What do we know (so far) about the ToK Exhibition?

The first set of ToK Exhibition results are in, and the clouds of mystery that have previously shrouded the expectations of this new assessment are starting to clear somewhat. We are yet to receive the Subject Report (which will hopefully further clarify expectations), but we can glean some things from this first set of moderated commentaries. At my school we entered 45 candidates, none of the sample were subject to moderation (the ToK Examiner agreed with our grading), and our range was from ‘fairly low’ up to 10/10.

What I present here are the thoughts and decisions of our ToK team as we worked through what we thought was expected from the ToK Exhibition. It would appear that these decisions were upheld, but before we fall into a pile of complacent conceit a few disclaimers are warranted:

1, My observations come from only 1 set of results, and this is the first cycle of this particular assessment. One set of 45 results is not sufficient to make reliable cause and effect statements. Further, rumour & folklore amongst DP teachers would have it that IB are more lenient the first time a new form of assessment is run.

2. It is highly possible that we “just got lucky” with our moderator,or that we were on the verge of moderation with some pieces, and just snuck over the no-moderation line. Many times in the past I have seen little rationale to moderation decisions in subjects across the Diploma. It’s rather irrational (and self serving) to call out moderation decisions as nonsensical when they go against your students, but to take them as an indication of your ‘greatness’ when they go in favour of your students.

3. The illusion of causality could be at play here. It may be that our student’s work was not moderated despite the decisions that we made regarding what we assumed was required for The Exhibition.

With the disclaimer out of the way let’s look at context:

We were a very experienced 4 teacher ToK Team including 1 ToK Examiner & workshop leader, and 2 of the other teachers being examiners in other DP subjects. I mention this because being an examiner in any DP subject gives you an insight into how the published assessment rubrics are actually applied to student’s work. I think that most DP examiners would agree that there are a number of implied ‘givens’ which may not be explicit in the published assessment rubric.

Secondly we have all attended numerous ToK workshops over the years that we have been teaching the course, and 3/4  of us attended ToK Cat 2 in November 2021 in the hope of upskilling ourselves for The Exhibition. Further, we had run our own collaborative ToK Exhibition upskilling workshops in school. The thinking presented here comes from those in-school ToK collaborative workshops.

Decisions regarding the Exhibition May 2022 Session.

1. Treat the Exemplars with caution.
   During the Cat 2 Training (Nov 21) that we attended the workshop participants undertook a blind marking procedure of the exemplar commentaries which are published in the Teacher Support Materials section of the Programme Resource Centre. Most of the workshop participants gave significantly lower marks than those awarded by the Chief Examiner, participants who had been ToK Essay & Presentation Examiners were particularly surprised by the high marks given by the CE to the exemplars in comparison to those given during the blind marking exercise.
   
   Back at school, after the workshop, our team reflected on what had happened during the workshop, and we all noted that we had seen a similar pattern in both new ToK assessments, and new assessments in our hexagon subjects. That pattern is that the exemplars for new assessments tend to be very generous, and the actual results that students receive from the first exam session are usually much lower than the corresponding exemplar marks (for coursework of the same quality). Further, we noted that some of the examiner’s comments for the marked exemplars on the PRC were extremely brief (eg see Exemplar C), far briefer than the teachers' comments that we had been writing for ToK Presentations in previous sessions. Therefore, we decided that we needed to unpack the assessment instrument to devise a structure for the commentary rather than be led by the exemplars.
   

2. Unpacking the Assessment Instrument - differences to the exemplars.
   Definitions:
   We noted that none of the exemplars had explicit definitions of concepts or key terms, the sort of definitions that we would expect in the ToK Essay. However, we felt that it is difficult for students to make a clear link between the object and the IA prompt, and to write a clear explanation of that link, without such explicit definitions.
   
   Further, we felt that it would be difficult for students to justify the contribution of the link to the overall Exhibition without those definitions. This links to point 3 - the role of arguments in the Exhibition. Finally, it would be easier for students to explain the real world context of the object, and to use evidence to support points if they had clear definitions of the concepts and key terms in the prompt at the beginning of the commentary.
   
   Therefore, we put ‘Definitions’ as the first stage of our Commentary Structure, and asked all of our students to define the concepts and key terms as the first sentence(s) of their commentary.
   
   We were concerned about this decision, as none of the exemplars contained a ‘definitions section’, it’s not in the assessment rubric, and there’s no instruction from IB to do this. However, all of our students who scored 7-10 on the May 22 Exhibition had a definitions section at the beginning of their commentary that they returned to, as appropriate, during the piece.
   
   I reiterate the point that those students may have scored highly despite the definitions section rather than because of it.
   

3. Real world context ratio
   We noted that exemplars B-J contain far more ‘real world context’ content than ‘ToK content’ than we are used to in The Essay, and previously in the presentation. My rule of thumb guide is 80% ToK: 20% real world context for the essay, the higher scoring Exhibition Exemplars range from 35-60% real world context content . We thought that it would be very difficult for students to both make the links between the object and the prompt, and to justify the contribution of the object in terms of knowledge in 950 words. The process of abstraction from the real world to the knowledge world is at the heart of ToK, and we were wary of the notion that this would be abandoned in this assessment.
   
   Therefore we decided to build a structure which focuses more on the knowledge characteristics (issues?) arising from the object’s link to the object rather than on the real world context of the object. We are somewhat taking a chance that if students talk about the knowledge issues of the object they will cover the requirements for identifying the real world context of the object.
   
   The first Drafts of the Commentary had far more real world context content than we were comfortable with. This was expected (and is the norm in the essay, and previously with the ToK presentation). The feedback on the Draft Commentaries focussed on reducing the real world context, and increasing the ToK content.
   
   The commentaries that scored 7-10 marks contained far more ToK content than real world content (close to the 80:20 ratio). Again, we should not necessarily read causality into this.
   
   A note on the binary categorisation of ‘ToK Content’ vs ‘Real World Context’ with reference to The Exhibition (and maybe the essay). I have heard from WSL, and maybe from the Curriculum Managers, that this division is a false one, or at least should be more nuanced. The view being (I think) that The Exhibition should be a tool for students to develop the skills required for abstraction in the Essay. Further, that as the Exhibition is based around the Core and Optional Themes which are more ‘real world’ based than Areas of Knowledge. Therefore the Exhibition should contain more real world context, and crucially - make the link between the real world and the ToK world. My concern is that the knowledge requirements to move into the two higher marking bands are such that with a limited word count students must focus on the ToK content to attain a higher score.
   

4. Perspectives (aka Arguments, aka Knowledge arguments).
   
   We noted that the exemplars on the PRC do not contain explicit knowledge arguments like we might see in the essay, or previously in the Presentation. The instruction to the students is that they show how ToK manifests itself in the world around us, and we felt that this might be more easily achieved by students if they were taking a more perspective (or argument) based approach. The vast majority of the IA Prompts can be answered using a diverse range of perspectives, and therefore lend themselves well to a perspective (or argument) based approach.
   
   Further, and crucially, we noted the requirement in the top marking band is to identify, and justify, the particular contribution of each individual object. We felt that this is probably more easily achieved by students if we ask them to identify 3 perspectives (or arguments) arising from the IA prompt at the beginning of the Commentary, and then to choose 1 object to demonstrate each argument.
   
   Again, I worried about this decision as there is no explicit instruction in the assessment rubric to do this. However, I know that it is easier for students to write a justification if they are making an argument than it is to write a justification without a wider framework. Further, it would be easier to differentiate the contribution of each object using a specific argument linked to that object than it would be without the explicit argument. 
   
   All of the commentaries moderated at 5-10 marks used this 3 argument structure. Again, we need to heed the previous warnings regarding causality here.
   
   The rough structure that our team arrived at is below. We used this with our students to guide them in the writing of their commentaries.

Link to a (FREE) PDF of the above diagram.

A short note on the nature of the commentary.

As far as I understand it the ToK Exhibition Commentary should be a write up of the commentary that the students give (gave), or use to guide them, at their ToK Exhibition. This possibly implies that the Commentary should be a more narrative piece. It could be levelled that the analysis and structure presented here today are not in the spirit of typing up a commentary from an Exhibition. However, as ToK remains a pass-fail component of the Diploma I adopt a ‘take no chances’ approach. 

Daniel Trump,
Lisbon, Portugal.
July 2022.