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Browse syllabus-aligned IB Theory of Knowledge revision notes by topic. Open each chapter for explanations, examples, and summaries.
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1.1.1 What knowledge is, and what it is not
27 minute read
1.1.2 Belief, truth and justification
28 minute read
1.1.3 Knowing how and knowing that
29 minute read
1.1.4 First-hand experience as a source
1.1.5 Testimony: knowing because you were told
1.1.6 Memory and its reliability
3.1 The essay at a glance
26 minute read
3.2 The instrument: one question, five bands
25 minute read
3.3 What separates 9-10 from 7-8
4.1.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
40 minute read
4.1.2 Full Model Response
1.1.7 Intuition and gut feeling
1.1.8 Reason and its limits
1.1.9 Emotion in knowing
1.1.10 Knowledge communities and how they validate
1.1.11 Expertise and when to defer
30 minute read
1.1.12 Judging a source
1.1.13 Perspective and bias are not the same thing
1.1.14 Certainty, doubt and degrees of confidence
31 minute read
1.1.15 Responsibility and the ethics of knowing
1.1.16 Assessment bridge: the core theme in the exhibition
1.1.17 Questions about the world and questions about knowing
1.2.1 What counts as technology
1.2.2 Tools that extend perception
1.2.3 Instruments and mediated observation
1.2.4 Recording, storing and retrieving knowledge
33 minute read
1.2.5 Search and the shape of what we find
1.2.6 Algorithms and recommendation
1.2.7 Attention as a condition for knowing
1.2.8 Machine learning: what it does and does not do
1.2.9 Can a machine know anything?
1.2.10 Machine outputs as evidence
1.2.11 Bias in and out of systems
1.2.12 The digital divide as a knowledge problem
1.2.13 Privacy, surveillance and knowing about people
1.2.14 Who is responsible for machine-made knowledge?
1.2.15 Technology and the future of expertise
1.2.16 Assessment bridge: technology in the exhibition
1.3.1 How language carries knowledge
1.3.2 Naming and categorising
1.3.3 Metaphor as a thinking tool
1.3.4 Ambiguity, vagueness and precision
1.3.5 Does language shape thought?
1.3.6 Linguistic relativity: the careful version
1.3.7 Translation and what survives it
34 minute read
1.3.8 Untranslatable concepts
1.3.9 Jargon and technical language
1.3.10 Framing and euphemism
1.3.11 Rhetoric, persuasion and manipulation
1.3.12 Silence, taboo and the unsayable
1.3.13 Language and power
32 minute read
1.3.14 Non-verbal and symbolic communication
1.3.15 Language, harm and responsibility
1.3.16 Assessment bridge: language in the exhibition
1.4.1 What a political knowledge claim is
1.4.2 Facts, values and policy
1.4.3 Polling and public opinion
1.4.4 Statistics and social indicators
1.4.5 Modelling and forecasting societies
1.4.6 Media as a knowledge source
1.4.7 Propaganda and disinformation
1.4.8 Conspiracy thinking
1.4.9 Ideology as a lens
1.4.10 Expertise and populism
1.4.11 Who certifies a political fact?
1.4.12 Power and the production of knowledge
1.4.13 Transparency, secrecy and the public interest
1.4.14 Political knowledge across cultures
1.4.15 What citizens and leaders owe the truth
1.4.16 Assessment bridge: politics in the exhibition
1.5.1 What a religious knowledge claim is
1.5.2 Revelation and sacred text
1.5.3 Tradition and authority
1.5.4 Faith and reason
1.5.5 Religious experience as evidence
1.5.6 Miracle claims and evidence standards
1.5.7 Arguments for and against
1.5.8 Interpretation and hermeneutics
1.5.9 Insider and outsider understanding
1.5.10 Religion and culture
1.5.11 Religion and science: conflict, independence, overlap
1.5.12 Religious pluralism and disagreement
1.5.13 Religion and ethical codes
1.5.14 Secular perspectives on religious knowledge
1.5.15 Religion, identity and community
1.5.16 Assessment bridge: religion in the exhibition
1.6.1 What a knowledge system is
1.6.2 Indigenous knowledge systems: scope
1.6.3 Orality and knowledge without writing
1.6.4 Story, song and ceremony as method
1.6.5 Land and place as knowledge
1.6.6 Ecological and practical knowledge
1.6.7 Kinship and who may know
1.6.8 Transmission across generations
1.6.9 The archive and the elder
1.6.10 Studying from outside: whose lens?
1.6.11 Colonisation and knowledge loss
1.6.12 Language loss and knowledge loss
1.6.13 Ownership and intellectual property
1.6.14 Appropriation and consent
1.6.15 Meeting other knowledge systems
1.6.16 Assessment bridge: indigenous societies in the exhibition
1.7.1 What makes a science?
1.7.2 The demarcation problem
1.7.3 Falsifiability and its limits
1.7.4 Observation is not passive
1.7.5 Instruments and mediated observation
1.7.6 Measurement, error and uncertainty
1.7.7 Designing an experiment
1.7.8 Controls, variables and confounds
1.7.9 Induction and the problem it raises
1.7.10 Models: what they are for and where they lie
1.7.11 Theories, laws and explanation
1.7.12 Prediction and its limits
1.7.13 Replication and the replication crisis
1.7.14 Theory change and paradigm shifts
1.7.15 Consensus, dissent and peer review
1.7.16 Ethics in and around the lab
1.7.17 Assessment bridge: the natural sciences in essay titles
1.8.1 What the human sciences are
1.8.2 The disciplines and their boundaries
1.8.3 Studying people: the reflexivity problem
1.8.4 Operationalising a concept
1.8.5 Experiments on people
1.8.6 Surveys, interviews and self-report
1.8.7 Sampling and representativeness
1.8.8 Correlation, causation and confounds
1.8.9 Statistical significance and what it does not mean
1.8.10 The rationality assumption
1.8.11 Behavioural economics and its lessons
1.8.12 Prediction in the human sciences
1.8.13 Comparing the human and the natural sciences
1.8.14 Replication in the human sciences
1.8.15 The ethics of studying people
1.8.16 Assessment bridge: the human sciences in essay titles
1.9.1 History is not the past
1.9.2 Evidence and the historical record
1.9.3 Primary and secondary sources
1.9.4 Source criticism
1.9.5 Absence of evidence and the missing record
1.9.6 Selection and significance
1.9.7 Narrative and how a history is shaped
1.9.8 Cause and explanation in history
1.9.9 Counterfactuals
1.9.10 Perspective is not bias
1.9.11 Objectivity and the historian's position
24 minute read
1.9.12 Historiography: how histories change
1.9.13 Collective memory and public history
1.9.14 Contested and denied histories
1.9.15 Who owns the past?
1.9.16 Assessment bridge: history in essay titles
1.10.1 What mathematics is about
1.10.2 Axioms, definitions and systems
1.10.3 Proof and deductive certainty
1.10.4 What proof cannot do
1.10.5 Non-Euclidean geometry and axiom choice
1.10.6 Infinity and counterintuitive results
1.10.7 Invented or discovered?
1.10.8 Platonism, formalism and other positions
1.10.9 Beauty and elegance as criteria
1.10.10 Why mathematics works so well in physics
1.10.11 Mathematics as the language of other areas of knowledge
1.10.12 Modelling and idealisation
1.10.13 Statistics: what numbers can and cannot show
1.10.14 Misleading with true numbers
1.10.15 Responsibility for models and algorithms
1.10.16 Assessment bridge: mathematics in essay titles
1.11.1 What counts as art
1.11.2 Definitions of art and why they fail
1.11.3 Institutions and the artworld
1.11.4 Making as knowing
1.11.5 Craft, skill and tacit knowledge
1.11.6 Intention and the artist
1.11.7 Interpretation: whose meaning counts?
1.11.8 The forgery problem
1.11.9 Emotion and aesthetic response
1.11.10 Judgement: is it all subjective?
1.11.11 Criteria, canons and taste
1.11.12 Art as evidence about a society
1.11.13 Art and truth
1.11.14 Censorship and offence
1.11.15 Appropriation in the arts
1.11.16 Assessment bridge: the arts in essay titles
2.1 The exhibition at a glance
2.2 The instrument: one question, one best-fit judgement out of 10
2.3 Choosing a prompt: narrowing 35 to 1
2.4 Objects that work: specific real-world context
2.5 Linking an object to the prompt
2.6 The commentary: 950 words across three objects
2.7 The Year 1 exhibition calendar
2.8 Coaching within the rules: what guidance is allowed
2.9 The exhibition event and the administrative requirements
2.10 Moderation: what the IB does with your marks
18 minute read
2.11 Exemplars with band reasoning
2.12.1 IA prompt 1: What counts as knowledge?
2.12.2 IA prompt 2: Are some types of knowledge more useful than others?
2.12.3 IA prompt 3: What features of knowledge have an impact on its reliability?
2.12.4 IA prompt 4: On what grounds might we doubt a claim?
2.12.5 IA prompt 5: What counts as good evidence for a claim?
3.4 Structure without formula
3.5 Examples are evidence, not decoration
3.6 Introductions, definitions, conclusions
3.7 Counter-pressure that does not cancel: four shapes
3.8 Unpacking any title: the method
3.9 The 1,600 words and the formal requirements
3.10 Exemplars with band reasoning
3.11 Practice titles: using the archive
4.2.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
4.2.2 Full Model Response
42 minute read
4.3.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
4.3.2 Full Model Response
4.4.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
4.4.2 Full Model Response
38 minute read
4.5.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
4.5.2 Full Model Response
4.6.1 Breakdown & Cheat sheet
35 minute read
4.6.2 Full Model Response
39 minute read
2.12.6 IA prompt 6: How does the way that we organize or classify knowledge affect what we know?
2.12.7 IA prompt 7: What are the implications of having, or not having, knowledge?
2.12.8 IA prompt 8: To what extent is certainty attainable?
2.12.9 IA prompt 9: Are some types of knowledge less open to interpretation than others?
2.12.10 IA prompt 10: What challenges are raised by the dissemination and/or communication of knowledge?
2.12.11 IA prompt 11: Can new knowledge change established values or beliefs?
2.12.12 IA prompt 12: Is bias inevitable in the production of knowledge?
2.12.13 IA prompt 13: How can we know that current knowledge is an improvement upon past knowledge?
2.12.14 IA prompt 14: Does some knowledge belong only to particular communities of knowers?
2.12.15 IA prompt 15: What constraints are there on the pursuit of knowledge?
2.12.16 IA prompt 16: Should some knowledge not be sought on ethical grounds?
2.12.17 IA prompt 17: Why do we seek knowledge?
2.12.18 IA prompt 18: Are some things unknowable?
2.12.19 IA prompt 19: What counts as a good justification for a claim?
2.12.20 IA prompt 20: What is the relationship between personal experience and knowledge?
2.12.21 IA prompt 21: What is the relationship between knowledge and culture?
2.12.22 IA prompt 22: What role do experts play in influencing our consumption or acquisition of knowledge?
2.12.23 IA prompt 23: How important are material tools in the production or acquisition of knowledge?
2.12.24 IA prompt 24: How might the context in which knowledge is presented influence whether it is accepted or rejected?
2.12.25 IA prompt 25: How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?
2.12.26 IA prompt 26: Does our knowledge depend on our interactions with other knowers?
2.12.27 IA prompt 27: Does all knowledge impose ethical obligations on those who know it?
2.12.28 IA prompt 28: To what extent is objectivity possible in the production or acquisition of knowledge?
2.12.29 IA prompt 29: Who owns knowledge?
2.12.30 IA prompt 30: What role does imagination play in producing knowledge about the world?
2.12.31 IA prompt 31: How can we judge when evidence is adequate?
2.12.32 IA prompt 32: What makes a good explanation?
2.12.33 IA prompt 33: How is current knowledge shaped by its historical development?
2.12.34 IA prompt 34: In what ways do our values affect our acquisition of knowledge?
2.12.35 IA prompt 35: In what ways do values affect the production of knowledge?
