What are the Advantages of Teaching Conceptually?

Teaching conceptually will help students to organise their knowledge, make links between different parts of the chemistry course and different DP subjects, and also help to transfer knowledge between different parts of the course.

This approach will take time to adopt, however, which is why the IB has maintained the number of teaching hours but reduced the course content. The examinations (with the exception of paper 1A, the multichoice paper) have fewer marks than the ‘old’ 1½ minutes per mark that the IB used to allocate. This indicates both a greater required reading time for examination questions and questions with more cognitive demand than before.

It is likely that students will take time to adjust to the conceptual approach, with the course seemingly slow at first, but accelerating over time.

Although CBT is new to teaching IBDP Chemistry in 2023, for the students the whole course is new. Normalise CBT from the beginning of your course and the students will embrace it.