The SL internal assessment asks you to engage in real anthropological practice and to reflect critically. This lesson covers the SL fieldwork task and how to critically engage with an ethnographic account.
Answer the quick checks, the sort and the match as you go to collect stars. Press Start when you are ready.
The IB SL internal assessment is a piece of engaging in anthropological practice. At SL it is built on limited fieldwork: making an observation, gathering some secondary data, and writing a critical reflection. The focus is on the position of the observer, the methods chosen, and the ethics of the work.
Key point: the SL IA is not a large research project. It is a focused chance to observe, then reflect honestly on how you did it and what shaped what you saw.
Whether you read a published ethnography or reflect on your own observation, critical engagement means analysing:
No account is a neutral mirror. Renato Rosaldo's essay Grief and a Headhunter's Rage introduced the idea of the positioned subject: only after his own bereavement could he understand the rage that led Ilongot men to headhunting. The researcher's position and experience shape what they can see and understand.
In the IA you should be reflexive: reflect on how your presence, identity and assumptions affected your observation, and be honest about what you could and could not access. What did people perform for you? What did your standpoint make easy or hard to see?
Tap a task, then tap which part of the IA it belongs to. (Two each.)
Even a small observation raises ethics: seek informed consent where appropriate, do no harm, keep people anonymous, and report honestly. Be especially careful when observing people you know, and mind the power difference between observer and observed. Malinowski's field diary is a reminder of the gap between tidy method and messy reality.
How we write about other people matters. The volume Writing Culture (edited by James Clifford and George Marcus, 1986) launched the crisis of representation: ethnographies are partial, authored constructions, shaped by rhetoric and power, not neutral records. Good critical engagement keeps this in mind.
Tap an element on the left, then its description.
For the IA, choose a setting you can observe ethically and realistically: a public or semi-public activity where you can watch social behaviour without intruding. Focus on a small, clear question about what people do and how they interact.
Combine direct observation with secondary data (existing sources on the setting). Take careful notes at the time or immediately after, recording what happened, who was involved, and your own role and reactions.
A strong critical reflection discusses your methods and their limits, your positionality and its effect, the ethical issues you faced, and how key concepts helped you interpret what you saw. Honesty about limits is a strength, not a weakness.
SL IA: limited fieldwork: observation, secondary data, critical reflection
Critical engagement: analyse viewpoint, methods, concepts, ethics, evidence
Positionality: the observer standpoint shapes what is seen (Rosaldo)
Reflexivity: reflect honestly on your own role and limits
Ethics: informed consent, do no harm, anonymity, honesty
Representation: ethnographies are partial and authored (Writing Culture)
You are ready to observe, reflect and engage critically for the internal assessment. Press Finish to see your score.
You have worked through Internal Assessment: Critical Engagement with an Ethnographic Account. 🎉
Your stars: 0 / 0
Next: test yourself in the Evaluate stage, then lock it in with Verify.