Scoring TOK Essays

Assets and Liabilities

Dis

claim

er

All observations in this presentation represent my own

experience as a teacher and examiner, and do not represent

official IB policy. Inaccuracies in any description or opinion are mine alone. For official policy regarding examining procedures and scoring

criteria, see the TOK Curriculum Guide, the Online Curriculum

Centre, and the Curriculum Review Report. Queries regarding official

regulations should be addressed to the Help Desk.

All materials for this presentation are available now:http://home.comcast.net/~cphenlymbk2006

Scoring TOK EssaysThe Logistics

Logis

tics

: W

ho?

TOK teachers

Apply voluntarily

Preferred 3 years experience

Perpetual shortage of examiners

Logis

tics

: W

hat?

TOK Essays

Assistant Examiner gets approximately 150 essays (fewer for first year)

Team Leader/Senior Examiner gets approximately 80 essays + 90 total from team members (15 each)

Additional marking for Re-mark, At-Risk, or EUR voluntary.

TOK PresentationsAssistant Examiner gets

approximately 25 presentations

Logis

tics

: W

hen?

Essays due to examiner: March 15

Moderation sample due to team leader: April 8

Scores due to Cardiff: May 1

Moderation marks due to Cardiff: May 7

Re-Mark and At-Risk marking occurs between May 7 and June 1.

Grade award and all final decisions occur between June 1 and July 5, when scores are released.

EUR begins when component scores are released and continues until all requests are processed (Sept. 15 deadline to order).

Logis

tics

: W

here

?

Through May 2010

Coordinators ship essays directly to examiners.

Essays scored at home.

Examiners ship moderation sample to senior examiners.

Remaining essays and PRF sent to Cardiff.

Essays re-shipped to examiners for re-marking, at-risk marking, and Enquiry Upon Results.

November 2010 On

Students will upload their essays to a secure site.

Examiners will download essays allotted by staff at Cardiff directly to their home computers.

Examiners will input scores into secure system—no further mailing of essays.

Logis

tics

: W

hy?

Limited pool of examiners.

Complex, wide-ranging, difficult curriculum.

Expense.

Eff

ort

s to

Reso

lve

Pro

ble

ms:

Through May 2010

Recruitment of qualified examiners.

Online training for new examiners.

Standardization exercises.

Moderation.

Re-Marking

Subject Area Report

Re-Training of unsuccessful examiners.

November 2010 On

E-Marking

Standardization exemplars.

Seeding of scored essays

Identification of experts for each title?

Major changes to curriculum guide and development of teacher support material.

Applying the Scoring CriteriaWhat do students do that cost them marks?

Source of Examples

The following examples represent either:

My own students’ work

Common occurrences in many papers

Adaptations of examples from other student essays

Photograph of Harvester by Carolyn P. Henly

Title 7 (2010)

“We see and understand things not as they are, but as we are.” Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.

Opti

cal Ill

usi

ons

“We see things as

we are, and

optical illusions

prove it.”

Implic

ati

ons

The bunny is there to be seen.

The duck is there to be seen.

I only saw the bunny, therefore, I did not see things as they were.

Faile

s to

Addre

ss:

If the bunny is there, then I see something that exists.

I now know that there are both bunny and duck; thus, I now see both aspects of the drawing.

The nature of optical illusions is dual (at least), and they are deliberately created to be appreciated as having a dual nature.

We can’t know it is an illusion until we recognize the dual nature of the image.

Once I recognize the dual nature, I do both see and understand it as it is.

What characteristic of me “as I am” determined that I would see the bunny and not the duck?

Eff

ect

on M

ark

s:

Criterion A: Limited understanding of what optical illusions demonstrate about how sense perception works; failure to understand that reason and ongoing sense perception offset an initial misperception.

Criterion B: Use of an illusion out of the textbook does not show independent thought.

Criterion C: The logic of the argument fails because the student did not understand the implications of his or her own argument.

Criterion D: Depending on the wording of the statement, factual accuracy may be at issue. “I saw only the bunny, so I see things as I am, not as they are,” is a false statement, when clearly the student must now see both the bunny and the duck in order to use the illusion as an example in the first place.

Insu

ffici

ent

Know

ledge

“For all we know, what I see as red might really appear to be green to you, but we both call it red because that’s how we learned the language.”

=

Fails

to A

ddre

ss:

We understand the physiology of the eye and the physical properties of objects and light.

That knowledge allows us to know that sensory experience is the same under the same physical conditions; thus, we know that under normal circumstances, sight is the same—or similar enough to be essentially indistinguishable—for all viewers.

Sight changes when physical conditions change—physiological differences in eyes, available light.

“Red” and “Green” are visible at entirely different frequencies of light.

Eff

ect

on M

ark

s:

Criterion A: Rudimentary understanding of how sight works, as well as of the relationship between sense perception and language.

Criterion B: This is an extremely commonplace example; thus, it lacks individuality.

Criterion C: The argument fails because the over-generalization is not plausible.

Criterion D: This is not strictly factually accurate; however, the factual inaccuracy arises from the failure to understand sense perception, so the penalty would come from A.

Illogic

al Exam

ple

: “Children believe that Santa Claus exists, but adults don’t believe in Santa.”

Fails

to A

ddre

ss:

Santa Claus exists only as a fictional character portrayed by humans in costume.

Adults know this; thus, adults both see and understand Santa Claus as he is in reality.

Children believe that Santa Claus exists because adults tell them that he does. They are deliberately deceived.

Children thus have a particular understanding of Santa Claus because of the way adults and popular culture are.

One might perhaps argue that children by nature are inclined to believe adults, lack the critical capacity to evaluate what they are told, and so on.

Eff

ect

on M

ark

s:

Criterion A: No attempt has actually been made to assess Knowledge Issues—no discussion of Ways of Knowing or Areas of Knowledge; though a knowledge problem is implied by this example, it is not actually assessed.

Criterion B: This is not a commonplace example, and might be individual to the student, so it might contribute to an overall impression of individual thinking.

Criterion C: The argument fails due to the lack of detailed explanation and the failure of the logic as implied.

Criterion D: There is no direct relevance.

Title 6 (2010)

All knowledge claims should be open to rational criticism. On what grounds and to

what extent would you agree with this assertion?

Invente

d E

xam

ple

s

“The person who commissioned Shakespeare to write Hamlet wished to have the battle biased toward one side."

Flaw

s in

the Inven

ted

Exam

ple

:

No evidence provided for existence of someone who commissioned Hamlet. (None, in fact, known.)

No justification provided for the accusation that the person who ostensibly commissioned the play required that Shakespeare slant the battle a particular way.

No identification of a particular battle in Hamlet.

No justification provided for Hamlet as presenting historical claims (which, if the claims about bias were true, must then be subject to rational criticism for the truth to be known).

Eff

ect

on M

ark

s:

Criterion A: The student’s knowledge of both literature (the Arts) and History as Areas of Knowledge is rudimentary at best.

Criterion B: Although this is indeed a highly individual claim, it is completely ineffective and so cannot raise the mark for personal engagement.

Criterion C: The argument fails due to the lack of justification and the lack of explanation.

Criterion D: Factual accuracy is problematic at best—either the student made this up or failed to provide the source for the central claim.

Title 1 (2010)

To what extent is truth different in the arts, mathematics, and ethics?

Insu

ffici

ent

Know

ledge

Without knowing the title of Dali’s painting “The Sacrament of the Last Supper,” no one would be able to accurately interpret the painting as being about Jesus.

http://s318.photobucket.com/albums/mm429/fxrnx/?action=view&current=thesacramentofthelastsupper.jpg&sort=ascending

Influence

s M

ark

ing:

Criterion A: The student has demonstrated poor understanding of the role of imagery and allusion in conveying meaning in the arts.

Criterion B: Although there is a clear individual idea here, it is completely ineffective, so the example does not help here.

Criterion C: The logic of the argument fails due to the lack of understanding of his own content.

Criterion D: Factual accuracy is a significant problem here.

The N

atu

re o

f Tr

uth

in M

ath

“There is no certainty in Math, because even though people think that there is only one right answer to every question, that is not true.”

Cut

Paper

Subtr

act

ion

Most people would say that 4 – 1 = 3, but look what happens when you cut a corner off a piece of paper.

4 – 1 = 5

Therefore: truth in math is not absolute.

1 2

34

5

Fails

to A

ddre

ss:

Cutting paper is not mathematics; mathematics is a system for modeling quantitative and spatial relationships.

To model this concept, addition would have to be used, by definition, as the number of corners was increased (actually to 8).

One COULD conceivably develop a mathematics of edges and corners, but the basic axioms of addition and subtraction of the integers would not apply.

Oth

er

com

mon

tri

cks:

If you add two piles of leaves together, you get one pile of leaves.

If you add two glasses of water, you get one glass of water.

Eff

ect

on M

ark

s:

Criterion A: Significant misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge in mathematics, both in terms of content and process.

Criterion B: Not an original example--appears to repeat a commonly shared “trick.”

Criterion C: The logic of the argument fails due to the false premises and is thus not convincing.

Criterion D: No source given for this trick, though it is not original; thus, it is treated as common knowledge (which reflects the lack of originality). Alternatively, if not common knowledge, it comes from a specific source, it should have been cited. Factually inaccurate, though that will be reflected more in Criterion A.

Ad

dit

ional Pro

ble

m E

xam

ple

s:

A claim that the question: “Why do you not want the great Barack Obama to be elected?” would appear on a survey run by Democrats and would be biased.

A photograph of Abu Graib, claimed to be altered from the original (not justified with any source) as an example of how the Arts do not portray the truth.

A dog peeing on a tree to mark territory as an example of an ethical issue.

Ad

dit

ional Pro

ble

m

Exam

ple

s:

My mother tells me that a clown performed at my 4th birthday party. I made up an image of what that would look like, and now I think that the image is true.

This example was intended to illustrate the idea that some of our memories are not real memories, but are, rather, constructed out of things we hear, but since the student KNOWS that the image is constructed, it is hard to believe that, in fact, he actually believes the memory is real.

Com

mon P

roble

ms Sweeping generalizations.

Factual inaccuracy.

Speculative or invented examples.

Examples which are not relevant to the discussion.

Examples which are badly or insufficiently analyzed with regard to the claim being made.

Examples about which the student has insufficient knowledge, so that they are rife with factual inaccuracy and/or the explanation is unconvincing.

TIP

S:

Cri

teri

on

This is the content criterion—students need to show accurate knowledge of the various Ways of Knowing and Areas of Knowledge.

Compartmentalizing or dichotomizing AofK and WofK shows rudimentary understanding. (“Math uses reason and art uses emotion.”)

“Knowledge Issues” are any question or concept that deals with how knowledge is made, with obstacles to making knowledge, and with mechanisms (procedural and technological) by which we overcome those obstacles.

Students should choose Areas of Knowledge that they actually know a lot about.

TIP

S:

Cri

teri

on

Personal examples are advantageous but insufficient for earning the highest marks.

Personally conceived answer to the question raises this mark.

Reliance on external sources, including dictionaries, for key ideas lowers this mark.

Reliance on commonplace examples lowers this mark. (Flat earth, 1+1 = 2, Mona Lisa, abortion, cloning, and Hitler, for example….)

Use of the same examples as classmates lowers this mark.

Use of the same key points as your classmates lowers this mark.

TIP

S:

Cri

teri

on

Incorrect use of transition words (“thus,” “therefore,” “as a result,” and so on being used as synonyms for “and”) results in factual inaccuracy.

Avoid internal contradictions. (Often this arises from raising counterclaims that undermine the argument without mitigating explanation.)

Avoid sweeping generalizations or other overly simplistic statements.

Provide the warrant for examples.

Do not rely on rhetorical (or other) questions in the place of statements.

Explain thoroughly enough so that the logic of the thinking is transparent.

TIP

S:

Cri

teri

on

Verify all statements of fact.

Use external resources only to document factual statements in support of your own ideas, rather than to provide the key ideas or arguments.

Define any term that introduces a concept—preferably in your own words.

Sources from the Internet require full citation, not just the URL, and that must include access date.

Print sources require page numbers.

Genera

l A

dvic

e:

1200-word essays use only 75% of the available words; they are very often lacking in depth and breadth. (This does not guarantee that 1600-word essays score the highest marks, however….)

Check students’ sources. Common reliance on websites that are essentially online collusion.

Citations of websites require the date of access; citations of print texts require page numbers.

Websi

tes

to look

out

for:

http://ibtokspot.blogspot.com/

Blogspot, Yahoo groups, Fratfiles, Coursework.info, e-cheat, etc.

Websites that sell papers.

URLs with a lengthy number at the end; that number is a code that identifies a specific post on a bulletin board.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/ is a bulletin board in Britain that contains numerous discussions among students about TOK titles.

Sam

ple

Mark

ed E

ssays:

Presentation prepared by:

Carolyn P. HenlyMeadowbrook High School

4901 Cogbill Rd.Richmond, VA 23234

http://home.comcast.net/~cphenlymbk2006Carolyn_henly@ccpsnet.net

THE END