Welcome to BQ3 (Spin)
BQ3 (Spin) asks: “How is our understanding of the world influenced by the way knowledge is communicated?” It looks at how our ability to understand the world objectively depends on the way in which ideas and concepts are represented.
Our context for exploring this question includes language, technology, the human sciences, and the natural sciences, although we consider all the areas of knowledge in lesson 3.1.
Accessing the BQ3 lesson presentations
Gain access to the 12 classroom-ready lessons for BQ1 by joining theoryofknowledge.net. Membership also gives access to our other resources for TOK, including the newsletter, Investigating Issues, the TOK mini-lessons, 12 Key Concepts, Knowledge Heroes, and loads of other resources. Download a sample BQ3 lesson here.
Enrichment resources for BQ3
Use the tabs below to access our other resources, which are designed to be used alongside the BQ lessons. They’ll help students to articulate their ideas, find real-world situations and issues, take ownership of the key concepts, and draw on the ideas of brilliant and influential thinkers to understand TOK, and create fantastic exhibitions and essays.
The TOK newsletter enables you and your students to explore the very latest events and issues going on around the world, and connect them to the TOK course.
Teachers can use the newsletter real-life situations to create an alternative pathway of TOK lessons, use the stories to augment the lessons found within this and other BQ units, or share the newsletter with non-TOK teachers to integrate the course with the rest of the DP.
The 12 concepts are: certainty, culture, evidence, explanation, interpretation, justification, objectivity, perspective, power, responsibility, truth, and values. Using them to articulate your understanding of the course will help you to create a great TOK exhibition and essay.
Access our 12 different documents looking at how the 12 key concepts link to the course, and to this Big Question here.
The Exploration Points enable students to develop a deeper understanding of the themes and areas of knowledge via articles, videos, talks, and notes on how TOK concepts manifest in the real world.
You’ll find the Exploration Points documents on the TOK Course section of the site – look for the blue section of each page!
Knowledge heroes allows you to draw on the ideas of over 100 of the most influential thinkers from the past and present, many of whom discuss ideas related to this BQ.
There’s a brief bio for each thinker, a key quote, and an explanation about how this relates to TOK. We’ve also indicated related thinkers, and provided a link provided to the relevant BQ lesson, and other media sources. Access the resource here.
TOK via TED unpacks over 100 of the most TOK-friendly TED talks, enabling you and your students to draw on these incredibly rich sources of knowledge to explore the course.
We’ve linked the talks to the different elements of the course, to this and other Big Questions, provided suggested questions (and indicated the timing of the answers), and included further activities and research targets.
Investigating Issues offers you a completely new way to plan and teach TOK, integrate it with the rest of the DP, and support students as they search for real-life situations to support their essays and exhibition commentaries.
The resource gathers together over 120 major global issues, provides a great collection of media sources to explore each one, and suggests ways to link them to the different elements of the TOK course.
Develop your TOK teaching skills!
Our TOK workshops will help you to design brilliant TOK course, create engaging lessons, oversee the two assessment tasks in as painless a way as possible, or integrate TOK with the rest of the DP.
Set up either an in-school or online workshop, and unlock the full potential of TOK to offer a brilliant, engaging, integrated learning experience for both your teachers and students.