What is the Extended Essay?
The extended essay is an in-depth study of a focused topic chosen from the list of approved Diploma Programme subjects—normally one of the student’s six chosen subjects for the IB diploma. It is intended to promote high-level research and writing skills, intellectual discovery and creativity. It provides students with an opportunity to engage in personal research in a topic of their own choice. This leads to a major piece of formally presented, structured writing, in which ideas and findings are communicated in a reasoned and coherent manner, appropriate to the subject chosen. The completion of the written essay is followed by a short, concluding interview, or viva voce, with the student's Extended Essay supervisor.
How is the Extended Essay Supported?
Researching and writing the Extended Essay is a lengthy process that starts in November of the student's junior year and concludes with the submission of the paper in January and the final student reflection in February of the senior year. Every student is appointed a faculty supervisor in the discipline of their paper, and a calendar of requirement meetings is set to provide a scaffolded structure for investigation and writing the paper. The process is supported and monitored in the Theory of Knowledge class.
What do students write about?
One of the great values of the Extended Essay is that students choose the subjects they will write in, choose the topics they will investigate, and write the questions they will research. As a result, the research questions are uniquely personal and creative. In addition, they are a testament to the what students can achieve when given an open platform to perform. Here is a list of research questions and their subjects that some of our students have investigated recently:
- How does Orson Scott Card portray homosexuality in his book Ender’s Game? (Literature)
- How does Lewis Carroll define and explore time as both a literary motif and mathematical concept in his novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and why? (Literature)
- ¿Cómo Miguel de Cervantes se burla las convenciones literarias de las novelas de caballerías en la primera sección de El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha? (Espanol)
- Comment les limitations de genre en français ont-elles affecté l'utilisation des pronoms non binaires et intersexués en France? (Farnçais)
- To what extent has agriculture impacted the culture of the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina? (History)
- To what extent did German tactical mistakes affect the outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad? (History)
- How significant were the spinning bees held by the Daughters of Liberty in expanding women's roles from 1765 to 1775? (History)
- How do Anthropologists discuss reproductive decision-making in Mexico (with reference to resources, gender roles and religion)? (SC Anthropology)
- How does a pair of Carolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) interact throughout their established breeding territory during the breeding season? (biology)
- How does the method of brewing and water temperature change the amount of caffeine within coffee? (Chemistry)
- To what extent has MAC and MDC hash functions shaped the development of Cryptocurrencies? (Computer Science)
- To what extent has the 1995 reintroduction of grey wolves in Yellowstone National Park affected Ecotourism in the Greater Yellowstone area? (Environmental Systems and Societies)
- Where, if it exists, is the sweet spot of a cantilever, and extending off of this, how accurately does it resemble the location of the sweet spot of a baseball bat? (Physics)
- How do different sky positions and the radii of the observable universe affect the measurement of Hubble’s constant? (Physics)
- How can musical harmonies be modeled by small integer ratios and logarithms? (Math)
- To what extent can analytics predict performance for Major League baseball players? (Math)
- How did Julia Margaret Cameron deviate from the conventions of nineteenth-century portrait photography and with what effect? (Visual Arts)
- To what effect do cinematographers employ color and lighting techniques to influence audience perception in science fiction movies such as Independence Day (1996) and Interstellar (2014)? (Film)
- To what extent do processed foods contribute to obesity in the United States? (World Studies-Health and Development)
- Why might Charlie’s mental illness be portrayed differently in the movie adaptation of the Perks of Being a Wallflower than it is in the book? (Literature and Performance)
- To What Extent is the United States aiding to the impending problem of malnutrition in Sierra Leone? (World Studies-Peace and Conflict Studies)