TOK Exhibition (IA)
Beginning with the class of 2022
Embedded Files
Overview
Overview
Beginning with the class of 2022, students will be expected to demonstrate their understanding of TOK concepts and their relation to real-world issues through the development of a TOK Exhibition. To complete the TOK Exhibition, students will select a prompt from a previously developed set of 35 high-level Knowledge Questions. Using the prompt to guide their thinking, students will select three objects (or pictures of objects) that thoughtfully illuminate the importance of the question in real-world contexts, and will develop a written explanation of why the objects were selected and how they relate to each other as well as to the selected IA Prompt.
The TOK Exhibition will be completed in the first year of the course. TOK Exhibitions are assessed internally (i.e., by ME) based on a global impression marking system, and moderated by an external examiner (to whom I send a selection of your work). The TOK Exhibition counts as 33% of your overall IB Grade for the course.
The TOK Exhibition is an individual assessment. Different students in the same class may choose to address the same question, but no two students may use the same objects in their exhibition.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
IA Prompts
IA Prompts
You will choose one of the following prompts to use as a motivating question for your TOK Exhibition.
What counts as knowledge?
Are some types of knowledge more useful than others?
What features of knowledge have an impact on its reliability?
On what grounds might we doubt a claim?
What counts as good evidence for a claim?
How does the way that we organize or classify knowledge affect what we know?
What are the implications of having, or not having, knowledge?
To what extent is certainty attainable?
Are some types of knowledge less open to interpretation than others?
What challenges are raised by the dissemination and/or communication of knowledge?
Can new knowledge change established values or beliefs?
Is bias inevitable in the production of knowledge?
How can we know that current knowledge is an improvement upon past knowledge?
Does some knowledge belong only to particular communities of knowers?
What constraints are there on the pursuit of knowledge?
Should some knowledge not be sought on ethical grounds?
Why do we seek knowledge?
Are some things unknowable?
What counts as a good justification for a claim?
What is the relationship between personal experience and knowledge?
What is the relationship between knowledge and culture?
What role do experts play in influencing our consumption or acquisition of knowledge?
How important are material tools in the production or acquisition of knowledge?
How might the context in which knowledge is presented influence whether it is accepted or rejected?
How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?
Does our knowledge depend on our interactions with other knowers?
Does all knowledge impose ethical obligations on those who know it?
To what extent is objectivity possible in the production or acquisition of knowledge?
Who owns knowledge?
What role does imagination play in producing knowledge about the world?
How can we judge when evidence is adequate?
What makes a good explanation?
How is current knowledge shaped by its historical development?
In what ways do our values affect our acquisition of knowledge?
In what ways do values affect the production of knowledge?
Note: The chosen IA prompt must be used exactly as given; it must not be altered in any way. If the IA prompt has been modified but it is still clear which IA prompt the student is referring to, the TOK exhibition should be marked as using the original IA prompt. Any lack of relevance in the student’s response arising from this modification will be reflected in the score awarded. If it is clear that the TOK Exhibition is not based on one of the IA prompts listed, the TOK exhibition should be awarded a score of zero, in accordance with the TOK Exhibition assessment instrument.
The Exhibition Development Process
The Exhibition Development Process
Step 1: Selection
Step 1: Selection
You should begin by choosing:
Your IA Prompt (from the list of 35 high-level Knowledge Questions)
Your preferred TOK Theme, selected from one of the three themes explored in the course
Your three (3) objects, or images of objects, that show how this question manifests in the world around us
You should develop this thinking in the form of a brainstorm document, which will act as a point of conversation in our 1-on-1 planning conference.
Choosing a Theme
Choosing a Theme
The TOK exhibition is designed to give you a chance to explore how TOK manifests in the world around us. For this reason, the TOK Guide strongly recommends that you base your exhibition on one of the TOK themes for the course. Viewing your chosen prompt through one of these themes can help to provide you with an accessible starting point, and can provide a focus to narrow down your choice of potential objects.
In our course, we will deal directly with three of these themes, and each of them has its own dedicated space on this website:
In addition to these three themes, the TOK Guide outlines three additional optional themes:
Knowledge and politics
Knowledge and religion
Knowledge and indigenous societies
Because these are not addressed directly in the course as I have structured it, you should think carefully about your level of comfort in navigating these other themes. However, if you decide to pursue one of them, I can provide you with what additional context and materials that I have.
Choosing your Objects
Choosing your Objects
The point of choosing objects for this presentation is to invite you to consider carefully how the TOK concepts we explore in class are relevant in the real, specific, material world. Almost anything in the world could be considered as a possible object, including both physical and digital objects. However, they must be specific objects that have a specific real-world context—objects that exist in a particular time and place (including virtual spaces). They may be objects that you have created yourself, but they must be pre-existing objects rather than objects created specifically for the purposes of the exhibition.
The specific real-world context of each object is extremely important to the task. It is, therefore, important that students identify specific objects to discuss rather than using generic objects and generic images from the internet. For example, a discussion and photograph of a student’s baby brother is an example of an object that has a specific real-world context, whereas a generic image of “a baby” from an internet image search is not.
As you think about how to develop your exhibition, you should consider objects that are of personal interest to you, and those that you have come across in your academic studies and/or your lives beyond the classroom.
The following examples of the diverse kinds of objects students could select are provided by the TOK Guide:
A tweet from the President of the United States
An image of the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso
The student’s own extended essay (EE)
A basketball used by the student during their physical education lessons
The graphic novel The Colour of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa
A painting that the student created in their DP visual arts course
A refillable water bottle provided to each student in a school as part of a sustainability initiative
A news article from the popular website Buzzfeed
A photograph of the student playing in an orchestra
Step 2: Development
Step 2: Development
Once you have made your choice of prompt and mapped your thinking onto objects in the world, you should begin to develop your exhibition document.
The final submission document for this assessment should be a single file that includes:
a title clearly indicating your selected IA prompt
images of the three objects you have chosen for your exhibition
a typed commentary on each object that identifies each object and its specific real-world context, justifies its inclusion in the exhibition and links to the IA prompt. The maximum word count for your commentary is 950 words. This word count does not include:
the title and/or IA Prompt itself
object labels
any text contained on/within the objects themselves
acknowledgments, references (whether given in footnotes, endnotes or in-text) or bibliography.
appropriate citations and references, as necessary (including appropriate references for all images used in the exhibition)
After you have completed a draft of this document, you will submit it to me and receive written feedback to help guide revision. This revised final submission document will then be submitted, marked by me, and submitted to the IB for moderation.
Step 3: Exhibition
Step 3: Exhibition
As you finish the revision of your final submission document, you will also have the opportunity to exhibit your thinking. In order to do this, you will transform your submission document into an exhibition display.
This exhibition display should contain:
a title clearly indicating your selected IA prompt
the three objects you have chosen (or images of these objects)
an explanation of each object and its real-world context, as well as your reasoning for including it in the exhibition and links to the IA prompt
As you can see, this is the same basic information that is included in your submission document. However, for the purposes of the exhibition, you should work to organize the material so that it is visually appealing and easily comprehensible.
Your display may take the form of:
A trifold exhibition board
A curated museum exhibit
A poster or infographic
A self-guided digital slideshow
A brief narrated video
Some other form that makes sense for you or your material.
The TOK exhibition will culminate with an opportunity to share your work with others in your class and in the school and community more broadly.
Assessment
Assessment
The TOK Exhibition is marked by me based on a "global impression marking system." This means that when I assess your work, I take into account the quality of the work as a whole, and award marks based on this overall quality.
The following instrument will guide my impressions:
For the purposes of TOK class grades, your presentation mark will be translated as follows:
Level 5: 95-100
Level 4: 85-90
Level 3: 75-80
Level 2: 65-70
Level 1: 55-60
Level 0: 50 (if attempted: failure to complete a TOK exhibition will result in a grade of 0.)
REMINDER ABOUT MODERATION: Remember that IA marks that an instructor gives may be moderated up or down or not at all by IB. In this case, the document submitted will be your final submission document. While the exhibition display and the exhibition itself will play an important role in our class discussion, they are not assessed by the IB.
Exemplars
Exemplars
The following exemplars were provided by the IBO as models for strong and week TOK Exhibitions. Each of these examples is accompanied by examiner commentary that shows the marks awarded and provides some guidance on how the score was arrived at.
Use these examples as guides to your own work.
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