Planning your TOK course is one of the most creative and rewarding things you’ll do as a teacher. Get it right, and you’ll be offering your students something genuinely transformative.
We offer three distinct pathways, from the reassuringly familiar to the boldly unconventional. Whichever you choose, our resources will make sure you’re ready to deliver it brilliantly.
Members explore all the content on the site in much more depth and detail, via classroom-ready lessons, monthly newsletters, and other brilliant resources. A single membership covers your whole learning community – join us in seconds here!
For the orthodox: Classic TOK
Classic TOK is the most straightforward way into the course, and a natural starting point for first-time teachers. Our Classic lessons are classroom-ready presentations built directly around the core and optional themes and the areas of knowledge, the familiar IB architecture that is literally the textbook way of doing TOK.
The main advantage is clarity: the structure is given to you, and your students will find it easy to see how each lesson connects to the course as a whole. The trade-off is that theme-and-AOK units can sometimes feel episodic, making it harder to build a sustained, cumulative line of inquiry across the year.
For the adventurous: the Big Question framework
The BQ framework organises the entire course around five overarching questions: BQ1 What is knowledge, and why does it require scrutiny? BQ2 How does our knowledge influence the way we construct our values? BQ3 How is our understanding impacted by the way knowledge is communicated? BQ4 How do our perspectives shape the way we view the world? BQ5 How does new knowledge emerge and develop over time?
This approach gives the course a narrative arc that Classic TOK can lack, making it far easier for students to track their own thinking across the year. It requires more initial planning, but the payoff is considerable: stronger engagement, a more coherent learning journey, students who are thoroughly prepared for their essay and exhibition, and a university application profile that genuinely stands out from the crowd.
For the radical: Disruptive Ideas
Disruptive Ideas is a critical thinking course that invites students to challenge – rather than confirm – their assumptions about the world, via contemporary events and the ideas of genuinely engaging thinkers. It can be used to deliver TOK in full, or as the basis of a standalone critical thinking course for non-IB students.
Built closely on our BQ and Classic resources, Disruptive Ideas is the most conceptually ambitious of the three pathways, and the most likely to produce students who think in genuinely original ways. It works best for teachers who are already comfortable with TOK and want to push both themselves and their students further.
Our resources for 2026-27
Whichever pathway you choose, our resources are here to support you. We are currently undertaking a complete revamp of the site for the 2026/27 academic year, with updated lessons, new materials, and a sharper focus on authentic critical thinking across all three pathways.
Members also receive our unique monthly newsletter, which draws on engaging current events and new ideas to keep your course fresh and your students engaged, wherever you are in the course, and whichever route you’re taking.
