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📋 IA Prompts

The 35 IA Prompts Explained

How to read, interpret and choose the right IA prompt — with analysis of what each prompt is really asking you to explore.

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35 Official Prompts

IB provides exactly 35 prompts across five thematic groups. Any student can choose any prompt — you are not restricted to themes your school taught.

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Knowledge Questions Only

Every IA prompt is a genuine knowledge question — about how, why, or whether we know something. It is never a factual or subject-specific question.

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Choose for Object Range

Pick the prompt where you can find three meaningfully different objects — not three that all make the same point in slightly different ways.

Understanding the 35 Prompts

The IB provides 35 prescribed IA prompts that remain fixed across examination sessions — unlike essay prescribed titles, which change each session. This means past students’ exhibitions are available as models, but it also means examiners have seen every prompt approached from every angle. Originality in object selection is therefore especially important.

The prompts are organised across five thematic groupings: Knowledge and the Knower (the core theme), and four optional themes: Language, Technology, Politics, and Religion. However, the IB does not map specific prompts exclusively to specific AOKs — most prompts can be explored through objects from any domain.

Selected Prompts by Group

Knowledge & the Knower (Core — Prompts 1–10)

“What counts as knowledge?”

“Are some types of knowledge more useful than others?”

“What are the implications of having, or not having, knowledge?”

“To what extent is certainty attainable?”

“Can new knowledge change established values or beliefs?”

“How is current knowledge shaped by its historical development?”

“In what ways do values affect the production of knowledge?”

“What role do experts play in influencing our views of the world?”

“Why do we seek knowledge?”

“What counts as good reasoning?”

Language (Prompts 11–17)

“How does language influence our ways of knowing?”

“What is the relationship between personal experience and knowledge?”

“How important is it to distinguish between knowledge, belief, and opinion?”

“Does the name we give something affect how we understand it?”

Technology (Prompts 18–24)

“How has technology changed the nature of knowledge?”

“How does our knowledge depend on what we can observe?”

“What are the challenges of knowing about events in the distant past?”

“Is bias inevitable in the production of knowledge?”

Politics (Prompts 25–30)

“To what extent can we trust the knowledge we receive from others?”

“How do we know the difference between justified and unjustified beliefs?”

“Is there a difference between knowledge and power?”

“How important is evidence in the production of knowledge?”

Religion (Prompts 31–35)

“What is the relationship between faith and knowledge?”

“Can there be objective knowledge about ethical questions?”

“In what ways is the acquisition of knowledge a social process?”

“To what extent is knowledge a commodity?”

How to Choose the Right Prompt

The most important criterion is not which prompt sounds most interesting in the abstract — it is which prompt gives you the widest range of distinct objects that each illuminate a different dimension of the question. A prompt where three obvious objects spring to mind, all making the same point, is a trap. A prompt where you can imagine objects from three different domains (science, art, history; or digital, physical, institutional) that together build a richer answer — that is your prompt.

The Three-Object Test

Before committing to a prompt, run this test: for your chosen prompt, identify three candidate objects from three different contexts. Write one sentence per object: “This object raises [specific knowledge question] in relation to the prompt because [reason].” If all three sentences say roughly the same thing, your objects are too similar. If each sentence highlights a genuinely different aspect of the prompt, you have a strong set.

What Makes a Prompt Interpretable in Depth?

The best prompts for high-scoring exhibitions are those that admit of paradox or tension. “What counts as knowledge?” is excellent because objects can challenge the intuitive answer — something that seems to be knowledge (a conspiracy theory with internal consistency) might not count, while something that doesn’t look like knowledge (a felt intuition) might under certain epistemological frameworks. This tension is exactly what TOK thinking thrives on.

Prompt Selection Decision Flow

⚠️ Common Pitfall

Choosing a prompt because it sounds easy, then finding all your objects make the same argument. A prompt like “How has technology changed the nature of knowledge?” may attract students who then choose: a smartphone, a search engine, and a social media platform. All three make the same point (technology democratises knowledge access) and the exhibition scores poorly on depth. A stronger set might contrast a genome sequencing tool (technology enables entirely new types of knowledge), an AI language model (technology can generate plausible-sounding false knowledge), and a digitised historical archive (technology changes how we access past knowledge without changing its content).

✅ Prompt Selection Checklist

I have read all 35 prompts before choosing one
I can identify three objects from genuinely different contexts for my chosen prompt
Each of my three objects raises a different dimension of the prompt
My objects are not all from the same AOK or real-world domain
My chosen prompt contains a tension or paradox that my objects can explore
I can write one distinct “knowledge question” sentence per object

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