Theory of the firm (ToF) is hard. Well, it can be. (Hey, I just noticed ToF=tough. That can’t be a coincidence). The first year I taught IB Economics, my students really struggled with the diagrams and all of the memorization in this part of the course. But if there’s something I love it’s taking something [...]

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts” (Anonymous). This holiday I read two new books that have really challenged my thinking about how to equip children and teenagers for success. They are: Teach Your Children Well (by Madeline Levine, 2012) and How Children Succeed (by Paul Tough, 2012). [...]

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” (Aristotle). A lot of what we do every day is habitual. Obviously, some of our habits are good and some aren’t, but they all work in the same way. Think of how powerful it would be if you did the [...]

The purpose of this article is to help you strengthen the logic and argument of your ToK essay. This is great for making final touches to your work and to help you spot some common mistakes. And it will, of course, pull your mark up. I’m just going to assume that you’re already using my [...]

As an economics teacher I like to think about how best to structure things to increase good outcomes. We can think of philanthropy as a market, where the donors and charities are trading. Economist James Andreoni explained this as an exchange relationship where people donate something tangible and in turn receive a “warm glow.”  But he [...]

Title page (with your Research Question) Acknowledgements Contents page Executive summary Introduction (approx. 200 words) Research Question Procedure or Method (approx. 200 words) Main Findings and results (approx. 200 words) –simply a summary of your findings Analysis and discussion (approx. 1000 words) This is where you J.A.M. (just like in the IB Business Extended Essay) [...]

**This can also be used for Business IA’s** Lets say you’ve chosen (as your EE question) to explore whether a restaurant should relocate from one shopping mall to another one. The second location is more popular, but also more expensive. Great! This is great because it’s a toughy. Easy questions (slam dunk questions) are not [...]

  Recently we had our staff (teachers in different subjects) compile a lists of the knowledge issues in their subjects. They have come up with a pretty good list, which I thought a lot of ToK Students would appreciate having. It’s helpful both to help you understand what a knowledge issue is, but also to [...]

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. -Dr. Seuss   Differentiation (diff-er-EN-she-AISH-en) is something every student should understand. It’s a powerful concept. In short it is about treating students differently. As Rebecca Alberg explains, “Equal education is not all students getting [...]

I strongly recommend that, before you start writ­ing your essay, you pre­pare an out­line. This will help you to clar­ify your ideas and keep you on track as you write. You can pre­pare your out­line by answer­ing the fol­low­ing questions: Download a PDF Version of this outline Knowledge Issue: Thesis: Body 1 The AoK or [...]