The themes

One core theme that every student takes, and five optional themes of which your school chooses two.

Core theme · compulsory

Knowledge and the knower
The compulsory core theme. It turns the enquiry back on the student: what they already believe, where those beliefs came from, which communities they inherited them from, and what happens to their knowledge when they notice this.
9 IA prompts

Knowledge and technology
How technologies store, filter, generate and distribute knowledge, and what changes when the tool that finds an answer also decides which answers you were shown.
5 IA prompts
Knowledge and language
How the language available to a knower shapes what can be expressed, distinguished and thought, and what happens to knowledge in translation, metaphor and technical vocabulary.
4 IA prompts
Knowledge and politics
How political arrangements decide which knowledge is produced, funded, taught and believed, and how claims to knowledge are used to justify the exercise of power.
5 IA prompts
Knowledge and religion
How religious knowledge systems establish, transmit and revise their claims, and what standards of justification, authority and interpretation operate within them.
5 IA prompts
Knowledge and indigenous societies
How knowledge is held, transmitted and validated in indigenous societies, including knowledge embedded in place, practice and oral transmission, and the questions raised by its documentation by outsiders.
5 IA prompts