Feedback from the May 2013 TOK Examiners

1. Feedback from the May 2013 TOK Examiners Mr Field

2. The Presentation Is…. • Somewhere to discuss important knowledge issues in the context of a real-life situation • Somewhere to explore your own ideas about knowledge and the way knowledge is generated and shaped • A lesson that should make a genuine contribution to your classmates’ understanding

3. The Presentation Is Not… • A forum to debate a contentious issue such as: • Is abortion right or wrong? • Is the death penalty acceptable? • Should violent videogames be banned? • You could turn the above into knowledge issues (although they often won’t be great ones), for example: • How should we decide X? • What role should X play in deciding Y?

4. The Real Life Situation • Must be concrete • If you can’t answer who, what, why, when, where questions, then it is probably not concrete • Must be real and not hypothetical • Real and recent events (where you have direct experience), lend themselves better to exploration than abstract events: • A real-life situation based on a conversation you had, or a lesson you experienced is generally better than one based on a book you read or a broad topic such as same-sex marriage (which you probably haven’t experienced!) • Should refer implicitly or explicitly to a knowledge claim

5. The Knowledge Issue • Must be stated explicitly • Must be clearly linked to real life situation • You probably want to explain to the audience how you got from your RLS to your KI • Needs to refer to the way knowledge is acquired and shaped not the knowledge itself. • About the knowledge itself: • Is abortion right or wrong? • About acquiring and shaping knowledge: • What role should reason play in reaching ethical conclusions? • Should be a single knowledge issue, not multiple knowledge issues • Sometimes, in order to fully address your KI, it will be necessary to ask and answer other smaller ones. This is fine, but they must be relevant and necessary in order to address the main one.

6. For example….

7. Criterion A: Identification of Knowledge Issues • The big mistakes here are: • Poor real-life situation: • Not concrete, not real, not personal and relevant to the student • Poor knowledge issue: • Interesting question, but not a knowledge issue • Not relevant to the real-life situation • Doesn’t use appropriate TOK vocabulary

8. Criterion B: Treatment of Knowledge Issues • The biggest mistake here is to describe but not analyse • You should: • Talk about the bits of the syllabus relevant to your knowledge issue, for example: relevant ways of knowing, areas of knowledge • Say what that means for the knowledge issue you are trying to address • Most people do the first part, but not the second part. • When you talk about anything you should ask: ‘so what?’…that should help you focus on the analysis needed

9. Criterion C: Knower’s Perspective • This is not about asserting your opinion! • Do not say: ‘I believe that…abortion is wrong’, ‘I strongly feel…Father Christmas is nothing but a red-suited slave driver’ • This is about: • Showing genuine, personal engagement with the issues raised • Saying what you think, not what some clever, famous (and probably dead) person said • Presenting a well reasoned perspective: your take on the matter • Demonstrating the relevance of the topic, to you personally and more generally • Selecting examples from your own experience that demonstrate the points you are trying to make

10. Criterion D: Connections • This about: • Considering alternative perspectives • Showing awareness that there may be other ways to approach the problem • Understanding the implications of the arguments you are making: • For other real life situations • In other areas of knowledge / ways of knowing • This is not about: • Simply expressing opposing views, or contradicting everything you have just said.

11. Presenting *Make sure you don’t do the don’t dos but do do the do dos to avoid finding yourself in the doodoo.