Your TOK exhibition is worth 35% of the grade. It is assessed internally, that is by your own teachers, but moderated externally by IB examiners. The “exhibition”, understood as both a noun and a verb, aims to assess how you can apply TOK concepts to the real world by requiring that you bring to presence, bring out of “hiding” and to “hold out”, ex-hibit, evidence of your ability to discourse on the subject matter that you have been studying and questioning in the course. Your discussion requires that you use representational thinking (thinking in images) and inductive reasoning to move from the particular images or objects you have chosen, establish their relation to one another through analogy or metaphor, and then proceed to the general principles and key concepts contained in the prompt that you have chosen to demonstrate your knowledge of those principles and concepts. Your first step is to ensure that you understand what principles and key concepts are involved in the prompt you have chosen.
Your Exhibition is a rendering that is handed over to others i.e. it is public. You have to complete the exhibition individually (no more groups) and make sure no one in your TOK class or school uses the same objects or images in their exhibition. In short, your TOK exhibition is a “holding forth” by you demonstrating how you understand some of the key TOK terms and how you are able to apply them to the “real world”. You are required to choose one prompt from the list below, and it must be exactly from this list and you cannot change the wording. You will then find three objects or images of objects that relate to this prompt and develop your interpretation accordingly.
It is very important that your exhibition is based on one of the prescribed prompts. If not, you will get a 0. You also create a document with the title of your IA prompt, images of the three objects, and you will also provide a commentary on each object that identifies each object and its specific real-world context. The comment should also justify the inclusion of the object in the exhibition and explain its links to the IA prompt (i.e. why these three objects or images from an almost infinite possibility?). Finally, you should also include appropriate citations and references. Perhaps the greatest challenge you will face is that the total word count for this document is 950 words (excluding references).
The purpose for this writing on these prompts is to provoke thought regarding our understanding of what the key concepts contained in the prompts might mean. Our interpretations of things may be complex requiring very specialized language from various areas of knowledge or it may be simple and be provided by what we might call “sound common sense”. It may be useful to you to determine which prompts belong to the same sub-group in terms of their main theme. Whatever prompt you choose, it is important for you to develop your arguments so that they are clear to your listeners and readers. In your analysis of your chosen prompt, you need to determine whether or not it is a “first-order question” and therefore a description or explanation, or whether or not it is a “second order question” and therefore involves the nature of knowledge, the type of knowledge involved, and how we know. The intention of this writing is to provoke thought on your part so that you are mindful of your choices and, hopefully, gain greater knowledge of who you are so that you will be able to make more aware judgements in the future about academic and ethical questions.
PROMPTS
Each of the prompts are discussed in detail on the mytok blog. Chick HERE to see all thirty-five prompts.
Below we outline the practical details of the exhibition. We go into more detail about these aspects on the different pages for the TOK exhibition; follow the links to take you to them. Your teacher will obviously go through all of these points, particularly on the process of assessing your final exhibition.
• The TOK exhibition is an individual task
• It represents one third of the overall mark for TOK
It is assessed internally, with a selection of exhibition files from each year group sent off to be moderated by the IB
• You choose one IA prompt to explore, from a list of 35 options. These remain the same for every exam session
• Three objects are also selected for the exhibition
• The aim of the exhibition is to demonstrate the relationship between the objects and the IA prompt in a 950-word commentary
• There is a single criterion for marking, and three characteristics of an excellent essay (convincing, precise, and lucid)
• The context of the exhibition should be based on the core theme, or one of the optional themes
• 8 hours of teaching/planning/writing is required for the exhibition task
• Ideally, your exhibition should form the basis of a public event, to showcase TOK to the rest of the learning community
• The exhibition is done at the end of the first year of the DP
(https://theoryofknowledge.net/tok-exhibition/)
How is the TOK exhibition marked? The exhibition commentary, and images of the three objects (along with references) is added to an exhibition file. This is marked internally by your TOK teacher, and uploaded to your IB dashboard, to be moderated externally. Your TOK teacher will explain this process in more detail.
Where can I find out more about TOK exhibition rubric? Read our guidance on the rubric for the exhibition here. You can read the official rubric in the TOK subject guide, on page 47. Your TOK teacher will give you a copy of this.
What are the IA prompts for the TOK exhibition, and how to I choose one? This page discusses the IA prompts. Your choice of a prompt should be driven by what you find interesting and engaging, and align to the experiences you’ve had inside and outside the TOK classroom. It should also allow you to explore either the core theme, or one of the optional themes.
What do you mean by exhibition ‘objects’? Find out more about the exhibition objects here. These allow you both to demonstrate the way TOK manifests itself in the real world, and link your experiences as a knower to the TOK course.
How do I write my exhibition commentary? We discuss the commentary here. In a nutshell, the commentary relates your objects to the IA prompt you’ve chosen, and shows how TOK is relevant to both the world around us, and to you personally.
(https://theoryofknowledge.net/tok-exhibition/)