IB theory of knowledge (TOK): the essay and exhibition

What TOK is

Theory of knowledge (TOK) is a course about knowledge itself. Instead of learning new content, you step back and ask how we know what we claim to know, in your subjects and in everyday life. Every Diploma student takes it, with at least 100 hours of class time over the two years.

TOK works through knowledge questions: open questions about knowledge that reasonable people can answer differently. "How far can a memory be trusted as evidence?" is a knowledge question. "What happened at the Battle of Hastings?" is not: it's a question within history, not about how history knows things.

What you study

The course has three parts:

• The core theme, knowledge and the knower: you as a knower, and the communities of knowers you belong to.
• Two optional themes, chosen by your teacher from five: knowledge and technology, knowledge and language, knowledge and politics, knowledge and religion, and knowledge and indigenous societies.
• Five areas of knowledge, all compulsory: history, the human sciences, the natural sciences, mathematics and the arts.

Each theme and area is explored through the same four lenses: its scope, the perspectives within it, its methods and tools, and its ethics. Using the same lenses everywhere is what lets you compare how, say, a historian and a physicist reach their conclusions.

How TOK is assessed

The two marks combine into a grade from A to E. You need a D or higher to get the Diploma, and together with your extended essay grade it gives up to 3 points. How IB grading works has the table.

You write your TOK work in English, French or Spanish.

The TOK exhibition

The exhibition shows how TOK questions turn up in the world around you.

• Pick one prompt. The TOK guide lists 35 prompts, each a knowledge question. You choose one, and they don't change from session to session.
• Pick three objects. Each object, or an image of it, must link to that same prompt. An object can be almost anything with a real context: a photograph, a tool, a document, a post, something you made.
• Write a commentary on each. Say what the object is and its specific real-world context, why it belongs in the exhibition and how it links to the prompt. The three commentaries together can be at most 950 words, not counting text on the objects or your references.
• Hand in one file with the prompt as the title, images of the three objects, the commentaries and your references.

The rules:

• It's individual work, not a group task.
• Classmates can use the same prompt but not the same objects.
• Your teacher can comment on one draft, without editing it.
• Your school must give you a chance to show your exhibition to an audience, though that isn't part of the mark.

The exhibition is designed for your first year, so expect it then. About eight hours of class time go to it.

What makes a strong exhibition: objects with a specific context rather than general ones (one particular news photograph, not "the media"), links to the prompt that are argued rather than asserted, and three objects that each show something different about the prompt.

The TOK essay

The essay is a formal argument in response to one of six prescribed titles that the IB publishes for each session.

• The titles appear on the IB's site for teachers about six months before the submission deadline. Your teacher shares them, and you pick one.
• Use the title exactly as given. If you change it, you're marked against the original, and an essay that matches no title of the session scores zero.
• The limit is 1,600 words. Examiners stop reading at 1,600. Quotations count; references, acknowledgments, the bibliography, and maps, charts, diagrams and tables don't.
• Format: 12-point type, double spaced. You give the word count when the essay is uploaded.

Your teacher must have three recorded interactions with you, noted on the TOK essay Planning and progress form:

1. a discussion of the prescribed titles, though the choice of title is yours;
2. a discussion of your first thoughts on your title, such as notes or a plan, which you share in writing;
3. comments on one draft of your essay.

Examiners don't use the form to mark you. It's there to show the essay is your own work. About ten hours of class time go to the essay.

What makes a strong essay:

• It answers the title as set, every paragraph moving the argument on.
• It works through the areas of knowledge the title names, with real examples, specific enough to be checked.
• It gives counterclaims their full strength before answering them.
• It reaches a conclusion that says how far, and in what conditions, its answer holds.

Planning your TOK work

• Collect examples all through the course. A note of anything from your subjects or the news that raises a question about knowledge gives you material when the titles appear.
• Use your subjects. Your other five subjects and your extended essay are the best source of examples for the areas of knowledge.
• Plan before you write. A clear claim, counterclaim and conclusion for each part of the essay matter more than polished sentences.

The key terms of each of your subjects are in the glossary, and The IB extended essay covers the other assessed part of the core.