What are the examiners thinking ? (ToK Exhibition)

Experienced teachers of ToK well know that the Subject Report is one of the most important documents for guiding students to do well in ToK.

The Subject Report is written by the Chief Examiner after each Exam Session, it is an aggregation of the main points arising from the individual reports that each examiner has to write after they have marked the ToK Essays & Exhibitions. Therefore it gives you great information on:

• Common Mistakes made.

• Strong or effective approaches to questions,

• And most crucially - the examiners operationalise the assessment criteria, in other words - they tell us what they’re looking for, or what they mean, by some of the more vague descriptors in the assessment criteria.

The May 22 ToK Subject Report is available from the Programme Resource Centre. I have summarised the May 22 ToK Subject Report - The section on The ToK Exhibition is linked here, and the section on the ToK Essay is linked here.

My summaries are useful as an aide memoir, or a teaching resource to be used with students. However, I encourage you to read the full report. There are a lot more details in the full report than I can fit into a one page summary.

Why focus on the May 22 Subject Report?

The May 22 ToK Subject Report is particularly interesting because it is the first time we have feedback from the Examiners on the ToK Exhibition, and it really clarifies some of the things that we were not sure about going into the May 22 exam session. If you are currently preparing students for the ToK Exhibition the May 22 Subject Report is required reading.

This post focusses on what the Subject report tells us about  the ToK Exhibition, there is a section in the report on The Essay, but that will have to wait for another video:

Key points in M22 Subject on The ToK Exhibition.

1. Object Specificity.

Specific objects are far better than generic objects. Many of the subsequent marks awarded for the Exhibition partly rely on the specificity of the object - so this point is important. Further, it is easier for students if the object has some personal link to their own lived experience - this is more in fitting with the Exhibition which is supposed to be a reflection on how ToK Manifests itself in the real world. The subject report goes into some detail about what is meant by a specific object -it really is worth reading, personally I think that the examiners have made it very clear for us.

2. Knowledge Links.

The explanation of the link between object & the prompt needs to be about knowledge - not about the the object, or any wider real world issues - it has to be about knowledge. This may seem obvious, however I recently saw an Exhibition commentary which the teacher thought had been undermarked by the Examiners. On reading the commentary it was immediately clear that the student had written very little about knowledge, they had written a lot about the real world context of the object, but very little about knowledge. A simple if crude test of this is to simply count the number of times the student has used the word “knowledge” - if they’re not using the word they’re probably not writing about knowledge.

3. Specific Contributions.

The contribution of the object to unpacking the prompt needs to be specific & distinct to that individual object. This means that the objects probably need to be varied / different types of object. Further, This is why I ask my students to construct 3 arguments relating to the prompt BEFORE picking 3 objects. This makes it much easier to score highly on this criteria.

4. Evidence.

The report clarifies what is meant by evidence, it could include a study, documentary evidence, a news item, a thoughtful or expert opinion.

Final Thoughts

Finally there is an interesting paragraph in the subject report that explains that the Exhibition is meant to be a reflection on how ToK manifests itself in the real world, it says that

“candidates are not expected to answer the prompt but to show how their objects are interesting to help reflection about the prompt and explore it. It needs to be a TOK discussion so candidates should be encouraged to use TOK concepts…,”

May 22 ToK Subject Report, IB

In this we paragraph have a couple of insights which were not previously clear to me , and I think will be of great help in the future:

1. We should try to bring the ToK Concepts out in the Exhibition - I’m going to ask my students to focus on 2 or 3 concepts in their Exhibition.

2. More importantly - it’s a reflection which can be left unanswered, this invites a wider ToK discussion, which can link back the student’s role as a knower with the prompt - oh happy days !

You can find more thoughts on the ToK Exhibition here, including a useful structure planner.

If you are a student who wants help with your ToK Exhibition please check out our student support pages here.

If you have any thoughts or requests I'd love to hear from you: Daniel@TokToday.com,

Have a Tok-tastic day!
Daniel,
Lisbon Nov 2022