Mock/Practice TOK essay -Essay

Plan
● DUE: Mon, 26 Sep on SEQTA(Turnitin via SETA)- make a copy of this template doc; once done,
download and submit on SEQTA for feedback
● NOTE: You MAY use bullet points in this document, but do try to have as much of the developed
sentences and paragraphs as possible. The more developed “flows” of your ideas, the more informed
teacher feedback can be.
● Using the TOK Essay Structure-detailed & TOK essay plan- Writing TEMPLATE documents
provide detailed guidelines for Mock/Practice TOK Essay Plan below.
● Do consult the Essay Plan Exemplar ( you have it in original & annotated versions in the shared
folder)
● If it is useful you may consult: a) sample TOK Essay introductions + b) sample TOK Essays-
completed. All these are available in the shared folder.
● Feel free to have chats with your DP subject area teachers in regards to the ideas specific to their
subjects / AOKs you are dealing with. These chats cna confirm that you are on the right track and
guide you when stuck.

INTRODUCTIO
N
→knowledge is the justified true belief
→Culture- the shared ideas, beliefs, customs and practices of a community

*Everything you have learned from your whole life was a plan for the people around you. I say this
because when someone is born in a society there are values and cultural traits transferred into that
person one of them being the use of mathematics, like the arabic number system, simple maths
operations. Natural sciences also play a role due to the view that is transmitted on them from
certain cultures.
*The AOKs that I'm going to be talking about are maths and natural sciences, the naturals sciences
mostly referred on the essay are Physics and BIology. This is going to address the relationship
between the understanding of something or subject independent of your own ideas and what has
been implemented in you has a member of today's society.

DISCUSSION 1 *There is no knowledge that can be independent of culture. Culture is the shared ideas, beliefs,
OR customs and practices of a community that comes from years of practices arranged for a better
KNOWLEDGE society and believed by a group of people
ARGUMENT 1 *In natural sciences like biology people carry knowledge throughout the years and perfect it to
understand the environment around humans and animals and understand how humans “work”. In
other areas of natural sciences like Physics when it comes to numbers and variables it comes from
a cultural connection to the alphabet “a”, “v”, “x”, “y”...
*A real life example where this can be seen is medicine where old practices have been carried out
for thousands of years and been improved through new knowledge every time by all the experts in
the area. Also research of diseases like cancer started years ago and researches have been passing
it through a diverse number of scientists to try to solve the problem.
* If we find another culture discussing culture independence, they will still mean something
 completely different. But we could discuss it with them. Despite the fact that we'd be adapting
different intra-cultural talking practises (talking to strangers) to the extra-cultural practices of
talking to someone from another culture (Wehren)
*Natural sciences are impacted by the way the scientist approaches it due to his views on culture,
things like the what is wrong and wright to do on an human experiment can impact the knowledge
obtain from sciences due to the cultural trait of making such a decision
* Science is done in very different ways regarding the place where is happening and the cultural
traits of the people.

DISCUSSION 2 *Mathematics is an area that has been implemented in everyone's culture.

OR *There cannot be maths without a cultural connection, when it comes to variables that are
KNOWLEDGE designated by letters of the alphabet like “a”, “v”, “x”, “y”... This is directly connected to the culture
ARGUMENT 2 of humanity . In today's world children are born and they are taught the Arabic numeral system in
school, which is used when shopping on price tags, quantities, measurements…
*Culture itself can be a generalised term due to the fact there is a big amount of cultures in today's
world. We can talk about culture independence in one culture and another but mean completely
two different things, back in 900 B.C when the Roman numerals were invented, that was they were
used for maths. (Hom)
*Arabic numbers were only invented between the 6th and 7th century on the other side of the
earth and the ones we know today have been adapted since then. (Gies)
*Students from societies with higher long-term orientation values outperformed students from
societies with lower short-term orientation values. (Leung)
* Cultural ideas are used to explain and teach mathematics to young individuals .

EVALUATION
and/or
CHALLENGE

CONCLUSION *With all the options being explored I still believe that there will always be a cultural connection to
any type of knowledge. When it comes to maths, any discovery made at this point where variables
are designed with an already known alphabet, the base calculations will lead to others… So the
beginning of any other discovery in mathematics will have been influenced by others ideas which
can be seen as culture.
*The same happens in natural sciences where basically passed ideas have just been improving by
the going of the years or disproved because of a fail or wrong assumption of past scientists.

WORKS CITED

Works Cited

Gies, Frances Carney. “Hindu-Arabic numerals | History & Facts | Britannica.” Encyclopedia

Britannica, 29 August 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hindu-Arabic-numerals.

Accessed 26 September 2022.

Hom, Elaine J. “Roman Numerals: Conversion, Meaning & Origins.” Live Science, 15 May

2013, https://www.livescience.com/32052-roman-numerals.html. Accessed 26 September

 2022.

Leung, Hu X. “The Influence of Culture on Students’ Mathematics Achievement Across 51

Countries.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10763-018-9899-6#citeas,

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10763-018-9899-6#citeas.

Wehren, Pat. “Home.” YouTube, 5 December 2018, https://www.quora.com/Can-there-be-

knowledge-that-is-independent-of-culture-Discuss-with-reference-to-mathematics-and-one-

other-area-of-knowledge?top_ans=386882368. Accessed 26 September 2022.

Lourenco,

your essay plan shows an acceptable beginning in developing a complete and effective plan, and later on a full
essay. To an extent you followed the structure of a TOK essay, but you also show misunderstanding of the
structure of the DISCUSSION body paragraphs; this is evidence in both AOKs here, for which reason you
offered incoherent/ confusing answers to the PT for each of your AOKs- whereby I am unclear what is the claim
and what is the counterclaim section? In addition to this structure that needs to be revisited (or we can talk
about in person as I suggested, if you would like), you should work on: 1) bringing in some TOK links (concepts,
ideas from classes (e.g. cognitive biases, or rational vs empirical types of knowledge, etc.) or even key thinkers
into your discussion arguments + 2) work on identifying much better concrete real life examples for each AOK;
the ones you currently have are generic and vague.