The ACT Big Questions (BQs) is a cognitive framework adapted from our highly successful theory of knowledge BQs, and designed for students involved in programmes such as A-Levels or the AP.
Each of the five BQs explores a different issue related to the acquisition and use of knowledge, and invites students to formulate their answers via different subject areas, personal experiences, and events and issues going on in the contemporary world.
The ACT Big Questions
The Big Questions ask five crucial questions about knowledge. Each one forms the basis of both our mini-lessons, and our BQ units of full-length lessons (we’ll be releasing these units in the Spring of 2025).
This means you can dive into the BQs to any depth, depending on whether your school offers a stand-alone critical thinking course, promotes critical thinking via existing lessons, or offers a combination of both.
BQ1 (Foundations) asks, What is knowledge, and why does it require scrutiny? It invites students to think about the nature of knowledge, how we acquire it, definitions of truth, and other key concepts related to the way in which we try to approach the world objectively.
BQ2 (Spin) asks, How does our knowledge influence the way we construct our values? It invites students to consider the relationship between ethics and understanding, by thinking about how our values shape – and are shaped by – the knowledge we possess about the world.
BQ3 (Spin) asks, How is our understanding impacted by the way knowledge is communicated? It invites students to think about the way our knowledge of the world is impacted by the way ideas are consciously and unconsciously ‘spun’.
BQ4 (Perspectives) asks, How do our perspectives shape the way we view the world? It invites students to think about how our personal and societal perspectives and biases affect the way we process ideas and theories, and how open-minded they leave us.
BQ5 (Change) asks, How does new knowledge emerge and develop over time? It looks at the way new knowledge is created, why old ideas and theories are questioned and replaced, and what drives this process of evolution on both an individual and societal level.
Help your learners to exit their echo chambers!
Our online and in-person workshops offer the usual support for students writing the essay and exhibition, and TOK departments designing great courses.
But our training sessions go much further than this: by focusing on authentic critical thinking, they demonstrate how to help learners confront, rather than confirm, their biases and assumptions, and exit their echo chambers. This makes them accessible and relevant for all teachers, whatever their subject or programme. Read more here.