Understanding the IB DP TOK Exhibition

• Myth: Objects must be physical items you can hold.
  Reality: Digital objects (tweets, screenshots, code) are perfectly acceptable.
• Myth: Objects must be historically significant.
  Reality: Personal objects (a childhood toy, your own artwork) are often the most successful.
• Myth: It is just "show and tell."
  Reality: The focus is on TOK analysis. Objects serve as evidence for your exploration of the prompt.
• Pitfall: Choosing generic stock photos.
  Problem: Lacks "specific real-world context." An image of *your* textbook is specific; a stock photo of "a book" is not.
• Pitfall: Commentary is purely descriptive.
  Problem: You must explain *how* the object illustrates knowledge concepts related to the prompt.
• Pitfall: Repeating the same argument for all three objects.
  Problem: Each object should provide a distinct justification or perspective on the prompt.
• Pitfall: Ignoring the word count (max 950 total).
  Problem: Examiners stop reading at 950 words.

Foundational Tips

• Start with the IA Prompt: Choose a prompt that genuinely interests you.
• Brainstorm Widely, Choose Specifically: Think about objects from your studies, hobbies, and culture. Then narrow down to three *specific* examples.
• Focus on the "Why": Why *this* object? Why is it a good illustration of the prompt? This is the core of your justification.
• Make Explicit Links: Constantly refer back to the wording of the IA prompt in your commentary.
• Explain the Context Clearly: Don't assume the reader knows the background of your object.
• Show, Don't Just Tell: Use the object as evidence for your claims.
• Draft and Revise: Use teacher feedback and peer review to sharpen your arguments.
• Cite Everything: Be meticulous with referencing to maintain academic honesty.

Strategic Tip: The Triangulation Method

To ensure each object provides a distinct justification, try to apply a different TOK Core Concept to each one:

• Object 1: Focus on Evidence or Certainty.
• Object 2: Focus on Perspective or Culture.
• Object 3: Focus on Power, Ethics, or Truth.

The 12 Core TOK Concepts: Evidence, Certainty, Truth, Interpretation, Power, Values, Responsibility, Justification, Perspective, Culture, Bias, and Objectivity.

Advanced Tip: “Taboo” / Overused Examples (High-Risk Choices)

In TOK, examples are not “wrong” because they are famous. They become risky because they are overused.

When examiners (and teachers) read hundreds of exhibitions, some examples show up again and again. That creates two problems:

• They signal “generic TOK” thinking: the commentary often becomes a predictable template (e.g., “science changes over time,” “ethics matters,” “perspectives differ”).
• They reduce your justification marks: because your object choice looks interchangeable with thousands of other students’ choices, and the link to the prompt tends to be broad rather than precise.

What makes these “taboo” in an exhibition? Most of them are not objects with a specific real-world context that you personally encountered. They tend to become generic “case studies,” and students often use stock photos instead of a genuinely contextualized object.

If you use a taboo example anyway, you must do all of the following:

• Make a precise, contestable knowledge claim that depends on your chosen prompt wording (not a vague “knowledge changes”).
• Include specific detail most students omit (method, limitation, stakeholder perspective, counter-evidence, alternative interpretation).
• Develop a real counterclaim (not a token sentence) and weigh it against the claim.
• Anchor it to a specific object in a specific time/place context (e.g., your annotated textbook page, your lab notebook, a museum ticket + exhibit photo you took, your own notes/artefact from class).

Master List of Commonly Overused (“Taboo”) TOK Topics

Use this list as a warning system when brainstorming. If your idea is on this list, choose it only if you can make it genuinely specific and original.

Ethics, Medicine, and Human Experimentation

• Tuskegee syphilis experiment
• Nazi medical experiments / concentration camp research
• Bloodletting as an obsolete medical practice
• Lobotomy as an obsolete medical practice
• Thalidomide (pregnancy/morning sickness; later repurposed)
• Edward Jenner and smallpox vaccination ethics
• Anti-vaccination debates / Wakefield and MMR
• Animal testing debates (e.g., cosmetics/pharmaceuticals; PETA arguments)
• Stem cell research (often presented generically)
• Placebo use in medical testing (patient perspective)

Natural Sciences: “How Science Changes” Canon Examples

• Serendipitous discovery of penicillin (Alexander Fleming)
• Spontaneous generation disproved (Redi / Pasteur)
• Phlogiston theory replaced by oxygen theory
• Heliocentrism (Copernicus) and Galileo’s conflict with the Church
• Galileo’s house arrest + later Church statements (often simplified)
• Development of heliocentrism from Aristarchus to Copernicus
• Atomic models progression (Dalton → Thomson → Rutherford → Bohr → Schrödinger)
• Wöhler synthesizing urea (challenge to vitalism)
• Kekulé’s dream and benzene structure
• Membrane models (Davson-Danielli → Singer-Nicolson fluid mosaic)
• Wegener and continental drift (rejected then accepted)
• Semmelweis and handwashing / childbed fever
• Physiology history: Galen → Harvey (circulation)
• Natural selection “classic examples” (often simplistic)
• Industrial melanism (Biston betularia)
• Young’s double-slit experiment / wave-particle duality
• Feynman diagrams / quantum electrodynamics as “simplicity”
• CERN and the Higgs boson discovery
• Detection of gravitational waves confirming GR predictions
• Edwin Hubble and expansion of the universe
• Einstein and the cosmological constant (as a “mistake” story)
• String theory and “lack of evidence” (usually handled vaguely)
• Heinrich Hertz and later application of radio waves
• Enzyme models: lock-and-key vs induced fit
• “Complexity of photosynthesis” at different education stages

Human Sciences: Psychology, Language, and Fieldwork

• Elizabeth Loftus & John Palmer (leading questions/eyewitness testimony)
• Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment
• Asch conformity experiments
• Milgram obedience experiments
• Zimbardo Stanford prison experiment
• Multi-store model of memory + “Clive Wearing”
• DSM as authority in diagnosis (often used generically)
• Myers-Briggs personality test (MBTI)
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Margaret Mead’s Samoa fieldwork (perspective/culture)
• Lera Boroditsky (language and spatial orientation / Indigenous examples)
• Antonio Damasio and somatic marker theory
• “Confirmation bias” as a generic explanation without a specific object/context
• Human chromosome number error story (confirmation bias in science)

Mathematics: Proof, Beauty, Usefulness, and Different Systems

• Euler’s equation (“beauty/value without application”)
• Imaginary numbers (often as a shallow “useful but not real” example)
• Rounding π / approximation and “inaccuracy”
• Polynomials / factorisation and “complexity” (too generic)
• Different calculus notation (Newton vs Leibniz)
• Spherical geometry and hyperbolic geometry (perspectives)
• Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometry (as a default “certainty” example)
• Number theory history: Pythagoras / Fermat / Wiles
• Riemann hypothesis / primes / internet security

History, Politics, and “Perspectives” (Often Over-Generalized)

• Treaty of Versailles and the rise of Nazism (simplified causality)
• Causes of WWI and Fritz Fischer thesis
• Cold War interpretations: traditional / revisionist / post-revisionist
• Nanjing Massacre (often treated as a generic “perspectives differ” case)
• Japanese history textbook controversies (as a generic “bias” example)
• JFK assassination conspiracy theories
• “Question wording” examples in politics (e.g., referendum question changes)

The Arts: Interpretation and “Famous Artwork” Defaults

• Vincent van Gogh and Starry Night
• Pablo Picasso and Guernica
• Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa / Vitruvian Man
• Mark Rothko and environmental/emotional interpretation
• Jackson Pollock as “ways of knowing”
• Banksy (as a default street art example)
• Kevin Carter’s Sudan famine photograph
• Nick Ut’s “Napalm Girl” photograph
• Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est
• Common “banned books” examples without personal context (e.g., Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye)
• Music therapy (often used as a generic “arts are useful” point)
• Controversial art installations used as shock-value (without analysis)

Technology and “Value of Knowledge” (Often Treated as Morality Tales)

• Alan Turing and Enigma
• Thomas Edison and the light bulb invention (hero narrative)
• Hiroshima bomb vs nuclear fission reactors (“good vs bad knowledge”)
• Fritz Haber (fertilizer vs explosives dual-use)
• The Amish and rejection of modern technology
• NASA Mars rover “Curiosity” as “why we seek knowledge”
• Conventional current vs electron flow (terminology mismatch)

Economics and Models (Often Too Vague)

• Phillips curve and “transient accuracy”
• Neoclassical vs Keynesian economics (without a specific real-world object)

Bottom line: The best exhibitions usually avoid “big textbook examples” and instead use highly specific objects from the student’s world: class notes, lab artefacts, local cultural objects, personal projects, or a real piece of media with traceable context (date, creator, platform, audience, purpose).