TOK Action Plan Summer 2011

First, of all: Complete any outstanding work set by your teacher.

The Essay

You should be thinking about which essay you will want to write after Christmas and about your presentation topic. While the essay and presentation may seem a long way off, you will find that the volume of work and the looming pressure of final examinations in your other subjects will quickly mount in the second year.

We shall be covering more material in the first term of next year and I shall give you all the details of the marking criteria and some exemplar material to consider. For the moment, though, I want you to:

• For each essay, try to identify in bullet points the key issues and, in a short paragraph, state what you think
• Identify the essays that strike you as interesting and where you think you may have something to say.

2011-2012 IB TOK: Exam Questions

1. Knowledge is generated through the interaction of critical and creative thinking. Evaluate this statement in two areas of knowledge.
2. Compare and contrast knowledge which can be expressed in words/symbols with knowledge that cannot be expressed in this way. Consider CAS and one or more areas of knowledge.
3. Using history and at least one other area of knowledge, examine the claim that it is possible to attain knowledge despite problems of bias and selection.
4. When should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing?
5. What is it about theories in the human sciences and natural sciences that makes them convincing?
6. "It is more important to discover new ways of thinking about what is already known than to discover new data or facts". To what extent would you agree with this claim?
7. "The vocabulary we have does more than communicate our knowledge; it shapes what we can know." Evaluate this claim with reference to different areas of knowledge.
8. Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of using faith as a basis for knowledge in religion and in one area of knowledge from the ToK diagram.
9. As an IB student, how has your learning of literature and science contributed to your understanding of individuals and societies?
10. "Through different methods of justification, we can reach conclusions in ethics that are as well-supported as those provided in mathematics." To what extent would you agree?

The TOK Presentation in a Nutshell

An integral part of the TOK course is your presentation. It contributes 20 of the 60 marks available in the overall assessment of TOK. The essay is worth 40 marks. You'll give the presentation in the Spring Term of your second year. I'll give you a guide to the marking criteria later and examples of past presentations. However, as with the essay, for the moment I want you to think about the kind of topic you'd like to address in a presentation.

The basic aim of the presentation is to identify and explore the knowledge issues raised by a substantive real-life situation that is of interest to you. Knowledge issues address how or whether we can have knowledge in certain areas or of particular claims and examines the connections between both ways of knowing and areas of knowledge.

Your starting point for the presentation is a real life situation or contemporary issue. You may select the situation you will tackle from a more limited domain of personal, school, or community relevance, or from a wider one of national, international or global scope.

It is important to bear in mind that given the time constraints of a presentation your topic needs to be clearly identified and focused. The situation selected is needs to be sufficiently circumscribed to allow an effective treatment of knowledge issues. You should ensure that the topic allows the underlying knowledge issues to be appreciated and explored.

Presentations may take many forms, such as lectures, skits, simulations, games, dramatized readings, interviews or debates. You may use supporting material such as videos, MS PowerPoint presentations, overhead projections, posters, questionnaires, recordings of songs or interviews, costumes, or props. You should avoid simply bringing in an essay and reading it out.

Each presentation will have two stages:

• an introduction, briefly describing the real-life situation and linking it to one or more relevant knowledge issue
• a treatment of the knowledge issue(s) that explores their nature and responses to them, and shows how these relate to the chosen situation.

A good presentation will demonstrate the presenter's personal involvement in the topic and show both why the topic is important and how it relates to other areas.

You may give the presentation on your own or in groups up to a maximum of five. If you wish to present in a group of more than three, then you'll need to convince me this is a good idea. Approximately 10 minutes per presenter is allowed, up to a maximum in most cases of 30 minutes per group.

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