Once you’ve understood what the assessment rubric is looking for, you can think about which IA prompt to choose. This comes from the list of 35 prompts in the subject guide.
Your prompt links your three objects to the TOK course, and enables you to demonstrate how TOK manifests itself in the real world. The context you’ll use for this will be either the core theme or one of the optional themes.
Members of the site have access to much more support for the TOK assessments, including lesson presentations, real-world examples, and advice on making links to the course, such as via the key concepts. Join us in seconds here!
Step 2 – Choose an exhibition prompt
The ‘BQ filter’
35 prompts mean that there is a lot of choice with your exhibition, and it’s easy to get lost amongst all the possibilities. By applying a filter to the prompts you’ll understand them better, and be able to make more sense about what they are asking. Our Big Question structure for TOK should help you. You can see the five BQs on here.
Step 1
Think about the aspect or concept behind each BQ, and then match this up to what’s being asked by the IA prompts. For example BQ2 looks at the relationship between knowledge and how we construct our values. This links to several IA prompts that focus on ethics, such as 16 and 27. BQ4 explores bias and perspectives. A lot of the IA prompts relate to this; for example, 12 and 28.
Step 2
After you have matched up the BQs to the IA prompts, you begin choosing one that will work for you. Be motivated by what interests you, what matches up to concepts you’ve found interesting during the TOK course, and what resonates with your own experiences, both inside and outside school.
Step 3
Your exhibition should be set within the context of the core theme, or the optional themes. So your third step is to head over to those sections of the site, and have a look at the Big Question that relates to your IA prompt. Check out the quotes, the notes, and the real-life situations that we’ve put together. This will give you more of an idea about what your exhibition will focus on, and the objects that you’ll select.
A 3-minute guide to the TOK exhibition
Our three-minute explainer video goes over the basics of the TOK exhibition, discussing the relationship between the prompts, the objects, and the context you’re meant to create your commentary.
You’ll find more videos on this and other aspects of TOK here, and you can dive into much more depth via our free and premium webinars, here.
More support for the TOK exhibition
Make sure you have access to all the documents and online material supporting the exhibition. These include the TOK subject guide, where you’ll find the IA prompts, and the exhibition rubric, and the exemplar TOK exhibitions (found in ‘MyIB’, which is accessible to teachers).
Follow the links above to take you to the three different elements of the TOK exhibition; we’ve also created a page giving some tips on how to put on your exhibition if your school is running a public ‘exhibition day’ which you can visit here. It suggests ways of presenting ideas to an audience.
If your school is a member of theoryofknowledge.net, we have designed a series of lessons on the exhibition, with a three practice exhibition tasks. These will familiarize you with the IA prompts, how to select effective objects, and the assessment rubric. If you are signed into the site, you can access these lessons here.
You can also find out our thoughts on the TOK exhibition (and the TOK essay) in several webinars that we have delivered. You can see these webinars on this page of the site.
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