Bidding for Knowledge

In ToK, students need to think about the methods used to gain new knowledge across the Human Sciences and whether these different methods are valid, reliable and accurate.

ToK requires students to link school subjects with Real Life Situations.

So, we set up an activity over 2 double sessions, in which they read an article written by the UN on the USA’s concern over the production of Cocaine in Peru.

Group Task: is to choose 1 or 2 areas within the Human Sciences and, imagining that they are in a Peruvian university, write a bid for funding from the US, to gain new and relevant knowledge about this problem. The had to write a research question, describe 2 or 3 methods they would use and then evaluate whether the methods would produce accurate, valid and reliable evidence. Here is an example from their presentations:-

Students give their presentations to the class, who then judge this bid according to the value of knowledge it will produce and the suitability of their methods, by completing this form for each presentation:-

You have $10,000 to allocate

You could allocate it all to 1 group, or split it.

When all the presentations have been given the sums allocated will be added up to find the ‘winning’ group.

Reflection

I did this with 2 5B classes and both produced clear winners. I was worried that they might not be able to remember and compare the presentations over 2 weeks; but I think they remembered them better than I did.

What went well: they had to justify their methods against clear criteria - they all understood the 3 criteria well, though some of them struggled to apply these to their own methods.

There was a high level of engagement and interest, partly because they found the topic relevant and interesting.

The drawback was that I started this before the Bimester break, so to make up for the gap, we recapped the presentations given before the break, which then took up a lot of time.

Next time, I would make larger groups to cut down on the time presenting. (Despite the Dragonfly guy advising keeping to pairs, or 3s to avoid piggy backing.) Alternatively, they could work on this task in pairs, present to 1 other pair and pick the best of the 2, which are then shown to the whole class to choose between.