Early this year the International Baccalaureate (IB) released the new group 4 guides for biology, chemistry and physics.
The IB said that it redesigned the courses with a conceptual approach to the study of each of the three sciences. As a physics teacher, there is a lot to get your head around - especially as the new syllabus begins in the next academic year.
Here’s what you need to know.
International Baccalaureate: changes in physics
Chiefly, in the forthcoming first examination 2025 syllabus, there is a marked shift in the educational approach. Instead of a focus on individual content areas, the new curriculum emphasises the interconnectedness of concepts. For example, in physics there are now five main themes as follows:
- Space, time and motion
- The particulate nature of matter
- Wave behaviour
- Fields
- Nuclear and quantum physics
If we look at the particulate nature of matter as an example, within the topic the IB has grouped together thermal energy transfers, greenhouse effect, gas laws and thermodynamics, as well as current and circuits.
Within each of these mini topics are both “guiding questions”, which encourage the teacher and student to explore more deeply the content of the unit, and “linked questions”, which invite discussion and further examination of other subject areas of the course to develop a wider conceptual understanding of physics as a whole.
Furthermore, with the inclusion of both guided and linked questions, it is possible to break the smaller units down into mini sections and create your own themes to fit the needs of your school.
For example, building themed sections to take account of Earth Day in April or Women’s History Month in March could provide context for the students and a new perspective through which to view physics.
Skills development
There is also an increased emphasis on skill development, with a dedicated section in the study guide, “Skills in the Study of Physics”. This presents skills integral to the study of physics, such as problem-solving and tool-based and inquiry-based skills. These include:
- Tools
- Tool 1: experimental techniques
- Tool 2: technology
- Tool 3: mathematics
- Inquiry process
- Inquiry 1: exploring and designing
- Inquiry 2: collecting and processing data
- Inquiry 3: concluding and evaluating
These skills are used throughout the course and are especially drawn upon later in the internal assessment and the collaborative project part of the course.
A different approach to practical work
Meanwhile, practical work has changed, too; notably by removing prescribed practical - such as measuring gravitational acceleration (g) or the student favourite of using beer foam to model half life - from the syllabus.
Instead teachers are encouraged to develop their practical schemes of work themselves - which means, of course, you can still stick with those above but you have scope to add new ones, too.
This approach aims to emphasise the significance of hands-on experimentation, simulations and modelling, and appropriate use of technology, and allows the teacher to design a course that supports a thematic approach.
Assessment updates
The assessment model has also been revamped so that for external assessment, students will now sit only two examinations, with the removal of the option topics.
Paper 1A will include multiple-choice questions and Paper 1B will cover data analysis questions, assessing skills such as graphing, units and uncertainties.
Paper 2 will contain short-response questions focusing on specific areas of the curriculum, and one or two extended-response questions for standard and higher-level students respectively, which encompass content from different areas of the course.
The internal assessment, known as the “scientific investigation”, will also be changed, now allowing students to collaborate within small groups.
These groups can work on the development of a collective experiment - however, they must have individual research questions with variation of different variables. Students will still submit an individual report with a maximum word count of 3,000 words.
Finally, instead of five criteria there are now four with equal weighting of six points each: research design, data analysis, conclusion and evaluation. The internal assessment also draws heavily on the inquiry process mentioned earlier in the skills section of the curriculum.
All of these changes represent a significant shift from a unit-by-unit approach to a more interconnected conceptual understanding - especially in Paper 2 Part B, in which the students will answer a question linking several interconnected concepts together.
This precludes students and teachers from studying for specific topic questions and requires them, instead, to focus on the underlying understanding of models. As such, discussion of concepts should be encouraged and explored more deeply.
It will be interesting to see how teachers and students will drive the design of the new course over the next couple of years.
Aaron Greenall is an International Baccalaureate physics teacher at the British International School of Houston
