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Sign inDon’t have an account? Click to sign up today!The IB Extended Essay: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
Perhaps the biggest change to the EE is the broadening out of the World Studies Extended Essay into the Interdisciplinary Extended Essay. This is now a much more flexible option (there is even a handy flowchart created by the IB) and makes it much less likely the rubric will get in the way of an interesting idea that can be developed into an effective Extended Essay.
This extra flexibility is incredibly exciting and allows the component to be even more curiosity-led than before. As an English teacher, I’ve supervised numerous EEs that have had large overlaps with subjects like History and Psychology, and have often needed to guide students back to a far more ‘literary’ focus that compromises their original interest in the idea. I now look back on those EEs and think about what would have been possible had the Interdisciplinary pathway been an option.
As with the WSEE before it, there needs to be a clear justification for the two subject lenses and there is also no requirement for primary research. Students simply need to integrate one or more of the following from each subject lens: knowledge, concepts, theories, perspectives or methods.
This opens the door to far more varied and subtle combinations of subjects. One example from the IB that caught my attention was investigating the relationship between the poetry of Bobby Sands and his political impact in Ireland. Whereas before the political and historical aspects of the writer would be approached more as context and deeper poetic message in a Language A EE, this EE could now be entered in combination with History to allow for a far more meaningful and in-depth integration of the historical and the political. The impact his poetry had on the political events of the time no longer remains largely extraneous context, but becomes central to the essay itself in a way a historically-minded student may find far more engaging.
I am expecting that in the years to come, as coordinators and supervisors get more comfortable with the new pathways, the number of interdisciplinary EEs will continue to grow and the boundaries between subjects will become far more permeable. This is much more in keeping with the spirit of the IB and better prepares students for the complex problems they will inevitably encounter in their futures.
The Hachette Learning textbook features a more in-depth, step-by-step approach to the Interdisciplinary Pathway that can be used to guide students and supervisors through the process (see Chapter 9).
For more information about the new textbook for the IB Extended Essay, click here.
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