All aspects of your identity and individual approach to processing your experience, or 鈥渨ays of knowing,鈥� give you valuable insight听and enable your curiosity.

Your lived experience provides a wealth of knowledge听that forms the foundation of your understanding and can take many forms.听Your identity gives you a lens on your context that can reveal new ways of seeing old ideas and new possibilities.

Your Ways of Knowing

Graphic of two concentric circles labeled 鈥淎reas of Knowledge鈥� and 鈥淲ays of Knowing鈥� with components of each distributed around the circles. The word 鈥淵ou鈥� is in the center of the circles. Components of 鈥淎reas of Knowledge鈥� are history, indigenous knowledge, arts, natural science, human science, religion, mathematics and ethics. Components of 鈥淲ays of Knowing鈥� are language, emotion, memory, reason, intuition, sense perception, imagination, and faith.

Adapted from TOK Journal Diagram ""

How might components of your identity work with your ways of knowing to provide a new perspective on an established idea or point to an unexplored idea?

Graphic of magnifying glass with several components of identity around the edge (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, gender identity, language(s), economic status, and nationality) focused on the words 鈥測our context.鈥�

Open Questions

By engaging your open questions in conversation with mentors, you can clarify your values and develop your identity鈥攚hich might still feel like an open question. Your curiosity is a powerful tool that is unique to you because it鈥檚 an expression of your individual听identity with all its'听intersections, providing you a singular lens to examine your context (and a way for others to see new possibilities).听

For background on "intersectionality," refer to the work of听Kimberl茅听Crenshaw, who introduced the term in legal theory to address the marginalization of black women (1989).