DESIGN FOR LEARNING
The ISM Promise
For the International School of Myanmar, a focus on learning recalls its foundational promise By Dr. Aloha Lavina, Director of Curriculum International School of Myanmar ISM has spent the last three years creating principles that guide a framework for learning. Designing Learning In 2020-2021, ISM turns its attention to design, using its framework. The shared school-wide goal this school year is to create the systems that turn its principles of learning into practices. Some of the systems that ISM has created and enacted this school year address the following: • Alignment between instructional planning, classroom instruction, and assessment To strengthen the alignment of the written, taught and assessed curriculum, ISM redesigned its unit planner so that there is more concrete and targeted guidance embedded in the unit planning process. For example, instead of a blank box titled Essential Questions, ISM’s Unit Planner specifies the creation and use of questions that target content, concepts and disciplinary and interdisciplinary understandings. In its beginning, the International School of Myanmar (ISM) was founded on a grandmother’s hope for her granddaughters. Picking up her granddaughters from school one day, ISM founder Daw Khine saw that they were in classes of 60 students, sitting passively, listening to the teacher. Daw Khine wanted her granddaughters and many children like them to experience “better quality and well-rounded education that meets international standards.” The promise of a quality international education was at the heart of ISM’s foundation. More than two decades later, ISM revisits its founding purpose as it addresses school improvement initiatives using an ecosystem approach. ISM focuses on learning as a community by re-visioning teaching and learning as “The ISM Promise.” A curriculum audit and a self-study in SY 2019-2020 revealed to the ISM community a list of definite priorities for teaching and learning. These priorities formed the basis for ISM’s curriculum action plan. Finding Common Ground A useful inquiry cycle for systems work is the four lenses of the Common Ground Collaborative (CGC). CGC organizes learning around four D’s which suggest a way to look at school as an ecosystem that cycles through four learning phases: define, design, deliver, and demonstrate (Bartlett & Eldridge, 2014). ISM inquires about its own re-visioning through each of the four learning phases. Defining Learning Like many international schools, ISM has co-created the language it uses to speak about teaching and learning over many years of collaboration. And, like many international schools, the language of learning gains definition from how students and adults learn and talk about learning through time. Consolidating a common glossary for learning addresses the question, What is learning and how do we do it? (Bartlett & Low, 2020). To answer the question and define learning for its community, 20 EARCOS Triannual Journal
• A tighter connection between professional learning and classroom/school needs Professional learning is distributed through four layers.The first layer addresses whole-school goals, such as alignment between written, taught and assessed curriculum. The second layer of professional learning addresses departmental goals, for examples, the science department is working on strengthening the student experiences of inquiry in science through phenomena, and the math department collaborates to design its curriculum backwards from the culminating AP years down through Pre-K. The third layer of professional learning happens in smaller teams, with goals set by the teams. For instance, Pre-K investigates projectbased learning and the use of single-point rubrics to create conversations about learning between the students and teachers. Finally, the fourth layer of professional development is based on individual growth goals, and is closely linked to ISM’s professional expectations for teachers. Senior leadership has embedded its professional development into the calendar year to address school-wide goals. The seminar from Thinking Collaborative’s associate trainer Ochan Kusuma-Powell focuses on facilitating collaborative teams and was co-designed with Director Ben Marsh and Director of Curriculum Aloha Lavina. Starting with an outcome mapping with the members of the leadership team, the leadership team meets with Dr. Powell once or twice a month, using contextual polarities and issues as conversation points for rehearsing and applying collaborative capabilities and norms. • Ways to make data more accessible to inform instructional decisions With many years of data, ISM is currently inquiring into ways to make data more accessible to teachers and students. One of the indicators for achievement is the ability of teachers and students to be able to speak about and predict achievement, whether descriptively using standards-
