I must admit that I didn’t enjoy teaching TOK and the students didn’t enjoy me teaching it. My problem is that after more than 40 years of teaching physics I find it difficult to think in any other way than the simple physics way of strict definitions, simplifying assumptions, application of laws and the solving problems  that have solutions. Everything was through the lens of a physics teacher, I had little to add when it came to discussing language, history, art, music… anything but physics really. TOK teachers will point out that this is OK, the students will take it away, just start them off and discussion will follow. This is true to some extent but if the students haven’t done their homework, which was to watch Seven Samurai, you only watched it on fast forward and it’s 8 o’clock in the morning, then it’s not easy to get a discussion going.

I do like TOK but only the physics bits. Having gone over to a totally student centered course I rarely address the whole class but when I do it’s usually TOK. The student’s don’t realise this but it is. I used to ring a bell whenever I mentioned something to do with TOK but someone stole the clanger.

Let’s take this week, my first year students are doing circular motion and gravity so we spend 15 minutes talking about:

• The way we can use different approaches to show that the force is towards the centre.
• What is centrifugal force?
• Frames of reference.
• How an incomplete statement of Newton’s 3^rd law leads to a misunderstanding of the forces involved.
• Why is Newton’s universal law of gravitation in the syllabus when it’s no longer the accepted theory?
• How can we be sure that the law applies to the whole universe?
• Is there such a thing as negative mass?
• How can gravity cause an apple to accelerate without touching it?
• What caused the apple to fall? Gravity. What is gravity? The thing that makes the apple fall.
• How can the universe expand if it’s already infinite.
• Why is it strange that inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same?
• How does Einstein’s idea of curved space solve this problem?
• Was there a big bang?
• Etc.

When looking at this list it’s hard to believe that all of this and more was included in a 15 minute chat but it was. It’s all interesting stuff and all relevant to TOK but all physics. Subject teachers are always being told to introduce TOK in their classes, I do it all the time but in a recent survey my students responded that TOK is rarely mentioned. I guess it’s true I rarely say the letters TOK. I have to admit that I shy away from using them knowing that they can have a negative effect. The idea is that the students will be able to use examples from their different subjects in discussions they have in their TOK class but I think it should also go the other way. Students should bring up things they have learnt in TOK in their subject classes. This almost never happens. The only time students want to discuss TOK is when they are writing their essays.

It would be great if TOK teachers could sometimes direct students back to their subject teachers but I’d prefer that the questions were relevant to what we do in the course. Ideally the TOK teacher would have to have some knowledge of the content of all of the subjects, that’s a bit unrealistic but it might be useful to know of some of the TOK type issues we bring up. So, here are my top 10 TOK hits.

1. In physics we aren’t interested in opinions. “I want to know what Newton would have thought not what you think”.
2. If everything was intuitive we wouldn’t need physics.
3. Electrons flowing uphill doesn’t give an easy to understand picture so we consider conventional current that flows downhill.
4. A hypothesis is not a guess.
5. Physics is a game you just need to know the rules and apply them.
6. In physics we define quantities very specifically, when you hear the word horse you know what it means. Potential, Energy, Force and velocity should also mean something.
7. Questions should always be answered using laws and definitions. When making explanations each new statement should be a consequence of a law or definition.
8. Physicists often use models developed in one area to explain phenomena in another e.g. sound waves, light waves, water waves. This ability to see patterns and adapt models is very useful.
9. The graph of results is a display of all the information gathered during an experiment. Any claims made in the conclusion and evaluation must be based on the graph. It’s easy to explain what was supposed to happen but not so easy to explain what happened.
10. Why do we linearise graphs?

Not really a top 10 more of a first 10 but it’s a start.