WHO WANTS TO KNOW?
TOK AND METACOGNITIVE POSSIBILITIES
The TOKResource.org site privileges embodied and culturally embedded knowing. These Who wants to know? pages are not class activities designed for students. They break the 4th wall—providing a meta-perspective for teachers. They suggest some useful points of entry and may serve to demystify TOK for new teachers.
30,000 year old paintings of lions and rhinos at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France
TOK is a natural vehicle for students to gain familiarity with their own learning modalities and idiosyncrasies; including recognizing what strategies and habits work best, and how emotional and other dispositional factors come into play. This meta-awareness can result in new levels of agency and confidence.
Awareness of oneself entails better understanding of the differing perspectives of others. We are each of us unique. This uniqueness arises from a common human predicament. We are embodied knowers, contingent in time and space, embedded in specific linguistic, cultural and historic contexts. Awareness of this invites a pluralism which recognizes the richness of differing, sometimes parallel perspectives and assumptions.
Francisco de Goya (c. 1797) The Pupil Knows More (Se sabrá mas el discipulo) Plate 37 of 80 in the Los Caprichos series. Etching aquatint.
REFLECTIONS ON DEEP LEARNING
I tell my class from the very beginning that it does not matter how smart they think they might be compared to others in the room; and it does not matter how much knowledge that I, as their teacher, might have accumulated over the years. Things that count are their own participation, questioning and personal strategies for gradually deepening their own understanding.
Education in any discipline is not a thing that can be given to a student. They must construct it for themselves and then they own it. Profound, sophisticated and lasting understanding is built up over time. Deep learning entails occasional “aha,” threshold moments where some kind of impasse, or hump, is overcome.
All students are in medias res. There are no entirely blank slates in the room even when a brand new topic is being introduced. All students have some prior knowledge which brings losses as well as gains. Myths, folk theories and erroneous intuitions may initially block the way. Neuroscience informs us that lasting progress is more like building, repairing, pruning and strengthening the connections of a web, than climbing up the steps of a ladder. Understanding is deep learning that is built over time. Strange as it seems, a good deal of understanding seems to be reconstructed in the moment, on the fly, based on fragmentary cues and half remembered contexts. A lot of everyday experience feels like this.
The learning quest requires a kind of safe stress. It should engender the possibility of failure, the freedom to inquire and question, the space to grapple with and work through complex ideas and, not least, allocated time for rest and reflection. The latter allows students to consider the ultimate generative question, “What else is possible?”
At times there will be resistance or frustration in the air; so much the better. Nobody ever “changed their mind” without some discomfort and without entering the scary, liminal zone that is betwixt and between. Of course, emotional tension must have its release. The teacher must, at times, rein chaos in and provide a safety net. But not too soon; like stand-up comedy, timing is everything!
COMMUNITIES OF KNOWLEDGE
Henri Matisse (1910) Dance. Oil on canvas. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
TOK is an invitation to explore how we know what we claim to know? It has a particular flavor. TOK students develop an awareness of themselves as embodied knowers and thinkers. This is the anchor for the entire course.
As the TOK experience unfolds, students soon appreciate that the individual knower is not especially privileged. We are embodied knowers, but we are also embedded in social and historical contexts. We are ourselves and our circumstances. TOK is not a vehicle for the narcissism of existential angst or solipsism.
TOK explores multiple and global perspectives engendered by various groups of knowers, including the traditional academic disciplines. As well as five Areas of Knowledge, the course explores knowledge acquired through Technology, Language, Politics, Religion and Indigenous Societies.
TOK is situated at the confluence of communities of knowers (emphasizing “we”) with the self as an individual knower (the subjectivity of “I”).
Andrew Brown (2005) Emma, Noah and Willam in Galicia. Oil on canvas.