Arguments are clear, coherent, and effectively supported by specific examples. The implications of arguments are considered.
There is clear awareness and evaluation of different points of view.
Insightful
Convincing
Accomplished
Lucid
Pertinent
Relevant
Analytical
Organized
Acceptable
Mainstream
Adequate
Competent
Underdeveloped
Basic
Superficial
Limited
Ineffective
Descriptive
Incoherent
Formless
Refer to the offical IB guide P. 48 for more information
Home › Study Tips › What is Theory of Knowledge? A Complete Guide
Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is an essential part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme. It gives students a profound opportunity to think about the knowledge they possess and the ways in which we come to understand our world.
TOK is a mandatory segment within the DP core, so if you’re doing the IB, you’ll need to know about Theory of Knowledge. However, it’s best to think of it not just as an academic exercise, but also a journey that challenges students to reflect on the very nature of knowledge.
At the heart of TOK lies a philosophical inquiry into the conditions, principles, and nature of authentic knowledge. Learners are prompted to delve into the fundamental questions surrounding the reliability of knowledge, which means they gain key critical thinking skills along the way.
Here’s everything you need to know about Theory of Knowledge.
In the 20th Century, the IB sought to establish a comprehensive educational model. It launched the TOK course as a part of this initiative, showing that the IB was all about nurturing intellectual curiosity.
Initially, the TOK was a bridge between several academic disciplines. It was a way to go beyond understanding individual subjects and start to form connections between them, cultivating well-rounded learners with a holistic perspective. To do this, TOK encouraged students to question and explore diverse perspectives on knowledge.
The early days of TOK emphasised philosophical exploration, delving into the nature of knowledge. Here, students could share their views on a range of knowledge-related topics. Teachers had flexibility in choosing their methodology and materials, emphasising a balanced approach to knowledge that triumphs over ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ideas.
Over time, the course evolved within the IB curriculum. Now, the scope has expanded to include a more diverse range of knowledge areas, including the sciences, humanities, and arts. The evolution highlights the changing educational landscape, but it also shows how different forms of knowledge can be interconnected.
Initially, students had to complete an essay and a presentation. Starting in 2022, the presentation was replaced with an exhibition instead.
Teaching methodologies have also evolved. Educators now focus on facilitating conversations rather than teaching, guiding students through complex and abstract subjects. The shift aligns with a broader vision of education, centred on cultivating critical thinking and inquiry rather than just the transmission of information.
Now, the IB continues to adapt to the evolving needs of education, still shaping the way IB students understand their world.
Taking the TOK assessment provides a range of benefits for students. Here are ten of the main benefits.
In essence, the holistic approach enriches the student’s academic experience and equips them with useful skills for later studies and the world of work.
Getting to grips with TOK requires understanding the terminology. Before you dive in, you’ll need to understand the following:
Teaching or studying TOK requires an understanding of all of these concepts. Historically, they stem from philosophers such as Plato, who defined the stages of knowledge development, and Socrates, who equated knowledge with virtue.
Throughout the TOK, students are encouraged to interact with these historical theories and use them to inform critical thinking skills that apply to the modern world.
There are two ways that TOK is assessed. This includes the exhibition, which accounts for 33% of the grade and is marked internally, and the essay, which accounts for 67% and is marked externally. Both sections have ten marks available.
The exhibition challenges students to create a tangible representation of TOK concepts. They must provide a virtual or live exhibition of three objects based on a prompt. The IB provides a list of prompts to choose from – you must choose one and not create your own. There are 35 prompts, including:
Alongside the exhibition, the student must create a document of 950 words with images of the three objects and a commentary on each, linked to the prompt.
Students are assessed on their ability to clearly identify and choose objects and explain their real-world context. They should be able to justify their choices and support their points with appropriate evidence, all while linking it back to the prompt.
Meanwhile, the essay is worth more marks. Students are given a set of essay titles to choose from, all related to the Areas of Knowledge:
The TOK essay should be reflective and analytical, as is the nature of the subject.
Tackling the essay and exhibition requires some careful thought. Here are some tips for each.
For the essay, students are given a set of questions to choose from. It’s important to choose a title carefully, opting for one that sparks intricate, creative ideas rather than the simplest one. While preparing for the essay, prioritize clarity and relevance.
Next, designate two Areas of Knowledge (AOKs) to explore your chosen title. This includes natural sciences, mathematics, and so on. Organise the essay into two sections, each presenting a claim and a counterclaim to form a nuanced discussion. Think of the essay as a dialogue, with evidence supporting both sides.
Examiners are looking for a coherent and critical exploration of the essay title. Students should emphasise the reflection on knowledge over extensive subject descriptions. It’s important to ensure your argument flows logically.
The icing on the cake lies in considering the implications of your claims. Always make sure to link back to the central question, analysing various perspectives to enrich the essay. Students should consider the broader implications of their arguments for knowledge in their chosen AOKs.
The essay is usually 1600 words. The ideal way to structure is is:
The exhibition is a newer part of the TOK assessment. Students are given a range of prompts to choose from. After selecting one, they must choose three objects that align with the selected prompt, then explain how.
Usually, the exhibition takes place in the first year of TOK teaching. It’s a fun way to connect the things learned in class with the real world. Students can choose from a range of objects, including both physical and digital items. This can be a piece of artwork, a tweet from a relevant figure, a novel, or a photograph. Really, students can use anything.
The exhibition showcase is not a formal part of the assessment, but most TOK students perform either a physical or virtual showcase. There may be combined IB events with other schools.
The assessment itself comes from the document. Students must create a single document with a word count of 950 words, including images of the objects and typed commentaries for each. The commentary should describe the object, explain its real-world context, justify its inclusion in the exhibition, and establish links to the prompt.
TOK plays a pivotal role in nurturing critical thinking skills, challenging students to question their assumptions and scrutinise knowledge claims. Through its inquiry-based approach, TOK prompts students to analyse the validity and reliability of information, fostering a habit of skepticism.
By exploring diverse perspective, students can develop the ability to think critically about complex issues. This is a huge benefit during university studies. However, it’s also helpful for the real world, helping students to evaluate evidence, consider alternative viewpoints, and recognise the limitations of knowledge. As a result, they can engage thoughtfully with the world around them
Studying TOK can sometimes feel philosophical and disconnected from the real world. However, despite being highly academic and intellectual, this course has some real-world applications.
Consider the following.
Medical ethics | Ethical implications of knowledge production | When considering the ethical implications of a new medical procedure, healthcare professionals must reflect on cultural perspectives, patient biases, and the impact of technological advancements on patient wellbeing. |
Environmental policy | Interconnectedness of Knowledge Areas | Policymakers can draw on TOK thinking to understand the interplay between scientific knowledge, economic considerations, and cultural attitudes toward nature. |
Media literacy | Influence of language on perception | Analysing news articles or social media posts through a TOK lens helps individuals to understand the influence of language, bias, and cultural context. |
Global diplomacy | Cultural perspectives in knowledge production | International diplomats benefit from TOK by recognising diverse cultural perspectives and understanding how knowledge is shaped by historical contexts. |
Technological innovation | Implications of knowledge application | Technology developers must assess the ethical and social consequences of their innovations, ensuring responsible application and considering potential cultural impacts. |
Law | Role of language in knowledge interpretation | Legal professionals applying TOK consider how language nuances, cultural contexts, and historical influences shape the interpretation and application of the law. |
Education | Recognising bias in knowledge transmission | In educational settings, teachers can question traditional educational methods to explore more diverse perspectives and consider what knowledge they pass on and how. |
The Theory of Knowledge is an amazing opportunity for IB students to go beyond traditional academic subjects and understand more about the knowledge they possess. Looking to enhance your critical thinking, research or writing skills to help support your theory of knowledge, discover our Online Research Programme with Immerse Education today.
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Feeding the Machine. By James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant. Bloomsbury; 288 pages; $29.99. Canongate; £20
Co-Intelligence. By Ethan Mollick. Portfolio; 256 pages; $30. WH Allen; £16.99
I t is not only the business world that is excited about generative artificial intelligence ( AI ). So, too, are publishers. In the past 12 months at least 100 books about AI have been published in America, reckons Thad McIlroy, a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly , and many multiples of that have been self-published . At the top of the pile are two new titles, which represent opposing sides of a noisy debate: whether enthusiasm about AI ’s benefits should outweigh concerns about its downsides .
The darker side of the shiny AI era is the subject of “Feeding the Machine” by three academics at the University of Essex and Oxford University. Automation is born of exploitation, they contend. Today’s glowing data centres that run AI systems are akin to the soot-covered factories of the 19th century. Behind the algorithms are humans—yes, lavishly paid engineers, but also an army of workers who make the systems hum, from those who review the underlying data that are fed into the software to those who check its answers.
The authors delve into seven archetypal jobs in the AI supply chain. Online content moderators, often in poor countries, assess whether material on platforms such as Facebook is acceptable under the terms of service, which helps train automated systems. Data-centre technicians are always on call to ensure the infrastructure is up and running. This guzzles growing amounts of electricity. A Chat GPT prompt consumes around ten times as much energy as a Google search.
Readers meet a voice actor who has to compete with an audio-synthesised version of herself for jobs and a machine-learning engineer who struggles with the ethical implications of her work—perpetuating bias, threatening jobs and potentially posing an existential risk to humanity. But the most interesting character-study is of Anita, a Ugandan data annotator, who spends mind-numbing ten-hour days in low lighting to prevent eye strain. A university graduate, her entrée into a glamorous career in tech amounts to watching a constant stream of video footage of car drivers, looking for evidence of driver fatigue—such as slumping shoulders or drooping eyes—and labelling it, all for around $1.20 an hour.
There is much to respect about the authors’ critical assessment of AI , yet also much to challenge. It is true that data-labelling is dreary, and that content-moderation can require mental-health counselling. But the authors grossly overstate their case. “The AI industry is just the next phase in a long journey that stretches back to the age of colonialism,” they argue. “The solution is to dismantle the machine and build something else in its place.” This extremism is ridiculous, considering that AI can automate expensive services like medical diagnoses, energy distribution and logistics—to name just three—which can help people in poor countries.
How AI gets built is only one facet of the technology. Another is how it gets used. A practical and more positive way to think about the interaction of people and AI is provided by Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He focuses on how people should learn to use generative AI services like Chat GPT . The technology is an “alien intelligence”, he says, that can augment humans’ own. But people need to raise their game in order to get the most from it. In that respect, AI is literally a “co-intelligence”, as the book’s title stresses.
Mr Mollick introduces the idea of a “jagged frontier”: the boundary between what AI can and cannot do. It is jagged because it is not clear where humans are better, and the dividing line is always changing. For instance, prompting a large language model ( LLM ) for a sonnet of exactly 50 words may result in a beautiful text returned in just a few seconds with, alas, 48 words, not 50. This is because the system is designed to produce a simulacrum of what it has seen in its training data, not act as a counter or calculator. In this and in a myriad of other tasks, AI is weird. When it fails, it does so in ways that people would not.
As a result, people need to experiment with AI to learn its capabilities and flaws. Mr Mollick advocates four rules. First, “always invite AI to the table”; that is, try to find a way to use it in every task. Second, “be the human in the loop”—look for ways it can help, rather than replace you. Third, give the AI a persona and prod it. Oddly, LLM s work better when they are asked to adopt a persona, such as “you are a corporate-strategy expert with a flair for originality”. Fourth, assume this is the worst AI you will use—so do not be sanctimonious when it fails. Systems will only get better.
The precepts force people to develop new skills to work with the machine, just as humans had to enhance their numeracy to work with calculators and spreadsheets, even as those tools made many things easier. “The strengths and weaknesses of AI may not mirror your own, and that’s an asset,” Mr Mollick writes. “This diversity in thought and approach can lead to innovative solutions and ideas that might never occur to a human mind.”
“Co-Intelligence” usefully brings data to bear on AI performance. LLM s score higher on creativity than most people, according to several studies in 2023 by researchers in America, Germany and Britain. AI also helps business people accomplish more tasks, work faster and improve the quality of their output, benefiting average workers most. For software developers, there was a 56% improvement on tasks, according to a study by Microsoft.
Yet AI ’s usefulness presents a new problem: it lulls people into a dangerous complacency. When AI systems are very good, people tend to trust the output without fully scrutinising it. When the AI is good but not great, people are more attentive and add their own judgment, which improves performance. It is a reminder that in the AI age, humans are still needed—yet must become sharper still.
Amid AI hype in business, where companies say a lot but seem to do little, “Co-Intelligence” usefully notes that innovation is hard for organisations but easy for individuals. Hence, do not look for how AI will change business from chief executives’ statements but from ordinary worker-bees who quietly incorporate it into their everyday tasks. The revolution will be noticed only in hindsight.
So, gentle reader, did your correspondent use AI to write this review? Yes—it was entirely written by artificial intelligence. Every word of it. Just kidding. None of it was, actually. The reason is that writing is not just the output that readers consume but a process of reflection and intellectual discovery by the writer, hopefully to originate novel ideas, not just express existing ones. Yet Mr Mollick’s first rule was not disobeyed: an LLM was prompted to challenge the article’s points. (Sadly its response was so generic that a vituperous editor was needed instead.)
As AI becomes commonplace, people will be empowered as well as reduced by it. Whether humans are the master craftsmen to their algorithmic assistants, or they become mere apprentices to the AI masterminds, remains the question. It is not one Chat GPT can reliably answer. ■
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The souls in a new machine”
The mysterious people who have shaped the books people read, humans have engaged in warfare throughout their existence.
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
A new history argues that there is more to the format than meets the eye
In grand old cities like Verona, your gelato comes with a moral education
Faster, higher, cheaper, smaller
People who expose malpractice are rarely considered heroes
Two new accounts examine the fascinating lives of books’ forgotten creators and boosters
Are they ever going to change?
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High scoring IB Theory of Knowledge Essay examples. See what past students did and make your TOK Essay perfect by learning from examiner commented examples!
May 2024 session IB TOK Essay Prescribed Titles with Explanations and detailed examples for a 10/10 essay.
Navigate the 2023 ToK essay prompts with ease. Gain insights, strategies, and multimedia resources to craft a standout essay and deepen your knowledge.
The TOK essay requires the students to investigate two Areas of Knowledge (AOK) and two Ways of Knowing (WOK) . AOKs and WOKs are investigated via questions such as:
Example essays. As part of theory of knowledge (TOK), each student chooses one essay title from six issued by International Baccalaureate® (IB). The titles change in each examination session. Upcoming and past questions include:
In this guide, we will dissect each of the six essay prompts, providing insights and considerations for students embarking on their TOK Essay journey.
Here are the Theory of Knowledge Essay prescribed titles for the May 2024 session. The video analysis (with topics, tips and ideas to consider for each title) will be available this will in the IBMastery members' area and our discussions on these titles can be found in our private community.
This guide will help you write a great essay for the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course at your school.
The essay prompt will require you to explore a knowledge question with reference to two Areas of Knowledge. The obvious strategy - at least in the planning stage - is to divide the main body into two roughly equal chunks.
10 TOK essay starting points. 1 The TOK essay is an individual task. 2 It represents two thirds of the overall mark for TOK. 3 It is externally marked. 4 You choose your title from a list of six prescribed titles, which change every exam session. 5 The word count for the essay is 1600 words.
Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge. This is a tricky TOK Essay Prompt and Title. What do you think? ...more I can help you with Theory of Knowledge prompt #3!
How to Structure a Theory of Knowledge Essay The following structure is a very good, step-by-step method you can use on any TOK essay to get a great mark. (It is updated for the 2022 syllabus ).
A dedicated ToK Essay video Playlist (incl. 66+ videos) looking beyond the prompts at issues such as how to structure the ToK Essay, examples of RLS to include in the essay, what the examiners are actually looking for, and the 3 most frequent mistakes that students make. Making ToK accessible for students and teachers.
IBO has announced 2023 May titles for IB TOK essay. Find SAMPLES + the list of prompts with short directions and suggestions for each topic
The November 2024 IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Essay Titles are out! This comprehensive IB Solved guide will unpack strategic approaches to the new titles!
Tok is not that hard. You don't really need to write any terms or anything to get a good grade in the essay. The way I did was simple. Once you choose your prompt, you have to understand what the prompt means, and the different things it could cover. Try to think of an experience in your life that fits the prompt.
List of IB TOK Essay Prompts November 2023. November Prompt 1 - Are facts alone enough to prove a claim? Discuss with reference to any two areas of knowledge. This question invites us to explore the nature of facts and their role in validating claims. Consider the AOKs of Natural Sciences and Human Sciences. In Natural Sciences, facts are ...
So let's get into unpacking them - here is everything you need to know about each of the November 2023 TOK Essay titles: Title 1: Are facts alone enough to prove a claim? Discuss with reference to any two areas of knowledge. Recommended AOKs: Natural Sciences, Human Sciences, History.
Once you've grasped the essay rubric, and chosen your title, you can start planning and structuring your TOK essay. You base this around the 3 interactions with your teacher, which are one-on-one meetings discussing your progress, and receiving feedback.
Theory of knowledge. Theory of knowledge (TOK) is assessed through an exhibition and a 1,600 word essay. It asks students to reflect on the nature of knowledge, and on how we know what we claim to know. TOK is part of the International Baccalaureate® (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) core, and is mandatory for all students.
Learn how to write a TOK essay with step-by-step instructions and tips to help you succeed in this challenging task.
May 2024 TOK Essay Prompts and Titles Below are all of the May 2024 Theory of Knowledge Essay titles! Click any of the links for even more information! You can get a list of TOK Essay Titles for May 2024 by clicking here.
Essay Guidelines - Word Count. The TOK Essay must be written in standard 12 type size and be double spaced. The maximum length of the essay is 1,600 words. Extended footnotes or appendices are not appropriate for the TOK essay. • any quotations. • any maps, charts, diagrams, annotated illustrations or tables.
TOK prompts reflection on the quality of these justifications instead of a binary notion of right or wrong. Teaching or studying TOK requires an understanding of all of these concepts. ... of Knowledge (AOKs) to explore your chosen title. This includes natural sciences, mathematics, and so on. Organise the essay into two sections, each ...
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bomb threats disrupt two schools. Did right-wing LibsofTikTok posts help prompt them? Did right-wing LibsofTikTok posts help prompt them?
At the top of the pile are two new titles, which represent opposing sides of a noisy debate: whether enthusiasm about AI's benefits should outweigh concerns about its downsides.