Announcing New Syllabus for IBDP Physics 2023

The new DP Physics course will be launched in February 2023 for first teaching in August 2023. First assessment will take place in May 2025.

An overview of this IBDP Physics Curriculum update is detailed in the Physics Subject guide.

Overview of the new course

With a larger emphasis on skills and the interdependence of concepts, settings, and content, a relevant and effective physics education must mirror societal change in order to allow deep learning and student understanding.

Each of the five basic organizing elements that make up the physics curriculum is further broken down into a number of sections.

Physics syllabus content overview

• Topics with content that should be taught to all students

•• Topics with content that should be taught to all students plus additional HL content

••• Topics with content that should only to be taught to HL students

Significance of Conceptual learning

The course aims to develop understandings that connect factual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge and recognizes the importance of connecting learning with conceptual understanding.

Students who have conceptual understanding will be able to transfer and apply knowledge to new or different contexts in inventive, generative, independent, and dynamic ways. They will also be able to be conscious of and critical of their own knowledge.

The two-year program's syllabus structure has been redesigned to include subject-specific concepts like energy, forces, and particles inside a framework that emphasizes models and ideas that let teachers design their own learning paths.

More Emphasis on skill development

The guide's inclusion of a section titled "Skills in the study of chemistry" emphasizes the practical character of the subject. These are organized into many categories and framed by the approaches to learning (ATL) skills, including inquiry skills and methodologies suitable for this level of study.

Exemplary Practical and Collaborative Work

The DP physics course continues to place a strong emphasis on practical work. Teachers are invited to create their own practical lesson plans that will give students opportunities to develop a wide range of investigative and practical skills as well as a greater comprehension of the subject's material and related ideas. The practical scheme of work should be broad and balanced to provide students the opportunity to participate in a variety of tasks, from closed to open inquiry, from hands-on experimentation to the use of simulations and modeling, and to correctly include technology.

The interdisciplinary collaborative sciences project tackles issues from the real world that can be investigated using the variety of topics covered by the sciences group.

Changes to the assessment model

External assessment

There will only be two external exams given to all students.

• In Paper 1A, there are multiple-choice questions from the curriculum, and in Paper 1B, there are questions about data analysis. These publications offer the chance to evaluate some of the experimental methods and methods.

• Paper 2 has both short-answer and extended-response questions that integrate knowledge, concepts, and skills into a relevant chemistry environment.

The choice subjects have also been removed, among other adjustments (relatively, engineering physics, imaging and, astrophysics). Some of the content from the four available options was included to the course at either a SL or HL core content.

Internal assessment

The "scientific investigation" (internal assessment) will change as well, giving students the chance to work together and help one another in small groups. If the independent or dependent variables are different and the data acquired is specific to each student, then students may share similar approaches when appropriate.

The number of words in each student's report will remain at a maximum of 3,000.

With 50% of the marks allotted for Conclusion and Evaluation, the revised criteria will place a stronger focus on higher-order thinking abilities.

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