessons. I owe all this to you and hereby record my sincere and heartfelt thanks for the improvement I’ve made as a TOK teacher.
Lipi, KOLKATA
After 4 years of teaching TOK and using 3 different resources from different editors, I believe that your material along with the content posted on your website has allowed me to focus more on sharpening the capacity for reflection of the learners instead of just their retention of information. Keep up the good work.
Taid, LOMÉ
Your website has provided me the grounding and confidence to do what is best for my students, not a one size fits all prepackaged curriculum from a textbook, but instead a course that is fluid, evolving, and meaningful. I feel so proud as I listen and watch my students discuss in the last moments of their senior year what really matters in their lives, in our world.
Julie, ST AUGUSTINE
I just wanted to let you know how awesome a resource the self-guided versions of your already amazing BQ framework lessons are. Even more useful is the fact that as a full member I can adapt the resources to my teaching context. Thank you, thank you and once again, thank you for adapting the resources so quickly and so effectively for use in this way.
Anthony, DUBAI
Thank you for all of this work. You have made my life so much easier, and I feel so empowered to have really rich conversations with my students. As a first time TOK teacher, I am learning so much with my students. Thank you for your wonderful resources, your attention to detail, your deep and abiding knowledge that I feel able to rely upon, and your generosity with your knowledge and skills.
Kemble, JOHANNESBURG
I have taught TOK since 2003 and been an examiner since 2008. I also lead workshops in TOK. Your approach has been the most effective that I have experienced and I feel that I have improved my teaching to students as well as how to conference with participants in workshops because of the resources found here. Schools will feel better prepared for evaluation visits because of your resources for TOK across the curriculum. You combine practical solutions with attention to aspirational pedagogy and reflection.
Douglas, TORONTO
Your support is superb. Best curriculum support of any course I have taught and essential for me at this early stage of delivering IB. In a way I am glad the 2022 curriculum change came in when it did because with my L6th I get to start ground up with other schools (sort of!) and I am using your resources adapted for our school.
Richard, BRISTOL
Fully-updated TOK resources for the ChatGPT world
TOK is a highly practical course, providing students with a set of skills, a mindset, and a conceptual framework designed to be applied to today’s world. But given how quickly society changes, ensuring your course remains relevant and engaging is a big challenge, and not one that can be met by static resources.
We have updated and edited all our lessons for the 2023-24 academic year, to ensure they are driven by the very latest real-world events and issues. And inspired by the IB’s position on the use of of AI-tools in schools, we have added extensive activities and questions focused on ChatGPT, to encourage students to use it effectively and ethically, and think about the relationship between AI-tools and the acquisition of knowledge.
Choose from three different TOK course structures
Faculty members have access to three different classroom-ready courses for TOK. All offer lessons that are beautifully designed and structured, framed by clear and measurable learning objectives, packed full of media-rich resources and driven by very latest real-world situations and ideas. They’ll save you huge amounts of time! Start downloading and delivering them here.
Apply TOK ideas and concepts to the real world
Our resources are designed to help students explore and make sense of the most important events going on right now, and grasp how TOK concepts manifest in the real-world. Our unique monthly TOK newsletter, Investigating Issues, and the 12 Key Concepts will help you – and your whole DP faculty – to develop critical thinking, and link learning to issues, debates, and controversies making the news. Subscribe to our free newsletter here.
Master the TOK assessment tasks
Our assessment packs (which are also available in Spanish) are designed to be used directly by students, and will help them understand the assessment criteria of the TOK essay and exhibition, and create fantastic final assessment products. The TOK assessment lessons will enable teachers to target and develop the right skills, so students will be able to take on the assessment tasks successfully.
Get your whole DP faculty onboard
One of the key features that sets us apart from other sites and textbooks for TOK is that our resources are designed for ALL members of your faculty. The Integration Tool enables teachers to effortlessly link their subject to TOK concepts and real-world events, the mini-lessons provide them with short classroom-ready lessons, and Knowledge Heroes enables them to draw on inspirational figures from all academic disciplines.
Watch our TOK videos
Check out our YouTube channel here. You’ll find a treasure trove of videos, including our 3-minute TOK explainers, integration webinar videos, and ways TOK can help you become a better thinker, and help you win a place at university.
We regularly upload new videos, so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and check back regularly.
Prepare your pre-DP students for TOK
We offer two pre-DP courses – Thinking for Yourself, and Worldviews – to develop critical thinking, encourage debate, and familiarize students with the kind of concepts that they’ll encounter in TOK, and a middle years newsletter that will support students to think beyond the headlines when it comes to the latest events and issues going on in the real-world.
Get trained-up for TOK
We offer practical, bespoke training in TOK and critical thinking for both specialist teachers and ordinary members of your faculty, and have worked with schools all over the world to help them make TOK – and critical thinking – engaging, relevant, and effective across the curriculum. We also offer free and premium webinars on TOK, and have an extensive library of videos for you to watch in our YouTube channel.
Explore the course
Access our free course material on all aspects of the TOK course: the core theme (knowledge & the knower), the optional themes (indigenous societies, language, politics, religion, and technology), and the areas of knowledge (the arts, history, human sciences, mathematics, and natural sciences). If you’re a faculty member of the site, you can also access our exploration point documents, taking you deep into the heart of each component of TOK.
Download free samples
Download an extensive selection of free samples to see our approach, and the kind of materials that members of the site can access and use to deliver the TOK course. Check out our classroom-ready lessons, which are structured into three different courses, see our TOK-world resources, which will allow students to take ownership of the course, and learn how our real-world resources will link learning to the events and issues going on right now.
Join theoryofknowledge.net – and make TOK extraordinary!
TOK is an extraordinary course that requires extraordinary resources. For us, that means:
- Exploring ideas and concepts directly from the very latest real-life situations
- Engaging with the most influential thinkers who have ever lived
- Beautifully designed lessons that are media-rich, highly engaging and updated monthly
- Encouraging students (and educators!) to challenge their own biases
- Getting the whole community involved in TOK – teachers, students and parents
Follow us on social media
You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. We post regular updates about what’s going on at theoryofknowledge.net, links to news stories that relate to different aspects of TOK, or just cool things that we’ve spotted going on in the world.
Find out more about who we are here. If you want to join us as a member, then follow this link. Discover what are members have been saying about us here and download a selection of free sample resources from this page.
For other enquiries, you can get in touch with us easily by using the contact form via this page. Whatever your question, we’ll get back to you with swift support and try to help you during your TOK journey as either a learner or educator.