Reflections on May 23 ToK Essay Session
Why write reflections on M23 ToK Essay session ? Well, I’ve been working with many students from all over the world with their May 23 ToK Essays. This is the first time that I’ve worked with students who are not in my school, nor in my ToK class. And that's an interesting learning experience for me - because I don’t know what they’ve been taught, how they’ve been taught, what their teacher’s approach to ToK is, nor where the emphases and reference points are in their ToK knowledge. So, this post is partly a consolidation of reflection for me, but it should also be useful for other ToK teachers, and maybe for ToK students who are about to start their learning.
In essence, in this essay session I’ve gone from Goffman’s participant-observer to observer-participant.
So, what are the reflections on M23 ToK Essay Session (main learning points) ?:
1. Making or building the argument.
A significant issue for many of the students with whom I worked was that they lacked the skills, or knowledge, to build a ToK argument. And this causes many consequent issues. It leads to:
Problems with definitions, I heard a lot of questions such as - “How do I define this key term ? or that key term?” , “I can’t think of a definition for…,” etc
Developing claims or counterclaims, I got questions such as “I can;t think of a counterclaim for this”, or “how can I make this into a claim ?”
And finally problems with identifying RLS - “is this a good RLS for____?”
These 3 problems (definitions, claims/counterclaims, and RLS) come from not having the skills to build a knowledge argument. Let me, briefly, take each one in turn.
Definitions:
In this session we wrangled with definition such as “cannot be explained”, “replicability”, “bubbles” etc
Obviously students should not be using dictionary definitions, but some students are still using dictionary definitions. The definitions are often the basis of the whole essay, if you can’t develop the definitions then writing the essay is problematic.
There’s a mutually reciprocal relationship between developing the definitions of key terms and devising the knowledge claims / counterclaims.
There's also the problem of some students rewriting the key concepts - I particularly saw this with essay #2 - the vast majority of students I worked with doing this essay had redefined "cannot be explained" as "has not been explained". - there’s an important difference between the two,
Developing claims / counterclaims.
Some students seemed to be stuck in fairly rigid thinking when it came to devising claims / counterclaims. From some students there was a lack of flexibility / creativity in the interpretation of the title. This has made me go back to using more debate in the classroom with my own students, a sort of quasi application of De bono’s thinking hats.
Obviously, difficulty with developing claims / counterclaims can be partly due to a lack of clarity of definitions of key terms, or having dictionary based definitions of key terms.
Problems of identifying or applying RLS.
So this is the question “is X a good RLS for this claim ?”. Some students found it very difficult to identify appropriate RLS to demonstrate their knowledge claims.
Obviously if the claim is not fully understood then it's difficult to find RLS to demonstrate it.
It’s not about the RLS, it’s about the argument that’s being built. I believe that nearly ANY RLS can be used for ANY claim / counterclaim if the argument is well made. I’ll make a future video where we can take claims at random and match them to random RLS to show how any RLS can be used for any claim if you know how to make the argument.
further, and wider, reflections on M23 ToK Essay Session include:
2. Question Choice.
I think that essay # 6 on Methodology is by far the easiest prescribed title in this session, followed by essay # 1 on replicability. I won’t go into why I think they’re the easiest in this video, I made an earlier post & video about this linked here
Looking at all the data points that I have Essay #6 and Essay #1 are the LEAST popular titles in the session. I think that Essay #5 (visual representations) is probably the most popular.
Now, I certainly don’t think that we should tell students which essay to take - it’s meant to be their personal authentic reflection. However, Essay #6 & #1 have really straightforward structures, they don’t have multiple assumptions - they’re just straightforward. I don’t know how we get it over to students that they should consider the straightforward essays as little gifts from the examiners ! I find it particularly frustrating that we shouldn't direct students to questions, but those who need the most help often choose the hardest questions !
3. Use of the 12 ToK Concepts.
Most students with whom I worked were not intentionally using, or referring, to the 12 ToK Concepts. Some of the students didn't seem to be aware that there were 12 core ToK Concepts.
If we put them front & centre it helps to improve focus of the essay, Obviously any of the 12 concepts could be applied to any of the essays. So we need to get students to focus in on 2-3 specific concepts.
I try to get students to identify at least 2 concepts at the beginning of the devising process.
4. Questioning the title for Evaluation Points.
Some students didn’t realise that they can develop strong evaluation points by directly challenging the assumptions in the title.
The most obvious examples of this could be:
Essay #2: what can and cannot be explained may not be exclusive and consistent categories. That which can be explained in one context may not fall into cannot be explained in another context.
And, what we think can be explained today may become ‘cannot be explained’ as we gain new knowledge.
And I also saw this with Essay #4 (“so little knowledge so much power”), where some students didn’t understand that they are meant to challenge Russell’s assertion, that they need to make the argument that we either have a lot of knowledge, or little power, and all possible combinations thereof.
5. Impact of AI, esp ChatGPT.
I started to see content generated by AI coming through, much of this is easy to spot because the AI tends to write with sweeping introductory sections, and uses fairly vague generalisations with lots of hedging words. Obviously we also know it when we see a change in the tone of language used, or the sudden switch to American spelling and grammar.
There’s a lot to say about AI and the ToK Essay, probably in another video, but suffice to say here that currently AI can’t give us anything sufficiently precise to score well on a ToK essay without asking it precise and directed questions. The skills and knowledge required to frame those questions are at least as demanding as just writing the essay yourself. Currently it’s one of those situations in which it is more effort to use the AI than it is just to do it yourself. However, that may change in the coming years.
On 27th February 2023 IB gave guidance that AI generated content can be used, it should be cited just like any other secondary source.
6. Too much description of RLS. - link back to building the argument.
And finally, we come to our favourite old chestnut - description of the RLS. I still saw lots and lots of description of RLS which was largely unrelated to the PT, or knowledge claims being developed within the PT. This remains the most common problem at the Essay Draft stage in my experience, however I think that the latest Subject Report said that most of the essays submitted are now focussed on the PT, so teachers must be working hard to iron this out before final submission - well done teachers !
If you’re a ToK student , and you’re concerned about too much focus on the PT, pick up my e-book How to write the ToK Essay in 6 Easy Steps linked here. The book includes worked examples of how to make an overly descriptive essay more analytical.
So there we have it, reflections on M23 ToK essay session, a bit of learning from the May 23 Essay Session.
I’m looking forward to the Nov 23 titles coming out next week,n Have a great day, stay tok-tastic !
Daniel, Lisbon, March 2023
For other thoughts on ToK Essay:
Why do the best ToK Essays get Mediocre grades?
Unsubstantiated Assertions in The ToK Essay