MODULE 8 · CAPSTONE · 60–120 MINUTES

Build an Evidence Brief

The capstone is not “write an essay using sources”. First prove that you can build a defensible evidence chain. Your final product is an Evidence Brief showing how each important claim is supported, limited, corroborated and traced.

Your governing standard

Another senior student should be able to inspect your brief and understand:

what you are claiming;
where each claim came from;
what each source can and cannot establish;
where sources agree or conflict;
which uncertainties remain;
whether AI or another mediation layer shaped your research path.

Choose the inquiry

Use a real question from History, Geography, Social Studies, Classics, Economics or another senior subject where evidence and interpretation matter. If you do not yet have one, choose a contested social question that has access to both primary evidence and later interpretation.

A good question is narrow enough that evidence could change your answer. Examples of shapes — not prescribed topics:

How and why did ___ change between ___ and ___?
To what extent did ___ cause / influence ___?
How did different groups experience or represent ___?
Why do historians / researchers disagree about ___?
What does available evidence show about the effects of ___?

Complete the capstone in stages

Write a working claim

State your current answer in one or two sentences. It may change. A hypothesis is not a commitment.

Build a mixed evidence set

Gather at least one primary evidentiary source, one secondary interpretation and one additional source that offers either corroboration, contradiction, a different scale or a different perspective. Tertiary or AI material may help you navigate, but should not substitute for the evidence chain.

Source every source

Record WHO, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, FOR WHOM and HOW DID IT REACH ME. Use the Source Analysis Matrix where needed.

Split your argument into claims

Do not attach five citations to one huge paragraph. Identify the separate factual and interpretive claims that carry your conclusion.

Corroborate and challenge

For each major claim, ask what independent evidence agrees, conflicts or exposes a limitation. Trace repeated claims upstream so you do not mistake copies for independent confirmation.

Audit silences

Whose records dominate? What perspective is hard to find? Is the absence meaningful, or merely a limit of your archive, search terms or access?

Audit AI mediation

If AI helped you discover, summarise or challenge material, identify which part of the research path it influenced. For any important AI-originated claim, trace the claim home.

State a bounded conclusion

Answer two questions: What does the evidence allow me to say? and What does the evidence not allow me to say?

Use the Evidence Brief

Open the printable Evidence Brief Template →

Claim

Narrow, testable, relevant to the inquiry.

Evidence

Specific carrier, source role and provenance.

Interpretation

Explain why the evidence supports the claim — do not let a quotation stand in for analysis.

Corroboration

Show genuine independence or explain conflict.

Limit

Name what the source or evidence set cannot establish.

Confidence

Justify confidence from evidence quality, not writing fluency.

Capstone trap: polished prose can hide weak evidence

If you can write a beautiful paragraph but cannot show where its load-bearing claims came from, return to the brief. In senior work, the evidence chain is part of the thinking, not decoration added at the end.

Self-review before submission

Have I confused a source category with a quality judgement?
Have I described bias/perspective rather than just labelling it?
Have I used “reliable” only with a specific claim?
Are my corroborating sources genuinely independent?
Did I inspect the source behind important quotations/statistics?
Did I notice whose evidence is missing or difficult to access?
Did any AI-generated or search-mediated claim enter my work without being traced?
Can I state what my evidence does not prove?

Year 13 extension: write the methods paragraph

Add a 150–250 word methods reflection explaining how you found and selected evidence, where the evidence base is uneven, how you dealt with contradictory sources, and whether search/AI systems influenced discoverability. This is a miniature methodological statement: make the conditions of your knowledge visible.

Completion standard

You have completed the bridge when you can hand someone the brief and they could independently follow your strongest claims back toward their evidence. That skill transfers into essays, reports, inquiries, externals, research projects and everyday claims far beyond Social Sciences.

Final sentence: I am most confident in ___ because ___. I remain uncertain about ___ because ___.