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Research questions - IA and EE
What is the difference between an extended essay research question and an IA research question (RQ)? The first difference is that the IA proposal does not have to have an RQ; an aim is sufficient. But...
Reflecting on P2B
In the second year of giving students practice Papers 2, Section B, I see they repeatedly make mistakes evaluating a study. These mistakes reflect more a misunderstanding of the goals of the assessment...
Perspectives on iced coffee
While this is an unusual blog title, the "Should you bring an iced coffee to a job interview?" debate that went viral online last week, gives an opportunity to look at two different perspectives on what...
The cognitive approach
We have received questions from teachers about the differences between the cognitive approach and the learning and cognition context. You have also wanted to check how questions may be framed, and what...
Frequently asked questions
It's been a while since we went through your questions and picked out some of the most frequent ones to answer. We get a wide variety of queries, but some come up more often than others, and it helps...
Tips for Paper 2
To be successful on Paper 2, students need knowledge and understanding of research methodology and of how to apply concepts to a previously unseen study.Paper 2 Section A is on the research methodology...
Paper 1C assessment
We have samples of good answers to Paper 1C but the question remains, how do we identify what is needed for a response to get in the top band? In this post, I have pasted one of these P1C answers and...
AI tools and mental health support
If you visit FT online and sign up yourself and your students for free access to FT articles, you will find plenty of discussions on health and well-being, human relationships, and other topics relevant...
Data collection tool: IA experiment
Some of you have questions about what constitutes an appropriate data collection tool for an IA proposal using an experimental method. To be clear, students do not actually conduct the experiment, but...
How to use studies
The IB Diploma guide for psychology states clearly that "Knowledge of specific details of research studies is not assessed" (p45 and p46). But what does this mean, exactly? Hopefully this blog post will...