Feedback from the May 2013 TOK
Examiners
Mr Field
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
The Presentation Is Not…

A forum to debate a contentious issue such as:



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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:
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How should we decide X?
What role should X play in deciding Y?
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:

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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
The Knowledge Issue

Must be stated explicitly

Must be clearly linked to real life situation

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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:


About acquiring and shaping knowledge:

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Is abortion right or wrong?
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.
For example….
Real life situation
Knowledge issue
Attempted assassination of Pakistani girl Malala
Yousafzai for promoting girls’ education.
Why do we need a tragedy before we act on
knowledge that we have?
Renaming of cities in India
To what extent do labels affect our perception?
Article on climate change
To what extent is a scientific explanation more
convincing than other types of explanation?
UN warns of looming food crisis in 2013
How do we know what is a fact?
Bullfighting ban in Catalonia
How can we know when a tradition should be
upheld?
The Ekeko amulet of the Andean Altiplano
believed to bring monetary wealth to its
worshipper.
Why do people hold beliefs for which there is
no evidence?
Wiki Leaks and the publication of secret
information and news leaks.
To what extent is emotion a better guide to
what is ethical than reason?
Salvador Dalí, an eccentric person
To what extent does it matter to know about
an artist to understand his or her art?
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:


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Interesting question, but not a knowledge issue
Not relevant to the real-life situation
Doesn’t use appropriate TOK vocabulary
Criterion B: Treatment of Knowledge Issues

The biggest mistake here is to describe but not analyse

You should:

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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
Criterion C: Knower’s Perspective

This is not about asserting your opinion!

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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



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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
Criterion D: Connections

This about:
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Considering alternative perspectives
Showing awareness that there may be other ways to approach
the problem
Understanding the implications of the arguments you are
making:
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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.
Presenting
DON’T DO
DO DO*
Read out prepared notes, or read
off the screen with your back to
the audience
Speak, facing the audience, making regular eye-contact,
and only use bullet-point notes as a prompt if needed
Mumble, speak too fast or too
quietly
Speak calmly, confidently and appropriately loudly
Film yourself doing the
presentation, sit back and hit ‘play’
You must present there and then
Rely on YouTube to present for you
Use a video only if it is fully relevant and very short (30
seconds max)
Steal ideas
It is OK to use others’ ideas, but they must be
acknowledged, and you should know that the focus of
the presentation is on your thoughts
Stay up so late preparing your
slides that you don’t have time to
practice what to say, and how
practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice
practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice
practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice
practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice
practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice
*Make sure you don’t do the don’t dos but do do the do dos to avoid finding yourself
in the doodoo.