International Schools Journal -- April 2013

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Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS JOURNAL

The Forest

International Schools Journal ARTICLES

A new language for culture, identity and values The World Studies Extended Essay: challenging students on global issues

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Professional learning with quantifiable classroom interaction data Fostering criticality for the iGeneration Educational and online technologies and the way we learn

Describing the dynamic nature of mathematics as a cultural product Education beyond frontiers: early signs of international mindedness Fifty years of development: The American School of Barcelona Internationalizing Teacher Education in the United States

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The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne: a clinical model for pre-service teacher preparation

A theatre for action: adopting the Khan Academy in support of a classroom model in the MYP

Forest and City

DREW

Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

The City

Finding the value of X: re-exploring the influence of teachers’ interpersonal qualities on learning

2/25/13 12:40 PM

Taking the IPC Forward

A John Catt Publication 28/03/2013 16:04

International Schools Journal Editor Caroline Ellwood Managing Editor Derek Bingham Editorial Consultants George Walker, Director General Emeritus, International Baccalaureate Jeff Thompson, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Bath Ex Officio Jean Vahey, Executive Director/CEO, ECIS Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission, should be addressed to: Dr Caroline Ellwood, 23 Trooper Road, Aldbury, Nr Tring, Hertfordshire HP23 5RW CarolineEllwood@ECIS.org Notes for contributors are on page 100.

Business correspondence, subscriptions, advertisements, back numbers, and offprints, should be addressed to John Catt Educational Ltd, 12 Deben Mill Business Centre, Old Maltings Approach, Melton, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 1BL UK. Tel: +44 (0)1394 389850. Email: enquiries@johncatt.com The Journal is indexed and abstracted in: ERIC, British Education Index; International ERIC CD-ROM; Contents Page in Education; Education Research Abstracts Index and abstract to the ISJ, 1998–2000 can be found on the website www.ecis.org

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Published by: John Catt Educational Ltd for The European Council of International Schools 4th Floor, 146 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TR, UK. Incorporated with Limited Liability in the State of Delaware, USA. Registered Office: 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Regd. in England under FC 8297.

ISSN 0264-7281 Printed by Charlesworth Press.

The Journal is published twice a year, in November and April, to form one volume.

Issues 1 to 27 cover 1981 to Spring 1994. Volume XIV began November 1994.

Copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder. Š 2013 European Council of International Schools, Inc.

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Contents Comment Caroline Ellwood.................................................................................................5 A new language for culture, identity and values Richard Pearce....................................................................................................8 The World Studies Extended Essay: challenging students on global issues Angela Rivière....................................................................................................16 Finding the value of X: re-exploring the influence of teachers’ interpersonal qualities on learning Paul Crowhurst..................................................................................................26 The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne: a clinical model for pre-service teacher preparation Melody Anderson & Rannah Scamporlino...................................................... 33 Professional learning with quantifiable classroom interaction data Paul Magnuson..................................................................................................43 Fostering criticality for the iGeneration Lodewijk van Oord & Ken Corn.......................................................................51 Educational and online technologies and the way we learn Lawrence Burke.................................................................................................57 A theatre for action: adopting the Khan Academy in support of a classroom model in the MYP Eoin Lenihan.....................................................................................................66 Describing the dynamic nature of mathematics as a cultural product M Sencer Corlu..................................................................................................72 Education beyond frontiers: early signs of international mindedness Ian Hill & Caroline Ellwood.............................................................................80 Historical vignette – Fifty years of development: The American School of Barcelona Robin Berting.....................................................................................................87 Book reviews Internationalizing Teacher Education in the United States Edited by Beverly Shaklee & Supriya Baily Reviewed by James Cambridge.........................................................................91 Taking the IPC Forward Edited by Mary Hayden & Jeff Thompson Reviewed by Lesley Snowball............................................................................96 Notes for contributors......................................................................................100 International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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ECIS FELLOWSHIP GRANTS For the Advancement of International Education

ECIS has instituted a Fellowship Programme as a means of providing recognition and financial incentives to selected recipients for work towards the advancement of international education.

Stipends of up to a maximum of ÂŁ3000 each may be awarded annually to individuals or groups who are selected.

GUIDELINES Fellowship stipends will be awarded for the purpose of enhancing international education.

Each project must: a) include a clearly stated, focused purpose and expected outcome(s) which will be of interest and benefit to a significant sector of the international education community. (The project must impact upon more than an individual school.) b) contain specific, realistic procedures/activities. (It will need to include such things as the proposed means and instruments for collecting and comparing data; identified sample populations of schools, teachers, and/or students that will be impacted on; and timelines for accomplishing various tasks and objectives.) c) include review/evaluation procedures. It must be reviewed by both the applicant and at least one other relevant educator (both at the mid-point and at the conclusion of the project). The evaluation feedback must clearly indicate to the ECIS Professional Development Committee what relevance and impact this project has (or will have) on international education. d) constitute original concepts, research, and/or ideas or appreciably enhance a project already underway. e) be undertaken and completed within an approved time line, normally within one academic year.

Applicants must complete the ECIS Fellowship Application Packet in its entirety and submit it by 15 January to be considered for the subsequent academic year.

ELIGIBILITY Only professional educators employed at schools or institutions that are current (regular or associate) members of ECIS are eligible to apply for a fellowship grant.

Applicants must have demonstrated exemplary skill in the field of education.

Each applicant must obtain the written approval of the chief executive officer of the affiliated institution (or in the case of an applicant who is the CEO, the approval of the head of the governing board or comparable authority).

Further enquiries, requests for Application Packets and all correspondence regarding the Fellowship Programme should be addressed to: Jean Vahey Executive Director/CEO European Council of International Schools 4th Floor, 146 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TR, UK.

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Comment Recently The Sunday Times listed the 500 best Apps now available online, a selection of the most interesting of a growing number of computer programmes that can be downloaded to one’s phone or tablet for a small charge, or nothing.

From science to the arts to literature, and education, Apps now ‘have your whole life covered’ (The Sunday Times, 3rd February, 2013).

The phenomenal advance of computer technology in the last 20 years has had an impact on teaching which is changing pedagogy in ways not always accepted or understood and is often controversial. Looking in the back files of ISJ, one of the early articles to discuss the ideas around what could still be termed ‘teaching machines’ is an article by Westwood and Dobson entitled ‘Implementing a successful Laptop Programme’: ...learning with laptops captivates and empowers students, makes them more self motivating and task-oriented; there is increased risk taking, students work at their own pace, and in their own time … this is heady stuff indeed’ (ISJ, November 1999).

Those were the days when forward-looking schools had a ‘computer room’, more advanced (and wealthy) communities had a ‘personal ownership laptop programme’.

Four of the contributors for this issue of ISJ consider the implications of recent developments in this ‘heady stuff’. As Westwood and Dobson warned, teachers have not all welcomed the revolution in technology, the pace at which it has brought change and what these developments imply for the teacher in the classroom and the student with a tablet on the desk and an iPhone in the pocket. Apple opened the virtual doors to its App store in July 2008 and, whilst a major use is for games, it has also promoted fiction. Books like The Hunger Games by Sue Collins and War Horse by Michael Morpurgo have had an extraordinary success.

Corn and van Oord point out that the students in our current classes belong to a generation that has in most cases never lived without the presence of the internet and the availability of information technology. Terming them ‘the iGeneration’ they describe them as having: iPads, iPods, and iPhones; they download free music, free films, and free school assignments without being overly concerned with property rights, plagiarism and appropriate referencing. They build a social network of ‘befriending’ and ‘defriending’ with the click of a mouse’ (p51).

The resultant pedagogical challenges and opportunities are analysed by van Oord and Corn who give examples of ways in which teachers can be what they term ‘critical friends’ so that they can assist this iGeneration to become critical thinkers in their own right and in their own worlds. We need to guide them to, and also along, those International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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pathways towards knowledge and understanding that may, in the long run, lead to a well-exercised judgement and a more profound moral understanding of the world.

Burke in his article assumes a number of the same points. However he is concerned by the social dimension of working in the isolated vacuum of virtual realities where ‘I am my screen’ and ‘I do not have to compete to share my thoughts’ (p57). The use of education technology is a valuable and exciting tool, but it should have ‘as its core principal how students learn, not what they like using and doing best’.

Burke is certainly no Luddite, having extensive experience of the IT field, but he does have concerns about the ‘long term psychological and corporeal effect and consequences that mobile and computer based learning’ could have on the ‘physical and mental wellbeing of present and future generations of learners’. He advises teachers to be aware of the claims and properties of new applications and software of all types. They should seek a clear critical understanding of how we learn and the cognitive processes most deeply affected through ed tech tools and online learning.

In his article, Lenihan considers the efficacy and practicalities of using the distance learning techniques developed by Salmon Khan in the classroom and how these can be dovetailed into the MYP Principles and Practice. Highly acceptable to a generation that is familiar with the internet as a resource, The Khan Academy (khanacademy.org), recently featured on TED talks (March 2011) and in Time Magazine (July 2012), is an online resource that provides in excess of 3200 mainly YouTube videos in all traditional subjects (p66).

Lenihan, like many other teachers, sees this amazing storehouse of expertise as an inspirational aid to teachers. Off campus interactive forums to connect with and extend student learning, via blogging, Facebook profiles and selfmade YouTube videos, are now a part of most schools’ programmes and provide resources and opportunities undreamed of in the education of the past.

By accessing a video at home, the student can arrive in class with a strong conceptual footing in the unit and, working alone, is able to progress on a topic at his or her own speed, thus facilitating student differentiation. Students can also complete self-evaluations and all stakeholders have access to this performance data.

Looking again at that 1999 article by Westwood and Dobson, they compare the development and general use of the car and of aircraft as being roughly 50 years. They go on to say: The computer, developed in 1944 … now at the onset of a new millennium is part of our everyday lives, and more so part of our pupils’ lives.

And that indeed is the point. All our contributors are clear that our students are well ahead of most of their teachers in their acceptance and exploitation of the

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technology available. However teachers are catching up, if for no other reason that many of the ‘dinosaurs’ are going towards retirement and the new cohorts have themselves been part of the change.

For the young teacher, computer technology and its rapid advance is just another part of life, presenting opportunity not fear. From the point of view of pedagogy we can look for an acceptance that then leads to development and experiment in the exciting world of teaching and technology. As the opportunities multiply and we grasp the new it is also necessary to temper enthusiasm with debate and research. Heady stuff indeed.

This ‘dinosaur’ is going on a ‘Tour of the Bauhaus App’ … in preparation for the ECIS Administrators’ Conference in Berlin (4th-7th April)!

References The App List, The Sunday Times, 3rd February 2013.

Westwood, P and Dobson L., ‘Implementing a Successful Laptop Programme’ ISJ Volume XIX November 1999. iPhone App ‘Bauhaus’, Bauhaus Archive. Accessed 3rd February 2013.

Caroline Ellwood

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A new language for culture, identity and values Richard Pearce The reason for this article is that recent research in the areas of neurobiology, cognitive science and related disciplines has provided understandings about culture in terms of process rather than content. With our new conceptualisation of how we think, rather than merely what we think, it is possible to speak of the process in dynamic rather than structural ways, reflecting more usefully how these factors relate to human behaviour. To do this we need to use new words.

Words give us mental images with which we can exchange ideas, expressed in terms that are shared. When new conceptualisations are made they can only be presented using existing words; but in fact these words, taken from our previous experience in a variety of fields, come with many conflicting and confusing associations. As Wittgenstein (1922) wrote: ‘whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.’ ‘Culture’, ‘Identity’ and ‘Values’ are now muddied with ambiguities.

None of these three entities is an existent; they have no material existence.

They offer models for abstract concepts, or at least metaphors, but are in fact merely reifications. Nisbett notes that in the West there is a fondness for using nouns (Nisbett, 2003), and this equips us well to describe a static, structural world with essential properties, but less well their dynamic interactions. If we are able to think about these three as processes this may help us to promote learning.

How are the words currently used?

‘Values’ is a word used in connection with judgment. Values are standards of what we think is good or bad, or normal or abnormal, or strange or familiar, and as an abstract noun it is used to express the quantity of positive evaluation.

We apply values to the world as we look at it. They govern what we do as virtuous people, and what we think about the actions of others. But sometimes we differentiate between moral values, which are what we feel we ought to do, and norms, which are what we customarily happen to do. We may apply ‘values’ particularly to the moral, and see them as taking some kind of priority over norms. In economics ‘value’ has implications of measures of demand, and of some intrinsic property by which diverse objects can be compared.

There is often talk in international schools of ‘universal values’, which all people are supposed to share. By contrast there is commonly reference to distinctive ‘cultural values’ which are shown by a particular group of people. It is noteworthy that cultural values are more often referred to in others than in our own group.

It is possible (Schwarz and Bilsky, 1987, Haidt, 2012) to list topics on which all

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societies hold preferred values, but within those topics particular preferred values are not universally shared, nor is their priority universally agreed.

Everyone has some loyalty to the groups of which they are members, but as literature repeatedly reminds us, clashes of duties may be resolved in a variety of ways. ‘International values’ have been nominated, either as empirically observed properties of ‘international’ people, or as properties thought to be desirable by the speaker for specific ‘international’ purposes (Cambridge, 2003, Pearce, 2003, Cambridge and Thompson, 2000, Cambridge and Carthew, 2006, Roberts, 2009).

‘Valuing’ implies that we care about something; that our judgment involves feelings. Emotion is central to the activity of values.

We use the word ‘Identity’ about who we are, or who we feel we are, or we ought to be. It is something that is the same about us, over time, yet we also develop it over time (Erikson, 1968). Even then, Erikson could say (ibid, p.19): ‘The more one writes about this subject, the more the word becomes a term for something as unfathomable as it is all-pervasive. One can only explore it by establishing its indispensability in various contexts.’

We sometimes speak of identity-building from a basis of identity diffusion, as a task to be completed or a role to be developed (Marcia, 1966), interrupted or facilitated by periodic ‘identity crises’ (Erikson, 1968). It is sometimes described in terms of social identity, who we are as members of a group, and personal identity, who we are as individuals (Breakwell, 1983, Tajfel, 1978, Schaetti, 1999). There is talk of ‘national identity’ within the world, or ethnic, religious, or communal identities, and of ‘identity politics’ in conflicts between self-identifying communities within a nation (Sen, 2006).

It is constituted by who we think we are and who other people think we are.

It is very close to our hearts, and we feel any assault on it acutely (Breakwell, 1983). But perhaps more useful than the noun ‘identity’ is the verb, ‘to identify’, which is to compare ourselves with a model, perhaps the loved or admired person from whom we took our values, perhaps an image we have of our self as we are or how we would like to be (Weinreich, 2003).

Interestingly, a post-modernist conceptualisation has been expressed by Giddens as ‘the capacity to keep a particular narrative going’ (Giddens, 1991, p.54), which represents not an essential property but something constructed by us at the moment of social interactions, and only instantiated in our discourse (Jameson, 1991, but see Strauss, 1997). But discourse is just the visible product; discourse can only be constructed from the marks on the brain that our experiences have left, so it is a product of persistent items.

There is talk about multiple identities, or of situated identities which are used in different company (Stryker, 1980), or of aspects or facets of identity (Weinreich, 2003). Identity is constantly reified in our conversations, but on the other hand it is evidenced by our actions, especially when they can be interpreted in terms of our own intentions, rather than through the perceptions of others.

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‘Culture’ is to do with the customs of social groups to which we belong. We apply it readily to the things that other people do that we find strange, and occasionally we admit that we do some cultural things ourselves. Culture is that matching set of things that it is normal to do in our home – our values. It is the reason that we have international schools, to bring up our children when abroad, sheltered from exposure to the host country values, to keep them ‘normal’. We may even use it for groups of people, saying someone comes from ‘a culture of violence’. We certainly contrast it with the conventions of neighbouring groups, making jokes in order to check that the speaker and the listener share the same viewpoint. Humour is universal; jokes are local.

High Culture is what ‘we’ (whatever community that may be) value highly.

Only experts can do High Culture. Often High Culture is what we show to others, saying that it symbolises our identity as group members, though it is far beyond our personal capabilities. We feel comfortable with our own culture, and with the many symbols of our group, and we value them especially when we are away from home, or in a minority.

What really happens?

In functional terms these words concern the working of the human valuesystem, whose role is to make us do what we need for survival.

Schwartz and Bilsky (1987) wrote about values: ‘Values are conceptions of the desirable that influence the ways people select action and evaluate events... cognitive representations of three types of human requirements: biologically based needs of the organism social interactional requirements for interpersonal communication social and institutional demands for group welfare and survival.’

Values in these terms are those things that we should do, or not do. Animal brains, including ours, work by remembering things, learning that they are to be favoured or disfavoured, and so arriving at beneficial actions appropriate to the situation – predominantly unconsciously, it seems (Haidt, 2012). Human brains are huge, remembering many details, even those things felt by others that are communicated to us through language, but they still need to work quickly in order to survive.

The miracle of the human brain is not just its capacity, but its ability to search and recall its carefully categorised content. To do this we record and memorise what we see not as detailed patterns of tiny signals or items, but as categories that we recognise: a face; a particular face; a letter; a word; a concept; a schema; a script.

Damasio (1994) has shown that, in order to make conscious decisions to do the right thing to survive, we mark remembered items with signals from the unconscious somatovisceral nervous system that operates the automatic

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functions of the body. Good things are associated with a ‘promote’ signal, and the bad things with an ‘inhibit’ signal. These signals he called Somatic Markers (SMs). We know them as Emotions, which we experience as Feelings (Damasio, 2000) – sometimes just inarticulate ‘gut feelings’. When a situation or stimulus is recognised, related SMs promote and inhibit a sequence of nerve connections, routing them so that they generate an appropriate action.

This happens unconsciously all the time, but also consciously when we think or speak and are able to debate decisions. We love the good, hate the bad, by definition, as defined by the emotional labels that we attach to those values.

Cacioppo, Berntson and Klein (1992) have demonstrated that our immediate perception of emotions is binary, so that before the emotion has been identified it is simply sensed as positive or negative. Like a sheepdog, emotion directs our actions through an unseen debate between our millions of remembered items, schemata and scripts, emerging with an evaluation of the scene or a contemplated action.

Most of this is unconscious, but a few of these negotiations are conscious, and we can put them into words; we call this reasoning. It is public and dialectical, and can constitute an experience observed and evaluated by another, but Haidt (2012) argues with good evidence that it seldom changes our minds or those of others. Nevertheless, it is this debate that is the field in which we take account of the convictions of others, and it is at the core of what we sense as our social and moral lives.

The involvement of emotion in all judgments means that it is a category error to separate affective and behavioural elements in considerations of human activity. We feel that there is a difference between the normative and the moral in the strength of our feeling, of how much we care, but I suggest that a functional approach calls for their inclusion in a single category.

Here we meet a familiar clash between fact and feelings. It could be said that the Enlightenment set them in opposition: reason against intuition, with reason presumed to be superior. Hume (2000) declared that ‘Reason should be the slave of Passion’, but most rationalists take the opposite view. If we speak of what is, instead of what ought to be, we find that although reason is subservient to passion, reasoning nevertheless happens, and we still bear responsibility for using the limited powers we have. The many instantaneous self-comparisons that we make in the course of this reflection is commonly reified as a reference to an essential ‘identity’, whereas actually the reference is made to many mental components of self and images of significant others.

Though moral decisions may feel distinct from normative ones, each is a balancing of SMs. Shweder, Mahapatra and Miller (1990) have shown that some things that are normative in one society may be moral in another. If actions are for communal good, Schwartz and Bilsky’s third category, they may be against our individual interests, in which case they will not be chosen unless the SM promoting them at the conscious level is very strong.

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This is the role of moral values, which we feel with strong emotion (Haidt and Kesebir, 2010). We become skilled at these through literature and storytelling, our moral gymnasium. As we listen or read we practice making moral judgments, making us good at it, and are exposed to moral values, making us good, in communal terms.

We learn values readily from people who are important to us (Keats, 1986, Bruner, 1985, Quinn, 2004, etc). There is an emotion to promote attachment to people – love. What comes from loved people gains by association a ‘good’ signal, and we tend to hold it strongly and positively. Moral values can get this powerful endorsement from transcendental validators, such as God or our ancestors, who cannot be opposed and overruled by worldly arguments of selfinterest. And if we feel that we have some kind of control over our lives we may postulate a core part of ourselves – our identity. The set of good, comfortable values that we see around us, displayed in our community as we grow up, is what we refer to as the culture of that community.

Doherty and Li (2011, p. 174) speak of its mental representation as the ‘social imaginary’. Ulf Hannerz (1992, p. 7) observed that ‘Culture has two kinds of loci: in human minds, and in public forms’, reminding us that we collectively form society, and society offers the values from which we build ourselves. As the set is assembled each new value is tested against existing components; where dissonance is sensed acceptance is difficult (Festinger, 1957), but consonance leads to an assemblage of matching items.

Schools play a part in this too, teaching and modelling shared values on behalf of the community (Hannerz, 1992). While we most readily detect those items of culture that are unlike our own way of doing things, in reality everything that is learned socially to be a right or wrong thing is a part of the same human social process. It forms the culture of other people, and it forms our own.

We may object that it doesn’t feel like this, but this is because a vital incentive to use our communicative and reflective faculty is provided by the sense that our actions are governed by conscious decisions. From this comes our pride in free will, but in fact our conscious minds can only think by using the remembered items stored in the unconscious, where they are already labelled good and bad (Haidt, 2012). We have various judgmental words for this: bias or prejudice; or commitment, conviction, belief, even knowledge. Each of these words carries an evaluative connotation, neatly exemplifying the point.

What can we say if we want to talk more clearly about human behaviour?

The reader may by now have noticed that in this account the three key terms are being used in unfamiliar ways. It is time to consider some distinctive alternative words.

The key to values, as seen here, is that they are the units of what we see, think or do that are felt to be right or wrong. We might call them doxomeres, meaning units of opinion, or waybits, since they are components of the proper way of

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doing things.

The key to culture is that it is a set of doxomeres that are available to all the children who grow up in a certain community, that is segregated from other child-rearing communities by space, language, or social barriers. We might call them demodoxas, meaning the opinions of a people, or peopleways.

The key to identity is that it is who we act like, the projected image for reflection on our values and how we got them and continue to hold them. This could be illustrated by calling it our idiomorph, or selfshape when we think of ourself, or when we apply it so someone else, heteromorph or othershape.

This is of course a reification; identity does not exist. More useful is the verb, to identify. The unconscious activity is a reference to previous experiences of a situation, in which we or someone who has an emotional loading in our minds faced a similar dilemma. What we do is to ask ourselves (consciously or unconsciously) the question: who should I behave like, and what would they choose to do? We can call this idioparathesis (putting oneself alongside), or self-likening.

Why this will not happen This account has treated three words very commonly used in the humanities and nominated replacements. There is, however, no expectation that usage will change as a result. There are several reasons for this. First, the Greek-based alternatives do not resonate with historic learning for most people, so they are unlikely to associate these words with a respected source carrying a positive SM, but rather find it dissonant and excluding, bringing a negative SM. Second, a word survives if it serves the purposes of communication between people, for which it must be understood by both interlocutors, and it must have a wide enough currency to become habitual. This requires that words can only arise within an adequate discursive community.

Third, it must bring satisfaction (a positive SM) to each party, which will happen only if there is a positive association such as a sense that in using the word they have ‘got it right’.

And finally, we have an inbuilt conservative emotion, referred to as ‘truth’, which ensures that language continues to convey standard meaning over time, without which it could not be used to convey meanings. This can sometimes be countered by a love of neologisms.

The aim: a discourse of method The real aim of this article, if not a revolution in the language of psychology, is to redirect emphasis from content to process in the hopes of encouraging original thought in the area of Culture, Identity and Values, to enrich our teaching and our students’ learning.

Continued overleaf International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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References Breakwell, G. (1983). Formulations and Searches. In: Breakwell, G. ed. Threatened identities, Chichester: John Wiley.

Bruner, J. S. (1985). Vygotsky: a historical and conceptual perspective. In: Wertsch, J. V. Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskyan perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G. and Klein, D. J. (1992). What is an emotion? The role of somatovisceral afference, with special emphasis on somatovisceral ‘illusions’. In: Clark, M. S. ed.

Emotion and social behaviour. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Cambridge, J. C. (2003) Identifying the globalist and internationalist missions of international schools. International Schools Journal, XXII, 2, 54-58 Cambridge, J. and Thompson, J. J. (2000). Internationalism, international-mindedness, multiculturalism and globalisation as concepts in defining international schools. staff.bath.ac.uk/ edsjcc/intemindedness.html accessed 18-01-2013.

Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: emotion, reason and the human brain. New York, NY: Putnam.

Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens. London: Vintage.

Doherty, C. and Li, M. (2011). Producing the intercultural citizen by the International Baccalaureate. In: Dervin, F., Gajardo, A. and Lavanchy, A. Eds. Politics of Interculturality.

Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Erikson, E. (1968). Identity; youth and crisis. New York, NY: Norton Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, pp. 1-31. London: Tavistock Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity, Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press.

Haidt, Jonathan (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Haidt, J. and Kesebir, S. (2010). Morality. In S. Fiske, D. Gilbert and G. Lindzey eds. Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th edition, pp. 797-832. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: studies in the social organization of meaning. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Hume, D. (2000). A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Keats, D. M. (1986). Using the cross-cultural method to study the development of values.

Australian Journal of Psychology, 38, 3, pp. 297-308.

Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego identity status, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3, pp. 551-558.

Nisbett, R. E. (2003). The Geography of Thought. London: Nicolas Brealey Pearce, R. (2003). Cultural values for international schools. International Schools Journal, 22, 2, pp.56-65.

Quinn, N. (2004). Child Rearing and Selfhood, or Culture and Personality. unpubl.

Roberts, B. (2009). Education for Global Citizenship: a practical guide for schools. Cardiff: International Baccalaureate.

Schaetti, B. (1999). Cultural identity development and resolution: a review of the literature. Paper for Doctoral program, The Union Institute.

Schwartz, S. H. and Bilsky, W. (1987). Toward a universal psychological structure of human values.

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 3, pp. 550-562.

Sen, A. (2006). Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Allen Lane Shweder, R. A., Mahapatra, M. and Miller, J.G. (1990). Culture and moral development. In: Stigler, J. W., Shweder, R. A. and Herdt, G. eds. Cultural psychology: essays on comparative human development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Strauss, C. (1997). Partly fragmented, partly integrated: an anthropological examination of ‘postmodern fragmented subjects’. Cultural Anthropology, 12, 3, pp. 362-404.

Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin, Cummings publications.

Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups: studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London: Academic Press.

Weinreich, P. (2003). Identity Structure Analysis. In: Weinreich, P. and Saunderson, W. Analysing identity: cross-cultural, societal and clinical contexts. London: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Richard Pearce has a PhD in International Education from the University of Bath, teaches IB biology at The International School of London, and is an education consultant.

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The World Studies Extended Essay Challenging students on global issues, an interdisciplinary approach. Part 1 Angela Rivière All too often we hear criticisms that young people are not engaged with global issues, that the challenges of the 21st century are simply other people’s problems, far removed from the preoccupations of teenagers. According to the mission statement of the International Baccalaureate (IB), which aims to ‘develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect’ (IB mission statement), students studying the Diploma Programme (DP) could not be accused of a lack of engagement.

The commitment of the IB to create more opportunities within the classroom and beyond to address some of the complex challenges of the 21st century, and to fully embed global engagement as part of the learning experience, is no more apparent than with the introduction of its new Extended Essay – the World Studies Extended Essay (WSEE).

The following discussion forms the first part of a longer paper on challenging students on global issues – an interdisciplinary approach. This part provides a short background on the World Studies Extended Essay and a discussion on the nature of inter-disciplinarity within the context of the International Baccalaureate. Part two will be published in the November issue of the International Schools Journal (ISJ) and will examine some of the rewards and challenges faced in undertaking interdisciplinary work at this level. It does so specifically in relation to the assessment of the WSEE. Introduction The World Studies Extended Essay is the culmination of a collaboration between the United World College (UWC) Mahindra, India, Project Zero, Harvard University,1 and the International Baccalaureate to develop an opportunity for students to demonstrate and apply their understanding of theories, methods and concepts outside of particular disciplines, recognising the importance of interdisciplinary understanding, specifically in relation to contemporary global issues.

What started out as a desire by UWC Mahindra to develop a course that would ‘enable students to gain a sufficient understanding of the issues that underlie many of the world’s most pressing problems and hence to become, more closely, the young adults described in the IB mission statement’ (Wilkinson, Vakil and Wilkinson 2011: 106), became a mainstream offering to all Diploma Programme

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students in the form of an Extended Essay in World Studies in August 2011. Until this time, it had been available to a small number of schools as a pilot.

The WSEE is an in-depth interdisciplinary study of an issue of contemporary significance. WSEEs examine issues such as the global food crisis, climate change, terrorism, energy security, migration, global health, technology and cultural exchange. Since global issues of this nature tend to play out in local contexts, any in-depth examination of these local instances of globally significant phenomena provide students with opportunities to engage in a well-grounded appreciation and understanding of the issue under study (IB 2012).

Examples include a zero-carbon footprint city policy in Denmark; the cost effectiveness of new clean energy technology in a village in India; the social and cultural factors that might influence maternal mortality rates in rural Guatemala; or the political and ethical issues that affect the implementation of human cloning in the USA. Furthermore, by employing an interdisciplinary approach, students are able to further appreciate the fact that a more comprehensive understanding of these issues requires them to actively engage across boundaries – not only local and global but the boundaries between disciplines.

Gareth Rees, former vice principal and director of studies of United World College of the Atlantic, current chief examiner for economics and the principal examiner for WSEE (2012), maintains that the ‘WSEE is an attractive option because it allows young people to engage with an issue of global or real world concern, identify its local manifestation and then actually do something about it in relation to applying the modes of learning and understanding they have gained from their subject specific courses.’ He has found that this ‘engagement in a global issue at a local level has provided the venue for interesting and original research’2.

Interdisciplinarity – within an IB context Klein has argued that ‘for most of the 20th century, the question of knowledge has been framed by disciplinarity (2000: 3) and certainly the Higher Education system has tended to be shaped by very distinct bodies of knowledge. And whilst this paper is not a discussion about disciplinarity, it is important in terms of context to understand that there are many arguments as to why a disciplinary structure came to predominate. Boisot, for example maintains that two arguments can be given to explain the main impetus for the emergence of this structure: first, he argues that it was the tendency to separate, classify and conceptualise the world around us; and secondly that the dominance of science in the production of knowledge facilitated this (1972: 89).

And even though, as Chettiparamb has argued, disciplines have not remained static over time, they have retained characteristics that make them identifiable as disciplines (2007: 7). These characteristics include the concepts, methods and ways of knowing that are specific to a discipline; the way in which disciplines International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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are embedded in society and how knowledge domains are institutionally organised (2007: 3-4).

Disciplines are ‘thought domains – quasi-stable, partially integrated, semiautonomous intellectual conveniences – consisting of problems, theories, and methods of investigation’ (Aram 2004: 380). They are ‘complex structures: to be engaged in a discipline is to shape, and be shaped by, the subject [...] – to become disciplined’ (Parker 2002: 374).

Despite the prevalence of the disciplines in our conceptualisations of knowledge, Boix-Mansilla and Dawes in their article entitled ‘Targeted assessment of students’ interdisciplinary work: an empirically grounded framework proposed’ maintain that ‘interdisciplinarity is increasingly the hallmark of contemporary knowledge production’ (2007: 215). Whilst in the past as a concept it was considered elusive, or as Chettiparamb (2007) has argued, viewed with scepticism, it has increasingly ‘gained popularity in policy, practice, teaching and research’ (Chettiparamb 2007: 1).

In undertaking research for this paper, several definitions of interdisciplinarity presented themselves, but in relation to the pedagogical thinking and practice of the IB, which has been heavily influenced by the work of Project Zero, the following definitions best encapsulate current thinking within the organisation.

Interdisciplinarity has come to describe work that demonstrates the capacity to ‘integrate knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to produce cognitive advancement – such as explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, creating a product – in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means’ (Boix-Mansilla and Dawes 2007: 219). It is the ‘involvement of more than one disciplinary perspective and explicit attention to the question of integration’ (Association for Integrative Studies, cited in Chattiparamb 2007: 31).

Following on from their definition, Boix-Mansilla and Dawes further argue that there are three core dimensions to interdisciplinary work that must be considered: 1. are the selected disciplinary insights appropriate and relevant to inform the issue being explored by the student?

2. Are these disciplinary insights clearly integrated so as to advance student understanding of the issue being explored?

3. Does the work display a clear sense of purpose and self criticism? (2007: 221-222). In other words, is it reflective?

The question here in relation to the WSEE and what is ultimately the measure of whether as a task it is ‘fit for purpose’ is: does the WSEE reflect these three core dimensions? In considering these, put quite simply, yes, the WSEE does reflect them.

First, it must be grounded in carefully selected and adequately employed disciplinary insights – students need to choose disciplines in which they have

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some knowledge and understanding. This is important because if students do not have the grounding then it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to draw the links to be able to move to the next stage which is to integrate this knowledge and understanding. ‘An extended essay in world studies is expected to show that the student possesses a knowledge and understanding of relevant theories, research methods, or findings in the selected IB Diploma Programme subjects’ (IB 2012: 147).

To address their research question students should ask themselves what aspects of the problem they will need to understand and which subjects will best equip them to develop a sound understanding of these. They should consider how bringing two or more disciplinary perspectives to bear might yield a deeper or better account of the issue. WSEEs must demonstrate students’ capacity to employ insights from the selected subjects and meaningfully connect them to address the topic (IB 2012: 149).

Secondly, and as will be discussed in more detail in part two of this paper3, the assessment criteria for the WSEE requires that students demonstrate more than just a juxtaposition of disciplinary perspectives; they must truly integrate the disciplines utilised. Examples of this can be taken from actual essays submitted.

An essay examining the impact of ecotourism on wildlife conservation at a particular site in Mauritius utilised biology and economics in order to assess the economic viability of eco-tours on wildlife conservation.

What made this a successful WSEE was the clear demonstration of an interdisciplinary approach to tackling this particular issue. At the centre of this discussion was an understanding that the situation could only be fully explored when ecological points of view were considered in relation to economic ones and vice versa. Furthermore, it was the explicitly integrative nature of the analysis and evaluation of data that ensured this essay scored highly.

A second example can be given of a student who successfully integrated peace and conflict studies, economics and politics to explore the issue of prejudice towards asylum seekers within a specific economic and political context. What was apparent in the analysis made within this essay is that the student fully recognised the complexity of the issue being researched and the way in which concepts and language may be interpreted differently by various disciplines and how this may impact on perceived attitudes.

More importantly, it raised awareness of contradictions in the treatment of asylum seekers – contradictions that the student may well not have identified if the essay had been completed within a disciplinary framework.

In relation to the dimension of whether the work has a clear purpose, is reflective and self critical, then the ‘researchers reflective space’ – an opportunity for students during the research process to reflect on and think through the issues they are researching and how their own world views, values and preconceptions influence this – facilitates this. Criterion A4 of the assessment criteria assesses the extent to which the research question of the essay focuses on an issue of International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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contemporary global relevance that the student has investigated; at the same time, the research question must clearly invite an integrative approach involving dimensions that are typically studied in the different disciplines (IB 2012: 153).

Whilst in the context of the traditionally discipline-focused Diploma Programme, the introduction of an explicitly interdisciplinary element might seem like a bold shift, the Diploma Programme does have two interdisciplinary courses, Environmental Systems and Societies and Literature and Performance.

Adopting an approach that is outside traditional disciplinary teaching is certainly not a new endeavour within the IB and when one considers the continuum of education for IB students, what is interesting is that students who have gone through the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Middle Years Programme (MYP) will not have been used to the rigid disciplinary format that the DP is seen to represent. The introduction of the WSEE may well be a novel addition to the DP but for most IB students it reflects a continuation and progression of their IB educational experience. So how does the WSEE form part of what is commonly referred to as the ‘IB continuum of education’?

The transdisciplinarity of PYP Cecile Doyen and Kassandra Boyd, curriculum managers in the PYP, maintain that the pedagogical philosophy of the PYP believes that student learning is best done when it is authentic – relevant to the ‘real world’; and transdisciplinary – where the learning is not confined within the boundaries of traditional discipline areas but is supported and enriched by them.

Whilst for many little distinction is made between multi-, inter-, crossand trans-disciplinary, within the PYP transdisciplinary is interpreted as an approach that transcends the boundaries of conventional disciplines: an approach that starts with a real life issue, which is then explored from multiple perspectives and experiences which, whilst it might be related to disciplinary knowledge, is not grounded in it.

Through acknowledging and struggling to meet the diverse needs of the student – physical, social, intellectual, aesthetic, cultural – PYP schools ensure that the learning is engaging, relevant, challenging and significant. What adds significance to student learning in the PYP is its commitment to this transdisciplinary model, whereby themes of global significance that transcend the confines of the traditional discipline areas frame the learning throughout the primary years, including in the early years. These themes are: Who we are.

Where we are in place and time.

How we express ourselves.

How the world works.

How we organise ourselves.

Sharing the planet.

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The aim of the themes is to promote an awareness of the human condition and an understanding that there is a commonality of human experience. Students explore this common ground collaboratively, from the multiple perspectives of their individual experiences and backgrounds. This sharing of experience increases the students’ awareness of, and sensitivity to, the experiences of others beyond the local or national community. It is central to the programme and a critical element in developing an international perspective, which must begin with each student’s ability to consider and reflect upon the point of view of someone else in the same class.

It is important to understand that this transdisciplinary programme of inquiry is not merely a novel way of repackaging subject-specific content, but rather a way of students using a range of subject-specific knowledge, concepts and skills in order to develop a deeper understanding of the transdisciplinary themes (IB 2012b).

Clear and meaningful links can be made here to the WSEE as students in the PYP are already beginning to appreciate how the world around them can be best understood by making connections between different perspectives and experiences. And, whilst the transdisciplinary approach taken within the PYP does not assume that these perspectives are framed within specific disciplines, the idea is that through transdisciplinary themes students are encouraged to make connections with their learning inside and outside the classroom.

Students are required to engage in a collaborative, transdisciplinary inquiry process that involves them in identifying, investigating and offering solutions to real-life issues or problems (IB 2008). Whereas, in the PYP, students learn about and use knowledge, concepts and skills from a variety of subjects to explore their transdisciplinary themes, in the MYP, students study a range of disciplines within subject groups and bring together two or more established areas of expertise to build new interdisciplinary understanding of issues.

The interdisciplinarity of the MYP Offering clear continuity in learning as well as progression from the PYP, the MYP firmly embodies an interdisciplinary approach. More than this, The Next Chapter5, which represents the culmination of a thorough and extensive review and development of the MYP, will introduce learning through global contexts, which will replace the areas of interaction 6 .

Learning through global contexts involves understanding concepts in context: more simply put, they frame inquiry, making the exploration of issues and ideas situational so that students have relevant and meaningful examples to draw on. The learning contexts are chosen from global contexts to ensure the encouragement of international-mindedness and global engagement within the programme. These have been influenced by the six transdisciplinary themes of the PYP. This move from transdisciplinary to interdisciplinary can be seen as one that requires much more explicit connections to be made to specific International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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disciplines. In exploring issues within global contexts students are able to integrate, transfer and apply the knowledge gained through their conceptual understanding to these.

The curriculum manager responsible for the development of interdisciplinary teaching and learning in MYP schools, Gabriela Gonzalez-Vaillant, confirms that one of the key features of the MYP is its emphasis on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This emerged as a consequence of the challenges and opportunities of educating students in and for the 21st century. More than this, young learners instinctively make connections between knowledge domains in order to try and apprehend the world which surrounds them. Very often this is because they have not yet been educated within the ‘confines’ of disciplinary canons that have tended to predominate in the world of academia.

There seem to be almost contradictory demands on education in the 21st century: on the one hand, secondary education, in particular from ages 14-19, strives to organize the students’ educational experience into disciplinary compartments.

This may well reflect the demand for increasing specialization in a globalised world. However, on the other hand, a globalised world, which is increasingly complex in nature, also demands that we educate future professionals who can integrate disciplines in novel and creative ways, better equipping them to help tackle and solve some of the most pressing global issues. This is even more crucial given that it is increasingly argued that complex problems require the application of multiple perspectives in order to truly understand them.

Building upon vast research undertaken by experts at Harvard University, including Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Howard Gardner, the MYP defines interdisciplinary understanding as having three traits: 1. It is integrative – bringing together concepts, methods, or forms of communication from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise.

2. It is purposeful – students connect disciplines to solve real world problems, create products or address complex issues in ways that would have been unlikely through a single disciplinary means.

3. It is grounded in the disciplines7.

Teachers and schools are encouraged to foster meaningful interdisciplinary experiences throughout the MYP and this is encouraged through the use of significant concepts and contexts that allow for the integration of disciplinary knowledge. The conceptual, constructivist and inquiry-based pedagogical framework of the MYP fosters this type of approach and is conducive to developing the complex skills necessary for the DP, especially in relation to Theory of Knowledge (TOK) and the WSEE. Since its inception, the MYP has been innovative in providing schools with the necessary tools to teach and assess interdisciplinary understanding.

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Furthermore, in an effort to continue being at the forefront of educational innovation, and to ensure greater alignment across programmes and with national curriculum requirements, the MYP has decided to introduce some significant changes which will further enhance its interdisciplinary approach.

Starting in 2015, MYP students will have the opportunity to sit for an optional summative e-assessment that will have both disciplinary and interdisciplinary components, where knowledge and experience gained during the disciplinary assessments will be applied in a specific context in an interdisciplinary way.

Having specific interdisciplinary objectives and criteria will be a breakthrough in the programme as it will allow schools to scaffold interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Again, this will further support the development of the necessary skills and aptitudes that the WSEE and successful completion of the DP require.8 Furthermore, when one considers the guiding principles and philosophy behind the transdisciplinarity of the PYP and the interdisciplinarity of the MYP, the introduction of the WSEE encompasses the approaches to learning that both embody in one self-contained and independent task. Students draw on an issue of global importance that manifests itself at a local level, has some personal significance to them, and then they explore this through the lens of more than one discipline. It is worth noting here that Veronica Boix-Mansilla of Project Zero, and one of the leading proponents of interdisciplinarity, wrote the current interdisciplinary guide for the MYP and was heavily involved in the development of the WSEE. This demonstrates the IB’s commitment to ensuring a coherency of approach and thinking with regard to this area of teaching and learning.

Approaches to learning has always been a central component of the MYP, and this has seen the development, and transfer of skills across disciplines, being at the forefront pedagogical practice. This transfer of skills and the integration of knowledge domains are both higher order thinking skills – 21st century skills – and the DP has also more recently committed to an initiative examining approaches to learning. This which will provide a real continuum across all the IB programmes, ensuring that students are given the opportunity to develop these skills throughout their IB experience. The WSEE brings together many of the areas within the approaches to learning, such as the development of research, communication, thinking and self management skills.9 Interdisciplinary learning is becoming increasingly common, especially since the recognition that answering complex questions and gaining a deeper understanding of issues is often beyond the limits of a single discipline. This recognition is not just confined to the IB – the intellectual landscape is changing and many universities across the world are embodying a more interdisciplinary approach, requiring a mixture of both breadth and depth.

Universities in the United States encourage students to take a broader liberal arts undergraduate course, and in the UK more and more universities are now offering interdisciplinary undergraduate courses. This change in particular International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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reflects the more widely held belief that in relation to tackling issues of global significance the boundaries between knowledge areas, such as history, economics, geography and biology for example, are no longer clearly defined.

Issues such as climate change, migration and sustainability can rarely be understood within the confines of discrete disciplines; and more than this, the solutions to today’s complex problems necessitate understanding diverse and sometimes competing perspectives.

The challenging but rewarding experience the WSEE offers students is in exploring these issues through an interdisciplinary approach in which they are able to ‘integrate knowledge and modes of thinking from two [...] disciplines in order to [...] offer explanations in ways that would not have been possible through single disciplinary means’ (Boix-Mansilla and Dawes, 2007: 219).

As a consequence they develop their ability to think critically and creatively about these issues, developing the intellectual rigour of synthesising multiple perspectives in tackling real, locally grounded and personally relevant research questions. In many respects, at this level it is a unique and exciting opportunity – one that the DP seeks to develop and promote in a complementary role to its more disciplinary tradition. However, it is not without its challenges, challenges that will be explored in the next issue of the ISJ. Footnotes 1.

Project Zero is an educational research group based at Harvard University. They have undertaken extensive work on interdisciplinary learning and thinking.

2.

Personal communication – September 2012.

3.

The second-part of this paper will be published in the November 2013 issue of the International Schools Journal.

4.

All extended essays are assessed using 11 generic criteria, each assessing a different aspect of the essay. The generic criteria for the EE and WSEE are as follows: A: research question; B: introduction; C: investigation; D: knowledge and understanding of the topic studied; E: reasoned argument; F: application of analytical and evaluative skills; G: use of language appropriate to the subject; H: conclusion; I: formal presentation; J: abstract; K: holistic judgement. For more detailed information of the assessment criteria please refer to the Extended Essay Guide, IB 2012 available on the OCC (Online Curriculum Centre).

5.

If you are an IB World School with access to the Online Curriculum Centre (OCC) you can learn more about The Next Chapter on the MYP pages. If you do not have access to the OCC please go to: www.ibo.org

6.

The areas of interaction provide the MYP with its unique core: the contexts through which subjects are taught. They are: approaches to learning; community and service; health and social education; environments and human ingenuity.

7.

These traits were discussed in more depth and in relation to the WSEE earlier in the article.

8.

Many thanks to Gabriela Gonzalez-Vaillant for her insights into the MYP.

9.

If you are an IB World School with access to the IB OCC (Online Curriculum Centre) you will be able to find more information on the ‘approaches to teaching and learning’ initiative in the DP there. If you do not have access please go to: www.ibo.org

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References Aram, J.D. (2004) Concepts of Interdisciplinarity: Configurations of Knowledge and Action.

Human Relations 57 (4), 379-412.

Boisot, M. (1972) Discipline and interdisciplinarity. In Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities. Paris: OECD, 89-97.

Boix-Mansilla, V., & Dawes, E. (2007). Targeted Assessment of Students’ Interdisciplinary Work: An Empirically Grounded Framework Proposal. Journal of Higher Education, 78 (2), 215-237.

Boyd, Kassandra (2012) Personal communication, January 2012.

Chettiparamb, A. (2007) Interdisciplinarity: a literature review, The Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Group, University of Southampton.

Doyen, Cecile (2012) Personal Communication, December 2012.

Gonzalez-Vaillant, Gabriela (2012) Personal Communication, December 2012.

IB (2008) PYP Exhibition Guidelines, Cardiff: IB. IB (2012) Extended Essay Guide, Cardiff: IB. IB (2012b) Developing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry, Cardiff: IB. Klein, J.T. (2000) A Conceptual Vocabulary of Interdisciplinary Science. In Weingart, P. and Stehr, N (Eds) Practising Interdisciplinarity. London: University of Toronto Press, 3-24.

Parker, J. (2002) A New Disciplinarity: Communities of Knowledge, Learning and Practice.

Teaching in Higher Learning 7 (4), 373-386.

Rees, Gareth (2012), Personal communication, September 2012.

Wilkinson, D. Vakil, C. and Wilkinson, V. (2011) ‘Schools’ contributions to curriculum innovation in the IB diploma: a case study of the world studies extended essay’ in Taking the IB Diploma Programme Forward edited by Hayden, M. and Thompson, J. Suffolk: John Catt Educational Ltd. Angela Rivière is curriculum manager, Diploma Programme Development, International Baccalaureate, The Hague.

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Finding the value of X: re-exploring the influence of teachers’ interpersonal qualities on learning Paul Crowhurst International educators are continually searching for ways to make learning more meaningful for their students. As a professional educator for over a decade I have seen an array of programmes and resources introduced to a variety of educational contexts. Some have led to an elevation in the quality of learning in classrooms. However, many fail, often swept away never to be discussed again.

Even those programmes with the greatest reputations and theoretical backing fail to gain traction in some schools. Yet the great search for the panacea of education goes on year after year as schools attempt to achieve consistency of quality in learning throughout their institution.

After considerable contemplation around this phenomenon and a substantial amount of associated reading, I would like to propose an idea as to why there is such disparity in the quality of teaching and learning at all levels. This paper presents one view on why educators and parents are further than they ever have been from a shared confidence in the experiences that make up the stepping stones in our children’s educational journey.

Beyond programmes and resources One hypothesis about what makes a great learning environment is that it is, in fact, not established by well detailed programmes and techniques of teaching. Nor is a great classroom the function of fantastic resources, digital and otherwise, although these may at some point all be utilised to enhance learning. A perspective I favour is that learning is largely defined by the teacher himself, or herself, and their interpersonal characteristics, not the educational paraphernalia by which they are surrounded.

In my time as a classroom teacher and now as an administrator I have seen a number of fantastic teachers who possess something special that I would like to call The X Factor. There is something about these teachers that drives them to make their classrooms dynamic, engaging and free from psychological inhibitions so that their students can actively engage in learning. Some of these teachers are decidedly ‘old school’ and not necessarily tech savvy. They are not always ‘details people’ whose planning and assessment documentation is always fully up-to-date. Some of them are introverts; others are extroverts. So what is this defining factor that these teachers possess? What is the value of X? It is personal There was, in education’s not too distant past, a movement that emphasised the

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personal attributes of teachers. It flowed from humanistic psychology and was in vogue throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s (Ivey, D’Andrea, Ivey & Simek-Morgan, 2002). The humanistic movement in education has given us a clear description of what type of personal qualities might make a difference in the classroom. These qualities are a mixture of externally displayed behaviours and the internally held beliefs that inform these.

Threat To understand the value of the personal encounter between teacher and student it is vital to comprehend the effect that threat has on learners. Threat significantly inhibits learning and growth. When a person perceives threat they react in two ways. First, they experience tunnel vision, narrowing their view so that all they see is the perceived threat. Secondly, they protect their existing position and become defensive, only concerned with the preservation of self (Combs, 1975).

In a classroom, the teacher can become a threat to students. Heavy criticism, low regard for students and their abilities, and remaining aloof can be perceived by learners as psychologically threatening. Threatened students simply cannot see things outside their narrow scope of reference. Their openness to new experiences is low because their energy is focused towards defending themselves.

A meaningful interpersonal connection serves as an antidote to threat. In the absence of threat, tunnel vision is exchanged for a more open view of the world (Combs et al., 1978). This brings learners’ creative abilities to the fore as they are free to interact with their environment. In the classroom this enables learners to explore more freely their learning environment because they see their classroom as a place of safety.

Defining X Humanistic educators viewed the qualities of effective teachers on two levels, overt and covert. There are outward demonstrations (overt qualities) that originate from internally held views on the nature of the surrounding world (covert). Humans are constantly in the process of responding to the actions of others and at the same time trying to perceive the purpose behind these actions. These personal attributes are a potent force in unlocking the potential of learners.

Overt qualities: core conditions Certain conditions, when present in the teacher, were seen to optimise the potential for growth in the student. Three core conditions were proposed by Rogers (1962) as vital in the facilitation of meaningful change in others: realness, acceptance, and empathy. Rogers first tested these attributes extensively in counselling and psychotherapy and later applied them to education (Rogers, 1969). His views were met with strong support from within education circles and enhanced the overall momentum of humanistic education (Smith, 1997; Combs et al, 1978). In the time since, these traits have become catch cries of International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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both counsellors and teachers of a humanistic persuasion (Ivey et al., 2002; Patterson, 1973).

Realness Realness was also referred to by Rogers (1962) as congruence. This involves the teacher being genuine in their encounter with the learner. Effective teachers should strive to be ‘themselves’ as they are at any given point in time. If they are enthusiastic, they show it; if they are bored, they do not hide it. Essentially they are a real person to their students and not a faceless demonstration of curriculum standards (Smith, 1997). However, the teacher should constantly be aware that any negative feeling is ‘their feeling’ and not a fact about the student or their work. The teacher should make this evident to their students.

Acceptance Rogers (1969) struggled to give one name to this essential characteristic.

Although acceptance is the best word available, several other words and terms have been used to provide further definition for this attribute. Initially Rogers (1962) adopted the term unconditional positive regard to describe the way one person can view others positively, even in the face of circumstances that might suggest otherwise.

Other words that have been used to convey the nature of this attribute are respect, trust, and prizing. Prizing, in particular, seems to describe this characteristic well because it speaks of holding the student in high esteem.

When an individual is held in high esteem by a significant other this has a powerful impact on motivation and self-concept (Patterson, 1973). It also brings them out of the defensive shell that many withdraw into in order to protect themselves (Kelley, 1962). The sense of acceptance students can get from a teacher builds self-esteem and can lead them to feeling safe and secure enough to take risks in their learning.

Empathy Empathetic understanding is a vital dynamic in the promotion of growth in the classroom (Allender, 2001). Empathy is the ability of one person to possess an accurate understanding of another person’s world as if it were their own (Smith, 1997). Rogers (1962) stressed that it is vital that the ‘as if’ component is not lost. The teacher must convey an understanding of a student’s situation whether they are frustrated, angry, or feel they have been treated unfairly. Yet, this must occur without the teacher including their own anger and frustration as though the student’s struggle is their problem too.

Essentially, empathy has no real synonym in the English language. A well known Native American phrase, ‘to walk in his moccasins’ describes this attribute accurately (Patterson, 1973). The successful teacher can put themselves in the shoes of the students they are seeking to help. They can see the world as the student sees it. From this position, the teacher speaks and acts in ways that

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are liberating to the student because the learner feels that the teacher really knows them and their experience.

Covert qualities: beliefs Another vital aspect of effective teaching is the nature of the beliefs teachers hold. The external observable characteristics of effective teachers have already been discussed. These characteristics are influenced by the internal frame of reference and beliefs that a teacher holds (Aspy, 1969; Combs et al., 1978). It is the beliefs and values of an individual that will inevitably be conveyed in their outward interaction with others.

Effective teachers hold beliefs in line with Maslow’s (1954) description of the self-actualizing person. They are characterized by acceptance of self, their situation, and others. This leads to functioning more effectively on a personal level with others (Combs et al., 1999). They are less likely to feel threatened and therefore resort to defensive behaviour. This liberates them to interact in a free and non-threatening manner with others (Combs et al., 1974). Beliefs are most visible to others in two areas – expectations and intentions.

Expectations Expectancy is a significant determinant of response. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1975) explored the effect teachers’ expectations of their students had on learning. They found that children whose teachers believed they were more able than they actually were made significant gains in IQ compared to a control group. Rosenthal and Jacobson’s conclusion from the study was that intellectual performance can often be attributed to the favourable expectations of teachers.

Teachers who believe in the ability of their students will have expectations of a more successful contribution from them. This expectation sends a message to the learner: ‘you can do it’. This seems to be a significant motivating factor in student achievement. More recent research from Pardini (1997) supports this notion, that if teachers believe their students can perform at high levels, then they will exceed reasonable expectations in their learning.

Intentions Students will further seek to explore the beliefs of teachers through observing the underlying intentions behind their actions. Combs et al. (1978) make the point that it is not what is said, but the meaning behind what is said, that influences learners. Students are not merely interested in what their teachers are doing but they consider the reason why a teacher is taking an action as extremely significant too. Intentions often say more about what one person believes about another than the actual action itself.

For example, a teacher may set a challenging essay to write because it will take students a lot of class time to complete and minimise the amount of contact the teacher needs to have with the class. On the other hand the same essay might be set because the teacher genuinely believes the students are capable of International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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producing quality writing worth sharing with others. Outwardly, the teacher’s behaviour is the same, but the underlying intention is quite different. The latter set of intentions frame learners positively, whereas, the former frames them in a negative way.

Students will be either affirmed or discouraged by a teacher’s intentions. If they are affirmed they will be motivated toward more meaningful engagement with the teacher. If they are sent a negative message, they are likely to withdraw more from the teacher and the learning environment, as they adopt a more defensive position.

What does this mean?

Contemporary educational leaders have much to think about. Are we finding, keeping, and developing professionals whose interpersonal abilities are at a level that facilitates growth? Or are we perpetuating a cycle of substandard education by believing that effective teachers are made by giving them the right curriculum tools? Tools certainly help the master craftsperson but it is their skills that set them apart and, at the heart of teaching as a helping profession, it is interpersonal skills that make the difference. Therefore, school leaders should consider the following suggestions with a view of making them initiatives within their schools: 1. Focus research on interpersonal dynamics in classrooms.

Much of what has been discussed in this paper has had little exposure within international educational circles. Dated as much of the literature referenced in this paper is, it remains reasonably exhaustive and therefore a rich base for new research. Cultural consideration would need to be paramount in any research as the focus and demands within an Asian school community are often very different to those within a European one.

2. Careful consideration of personal attributes during teacher recruitment.

There is evidence here to suggest effective teachers can be identified, through their personal attributes, before they even enter a school. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that international school Principals and Heads are often very focused on experience ahead of personal attributes. In light of what the paper has explored, it seems bizarre that IB teaching experience may be the primary differentiating factor between candidates for jobs.

Other factors contribute to the making of a good teacher. If interpersonal qualities make a major difference then these should be at the fore of new teacher selection criteria. This could be achieved by ensuring referee checks are done that explore the interpersonal characteristics of the candidate. Making the interview process comprehensive and engaging the applicants on an interpersonal level would be useful too. Certainly support for school leaders is needed so they can confidently evaluate the ability of candidates.

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3. Professional learning that promotes the growth of self.

Teachers will benefit from professional activities that promote personal growth.

Reflection on the various aspects of professional work can be helpful when carried out both in a team and on an individual level (Rogers, 1969). The end goal of this will be to overcome personal and social inhibitions which, in turn, will promote healthier, more confident teachers that should translate to a higher functioning personal life.

5. Freedom and expectation to create.

Effective teachers will naturally gravitate toward creating a classroom where children have freedom to create, be original, and explore their own ideas. This type of learning environment has for some time been seen as a necessity. School leaders and educational policy makers often suffocate creativity under the weight of accountability practices and external requirements.

These leaders have a responsibility to serve classroom practitioners and promote psychologically healthy environments that allow teachers freedom to let their students follow their own creative inclinations. This will only happen if teachers can also have the freedom to create. They must not be compelled to follow formulated regimes of curriculum delivery. In essence, our schools should be places of liberty where everyone works toward exploring the limits of their potential rather than institutions that demand a strict adherence to prescribed canons of knowledge.

Conclusion Ask any parent, student, or honest school Principal and they will tell you that the personal characteristics of teachers make a huge difference to the quality of learning in a classroom. Therefore, school leaders need to focus their energy on recruiting and retaining individuals with the highest personal qualities. This may mean transcending traditional logic around who are the best teachers to have on staff.

It is not the past experience or some special knowledge that we come to love in our teachers. Rather we appreciate the warmth of their humanity as they allow us to experience it. This enables learners to focus on exploring the extent of their own potential within a psychologically stress-free environment. Educational leaders must find ways of looking beyond what is written within the pages of a teacher’s CV and into the depths of who they are and who they might be to the students they will teach.

Teachers have a responsibility too. They need to reflect on their classroom experiences, putting themselves in their student’s shoes for the purpose of improving their ability to develop strong interpersonal connections with students.

We will never be able to bottle the X Factor possessed by certain teachers.

However, careful attention to certain conditions within schools will help to develop its prevalence. The humanistic movement in education has left modern educators much to think about in this regard.

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References Allender, J. S. (2001). Teacher self: The practice of humanistic education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Aspy, D. N. (1969). The effect of teachers’ inferred self concept upon student achievement.

Resources in Education, Retrieved 12 May, 2009, from web.ebscohost.com Combs, A. W., Blume, R.A., Newman, A.J., & Wass, H.C. (1974). The professional education of teachers. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Combs, A. W., Miser, A.B., & Whitaker, K.S. (1999). On becoming a school leader: A person centered challenge. Alexandria, VA: ASCD Publications.

Combs, A. W. (1975). New concepts of human potentials: New challenges for teachers. In T. B. Roberts (Ed). Four Psychologies Applied to Education: Freudian, Behavioral, Humanistic, Transpersonal (pp.296-303). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Combs, A. W., Avila, D.L., & Purkey, W.W (1978). Helping relationships: Basic concepts for the helping professions. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Ivey, A. E., D’Andrea, M., Ivey, M., & Simek-Morgan, L (2002). Theories of counseling and psychotherapy: A multicultural perspective. Boston: Pearson.

Kelley, E. C. (1962). The fully functioning self. In A.W. Combs (Ed). Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming (pp. 9-20). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York, N.Y: Harper and Row. Pardini, P. (2007). Higher expectations challenge teachers and students to succeed. Journal of Staff Development, 28(4), 10-13.

Patterson, C. H. (1973). Humanistic education. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

Rogers, C. L. (1962). The interpersonal relationship: The core of guidance. Harvard Educational Review, 32(4), 85-101.

Rogers, C. L. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1975). Teachers’ expectations: Determinants of Pupils’ IQ gains.

In T. B. Roberts (Ed). Four Psychologies Applied to Education: Freudian, Behavioral, Humanistic, Transpersonal (pp. 384-388). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Smith, M. K. (1997) Carl Rogers and informal education. The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, Retrieved June 18, 2009, from www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rogers.htm.

Patterson, C. H. (1973). Humanistic education. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

Paul Crowhurst is primary learning leader, head of mathematics learning, at Chinese International School, Hong Kong.

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The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne: a clinical model for pre-service teacher preparation Melody Anderson and Rannah Scamporlino ‘In the future, we see all teachers being Masters of the classroom’ (Melbourne Graduate School of Education, 2007) Ensuring a quality teacher in every classroom is crucial if our schooling is to promote equity and excellence and to create intelligent and informed citizens, consistent with the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, (MYCEETA, 2008).

It is broadly acknowledged that the quality of the teacher is the most significant factor in influencing student achievement (Richardson & Watt 2006; Barber and Mourshed 2007; Hattie 2009). The challenge is provision of high quality teachers (Darling-Hammond and Baratz-Snowen 2005; Dinham 2008) and thus the nature and effectiveness of pre-service teacher education becomes an important focus.

This paper outlines the Master of Teaching program, introduced in 2008 at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne.

The masters-level academic course builds upon the (inter) disciplinary knowledge and critical analytical skills of graduate-entry teacher candidates.

The program is built on the premise that graduates entering will have a firm foundation of disciplinary knowledge and analytical skills, bringing also diverse educational and life experiences. Within an inclusive culture of research-based academic rigor and respect for evidence, teacher candidates are prepared for the complexities of the 21st century classroom.

The program aims to produce interventionist classroom practitioners, capable of using data or evidence to determine the diverse learning needs of individual students. The program is a fundamental change to the way we have prepared teachers in the past, building a strong link between theory and practice within a new partnership model with selected schools. Opportunities for teacher candidates to undertake teaching practice in international settings to enhance their cultural awareness and expand their understanding of global education are an additional feature of the program.

Introduction and background In 2008 the University of Melbourne implemented its strategic plan ‘Growing Esteem’, introducing landmark educational reforms collectively known as the International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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‘Melbourne Model’. The university transitioned from a plethora of typical undergraduate degrees to six broad undergraduate ‘new generation’ degrees qualifying students for graduate programs and entry to the professions.

In response to the strategic plan the Melbourne Graduate School of Education launched the Master of Teaching, a two-year postgraduate professional degree comprising secondary, primary and early childhood streams. Although the university strategic plan was the catalyst for review, it also provided an opportune platform for the Melbourne Graduate School of Education to address ongoing national and international criticism of pre-service teacher education.

A major review of 1000 schools in the USA (Levine, 2006) determined that teacher preparation was ineffective and that few programs linked theory to teaching practice. These criticisms have persisted despite decades of review and recommended reforms. In the local context, these findings are consistent with the recent Federal inquiry into teacher education (2006) Top of the Class and the Victorian State Parliamentary Report (2005) Step In, Step Up, Step Out. The program design of the Master of Teaching is strongly informed by an extensive body of national and international research and reviews into pre-service teacher education programs. It has been benchmarked against 20 graduate entry pre-service teacher education programs at leading institutions worldwide. The design has been influenced by the Carnegie Foundation of New York’s ‘Teachers for a New Era’ (TNE, 2004). This major reform initiative is a significant shift from traditional views and ‘apprenticeship’ models of teacher preparation and recognizes teaching as an ‘academically taught clinical practice profession’.

The reform agenda focuses on the use of data or evidence to inform teaching practice (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). Aligned with the TNE agenda, the Master of Teaching offers a highly rigorous curriculum underpinned by a strong body of theoretical knowledge that is articulated and sequenced within the context of continuous and sustained professional practice. The design principles are influenced by findings that ‘program designs that include more practicum experiences and student teaching, integrated with coursework, appear to make a difference in teachers’ practices, confidence, and long-term commitment to teaching’ (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).

Teacher candidates develop a professional sense of themselves as teachers and are more likely to engage with elements of the wider school program than in traditional practicum models (Scott et. al., 2010:19). Graduates of programs that incorporate an extended practicum experience interlaced with coursework have increased confidence, are more effective teachers and increasingly committed to teaching as a long-term career (Darling-Hammond & Bransford 2005: 411).

An important and integral component of the program is the close connection and collaboration between the university and partnership schools, and its increasing global perspective. Teacher candidates are on placement in schools within the first weeks of the program, learning and applying the theory

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immediately within the context of real classroom practice. There is a very close connection, linking academic and clinical faculties in planning, curriculum, design and teaching, consistent with Levine’s stance on ‘exemplary’ teacher preparation programs (Levine, 2006).

University-school partnership roles Professional partnerships have been established with selected schools sharing a common goal to improve the initial professional preparation of teachers. Within the Master of Teaching model participating schools are geographically arranged within localities to form partnership school groups of eight to ten schools.

Schools within each group typically provide placements for three to six teacher candidates with cohorts averaging 25-30 per partnership school group.

There is a designated base school within each school group and this is usually the venue for the practicum seminar. Highly skilled teachers are drawn from the base schools to be appointed as the ‘teaching fellows’, employed on a 0.5 basis to ensure the coherent and consistent delivery of the practicum.

The teaching fellow The roles and responsibilities of the teaching fellow are many and varied, calling upon them to be administrators, providers of pastoral care and coordinators of the in-school experience. As an advocate of the university, the teaching fellow disseminates information about the design of the program to all staff within their school groups. They brief mentor teachers specifically about placement requirements, maintaining regular and frequent liaison throughout the period of supervision.

The teaching fellow designs programs to involve teacher candidates with all aspects of the school, beginning with induction and orientation processes; regularly observes them in teaching situations, monitoring their progress; and identifying priorities for future action. They moderate the assessment of teacher candidates with mentor teachers as they progressively grade against the standards, facilitating submission of online reports and alerting the clinical specialist and professional partnership coordinator if there are any progress or placement concerns.

The clinical specialist Clinical specialists are members of the university academic staff who are usually engaged also in academic programs. The clinical specialist personifies an integral link in the partnership between schools and the university and facilitates the theory-practice nexus within the practicum seminar. As university representatives they have the primary responsibility for promoting and building upon the university-school partnership. They combine the academic strengths of the faculty and school capabilities to meet the professional development needs of teacher candidates and their mentor teachers.

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Alongside the teaching fellow the clinical specialist is appointed to a school group and supports the development of teacher candidate members. Clinical specialists make supervisory visits during the placement block to observe and assess teacher candidates in teaching situations and submit a supervisory report framed by national statutory standards for graduate teachers (AITSL, 2010).

The partnership and professional practice academic coordinator One partnership coordinator is appointed to each stream of the Master of Teaching to oversee the activities of all participants, monitor the success of all school-university partnerships and foster the establishment of new school partnerships. The partnership coordinator role involves monitoring the success of all partnerships with a particular focus upon the teacher candidates’ perspective. The professional practice academic coordinator role includes responsibility for the academic content of seminars and supervising the overall assessment of student progress.

The practicum The practicum is structured in two component parts. The Schools Program provides continuous experience two days per week with a shared time allocation between teaching/classroom tasks and the practicum seminar/academic tasks.

Formative assessment to assist teacher candidates to monitor their professional learning as well as identifying strategies and priorities for action is provided by the interim report.

Teacher candidates attaining a satisfactory assessment proceed to a period of sustained professional practice during a two or three week placement block with a graduated progression of teaching requirements and responsibilities. A summative assessment of professional growth framed by the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2010), is reported after each block placement.

A fundamental change and unique feature of the Master of Teaching program is the fortnightly and school-based practicum seminar, providing an integrated focus for all academic subjects and professional practice and further embedding the links between theory and practice. The clinical specialist delivers the seminar on site at the base school with support from the teaching fellow. The seminar series is framed by national statutory standards and the Principles of Learning Teaching (PoLT), widely recognized principles of best practice.

The seminar program provides a forum for teacher candidates to synthesise and reflect upon their professional learning under the three broad AITSL domains of Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement. School staff is invited to attend where possible and school-based speakers frequently address the teacher candidates. The seminar is a reciprocal site for professional development.

A high level of exchange between the university and school is evident as teacher candidates are ‘taking things to school and bringing back experiences’.

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These features create immediacy between theory and practice in teaching and provide tangible evidence of a professional learning exchange between the two sites. Principals agree that the seminar helps link theory to practice and also provides a significant and reciprocal opportunity for schools to connect with the latest theory and the university to know what is happening in schools (Scott, 2010:19).

Clinical praxis Clinical praxis in this paper is defined as a disciplined articulation and reflexive performance of theory into action: in this context providing best practice in the practical side of a profession or field of study.

Now in its sixth year, the Master of Teaching program is demonstrating significant gains in relation to the integration of university studies and professional placements. This clinical teaching approach to teacher education is strongly aligning academic content, assessment strategies and professional practice (McLean-Davis et al, 2012).

With its origin in the secondary stream of the program, academics aware of the heavy demand and rigor of the program developed the Clinical Praxis Exam (CPE) as a major assessment task. The CPE is an oral assessment designed to provide the opportunity for teacher candidates to demonstrate theory-practice ‘praxis’ links drawing on their classroom teaching experiences. Throughout an oral presentation, to a panel of academics and practicing teachers, teacher candidates draw upon a range of concepts from core subjects, providing a supportive framework to demonstrate theoretical understandings and to articulate their pedagogical reasoning (Shulman, 1987).

During the CPE, teacher candidates are required to clearly articulate and demonstrate the philosophical and ideological differences between each of the core subjects across one or more semester’s program of learning. Throughout the classroom intervention program teacher candidates explore and discover connections and implications for teaching young learners, taking account of the social and political contexts of education through a sociological lens, whilst examining learning, teaching and pedagogy through a psychological lens (McLean-Davis et al, 2012). Incorporating academic instruction and drawing on practice links in the seminar program, teacher candidates are well supported as they move beyond the mechanics of teaching and unsubstantiated opinions towards evidence-based clinical practice.

Effective assessment, using a range of practices, is inherent in the underpinning theories around evidence-based teaching and is the focus for the oral exam. The task is assessed under the five categories of evidence; design of the intervention; literature review; variables that impact upon student learning; and evaluation. A rubric template framed by the SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, 1982) was devised providing transparency of assessment criteria for teacher candidates and a framework for consistent judgment by assessors.

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In response to identified needs, clinical questioning skills and techniques have been developed by assessors. This has led to the recent conceptualisation of the Melbourne Taxonomy for Clinical Teaching (MGSE, 2012). The taxonomy has five stages with questions aimed to elicit clinical thinking in our teacher candidates, teachers and education specialists in schools, early childhood settings and the wider community.

Key to the practicum components’ theoretical underpinning is the focus on developing teacher candidates as intervention practitioners. The Clinical Praxis Exam facilitates teacher candidates to: Plan, implement, evaluate and reflect upon an intervention1 for one student or group of students in their classroom.

Report on their experience of interventionist practice in the context of their daily planning and teaching, drawing on the knowledge gained from university subjects. This intervention assists the students to go beyond their current level of knowledge and/or skill.

Findings from internal and external reviews (Scott et al, 2010) in the primary and secondary streams indicate that teacher candidates acknowledge the significance of the combination of the practicum experience, seminar program and the CPE form a nexus for integration of theory and practice leading to pedagogical improvement and increased confidence in the classroom and beyond (McLean-Davies et al, 2012).

International perspective The clinical teaching model within the Melbourne Graduate School of Education underpins the importance of students gaining an understanding of the broader context in which education takes place, aligning their educational practice to this understanding. Responding to increasing cultural diversity in Australian schools and society the program acknowledges global processes impacting upon individual’s sense of identity and belonging. The Australian Government’s White Paper (2012) on Australia in the Asia Century highlights the need for learning about Australia-Asia relations and developing relations with schools in Asia. The national curriculum has accordingly identified Asian literacy and intercultural understanding as key cross-curricular priorities.

The Master of Teaching responds to these priorities in numerous ways, not only by preparing pre-service teachers who are interested in becoming teachers of foreign languages but also by enabling all teacher candidates to explore and address issues of identity, culture and difference in broad aspects of their work.

In addition, the Master of Teaching provides opportunities for students to travel to rural or remote settings or international school settings typically for a period of two weeks. Teacher candidates can either work in a disadvantaged community by engaging in a final semester elective (Education, Practice and Place) or participate in an internship experience at an international school.

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First introduced in 2011, Education, Practice and Place provides the opportunity for some candidates across primary and secondary streams (who undertake a rigorous and competitive selection process) to experience a placement in a rural or remote context in Australia or overseas. Since 2011, teacher candidates have experienced learning and teaching in the Arnhem and Anagnu Lands, Thailand, India, China and Japan.

The internship option requires teacher candidates to work with teachers and students at a school in Asia. They participate in excursions to local sites of educational significance and develop and implement a co-curricular activity.

In addition, students work as a group on a joint research project negotiated prior to travelling. The design of the project incorporates personal interests and priorities of the school. In this way, the internship is based on a principle of reciprocity benefiting both the students at the MGSE and the school in Asia.

Responses from teacher candidates during reviews of the global teaching opportunities offered by the Master of Teaching program are collectively exemplified as The opportunity to teach in another country, in an unfamiliar cultural context, and with challenges presented by language differences, has boosted my confidence in my teaching ability and made me appreciate the variety of roles schools can play in society.

The international student in the local context With increasing global interest in the Master of Teaching program there has been a marked and significant increase in international student enrolment. In the program’s inaugural year it became evident that teacher candidates from international settings had specific needs centered on social and cultural needs.

Students who are not familiar with contemporary Australian school contexts have the opportunity to undertake a program of targeted workshops available as an alternate pathway within the first practicum subject, known as Contemporary Australian Schooling. These workshops parallel teacher candidates’ introduction to the Australian classroom environment and the national school curriculum.

Teacher candidates develop knowledge of typical school structures, policies and procedures as well as skills for personal professional interaction between students, mentors and peers. Teacher candidates undertaking this program attend their placement schools on all prescribed days and attend all professional practice seminars. There is a marginally reduced requirement for independent teaching for the duration of the program.

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to survey questions indicating the benefits of the program generally with exemplars such as It’s been a great help and I believe it will help more international students in the future and It offered us a warm and comfortable environment to share and exchange our ideas, where we could feel well-protected, supported and considered.

Additional comments such as I got to familiarize myself with the Australian system.

The subject provided us high support in many ways in terms of how to communicate with mentors, the Australian schooling system, and voice projection and how to encourage students provide more specific feedback about the areas of historical and contemporary knowledge of Australian schools and schooling for the international teacher candidates.

Results and future directions The Master of Teaching program has been regularly and rigorously reviewed by both internal committees and independent external organisations with a major review, inclusive of all three streams, by the Australian Council for Educational Research (Scott et al 2010). The overall results indicate that the program is regarded highly by all stakeholders and generally produces high-calibre graduates who are knowledgeable and confident practitioners.

Findings indicate that the program is successful in linking ‘theory and practice’ and that graduates rate this almost as significant in their learning as the practicum experience itself, which is not traditionally the case. Many schoolbased stakeholders expressed highly positive views about the innovative nature of the program and saw that the partnership with MGSE adds to the capacity of schools. The overall quality of the graduates has been rated as very high.

There is broad recognition by academic and school-based staff of the depth of professional understanding and fluent articulation of pedagogical reasoning (Shulman, 1987) demonstrated by teacher candidates in defending interventions and extending across the entire program. Principals have indicated this to generally exceed the expected level for pre-service teachers and, in some cases, the capacity of experienced teachers. The opportunity to preview teacher candidates on placement for continuous and extended periods has been highlighted by principals who value ‘knowing what they were getting’ when employing graduates (Scott et al, 2010). Teacher candidates rate their confidence as high ‘because we are in schools so much we can see what is expected of us’ (Scott et al, 2010).

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Graduates from the Master of Teaching (primary and secondary) programs were surveyed by an independent external organization (ACER) to indicate their satisfaction in terms of their training preparing them for teaching and the reality of the classroom. Ninety per cent stated that they were either ‘well’ or ‘very well prepared’ (Scott et al, 2010). In stark contrast an Australia-wide study of 1545 new primary and secondary teachers by the Australian Education Union (2009) asking the same question revealed a response rate of only 40-45 per cent.

The evidence is clear: the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and the Master of Teaching program are making a difference. We now turn our sights to measurement of the impact of the Master of Teaching program in terms of the learning of the students of our teacher candidates and graduate teachers – a work in progress Footnotes 1.

Interventions at this level are within the framework of the general education classroom, involving targeted instruction, and can be in the form of differentiated instruction, small group review, or one-on-one remediation or extension of a concept.

References Australian Education Union. (2009). New Educators Survey 2008. www.aeufederal.org.au/ Publications/2009/Nesurvey08res.pdf Australian Government, (2012) Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. Canberra. asiancentury. dpmc.gov.au/white-paper Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2010). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. www.teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/OrganisationStandards/Organisation Barber, M. and M. Mourshed. (2007). How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top. www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/mckinsey_education_report.pdf Biggs, J. and K. Collis. (1982). Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy. New York: Academic Press.

Carnegie Foundation. (2004). New York, Teachers for a New Era. www.teachersforanewera.org/ index.cfm?fuseaction=home.aboutTNE Darling-Hammond, L. & J. Baratz-Snowden, (Eds). (2005). A Good Teacher in Every Classroom.

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Darling-Hammond, L. and J. Bransford. (2005). Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do. Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, USA. Dinham, S. (2006). Teaching and Teacher Education: Some Observations, Reflections and Possible Solutions. ED Ventures 2: 3-20.

Dinham, S. (2008). How to get your school moving and improving: An evidence-based approach.

Camberwell: ACER Press.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement.

London: Routledge.

Levine, A. (2006). Educating School Teachers. Washington DC: The Education Schools Project.

MCEETYA. (2008). The Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians.

Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. www.mceecdya.edu.

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au/verve/_resources/National_Declaration_on_the_Educational_Goals_for_Young_Australians. pdf McKinsey & Co. (2007). How the world’s best performing schools come out on top. www. mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/resources/pdf/Words School_Systems Final.pdf McLean-Davies, et al (2012). Masterly preparation: clinical practice in a graduate pre-service teacher education program. Journal of Education for Teaching, (in print).

Richardson, P.W. & Watt, H.M.G. (2006). Who chooses teaching and why? Profiling characteristics and motivations across three Australian universities. The Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 34(1), 27-56.

Scott, C. E. Kleinhenz, P. Weldon, K. Reid, & S. Dinham (2010). Master of Teaching MGSE: Evaluation Report. Camberwell, Victoria: Australian Council for Educational Research.

Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22.

Victorian State Parliament Report, Education and Training Committee, (2005). Step Up, Step In, Step Out, Report on the Inquiry into the Suitability of Pre-Service Teacher Training in Victoria, www.parliament.vic.gov.au Melody Anderson is a lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She has worked in the field of primary education for 30 years covering a range of roles as a primary classroom practitioner as well as teaching in the university sector. Melody’s research focuses upon the professionalisation and socialisation of graduate teachers as well as pre-service teacher education.

Rannah Scamporlino is a lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, teaching across early childhood, primary and secondary streams. She has worked in primary education for over 15 years as a classroom practitioner, principal and education consultant. Her research centres around professional relationship development investigating perceptions about professional identity and agency with a focus on pre-service teacher education and the practicum experience.

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Professional learning with quantifiable classroom interaction data Paul Magnuson Introduction During the 2011-2012 school year, the Leysin American School (LAS) of Switzerland began a new option for teacher professional learning. A data collector, using an instrument developed at LAS, observed classroom interaction, recording quantitatively what the teacher and students were doing. Teachers worked with the data to reflect on classroom interaction and to monitor their self-selected improvement goals. Here we discuss this professional learning program, including the pilot semester, the first full year, and its future.

Structure of the program In addition to additional opportunities, LAS supplements professional development with locally-grown professional learning programs. The program discussed here encourages teachers to experiment with patterns of classroom interaction. Teachers enter a continuous improvement cycle, measuring their progress toward personal goals with feedback from quantitative data.

Since autumn 2011, participants have chosen in which class they would like to be observed. The data collector observed the same class once weekly over seven weeks. The data collector recorded summary ‘code strings’ of every five minutes of class. Each five-minute code string reflected 1) teacher action; 2) student action; 3) student groupings; and 4) the class topic. A complete one-class observation contained eight five-minute summaries.

The data observation sheet is in Appendix A. After the first two observations the data collector and teacher determined, by looking at the data, a teacher improvement goal. At this point the teacher also had the option of creating a student survey to administer in parallel with the next five observations.

After the fourth or fifth observation, participating teachers met to discuss their goals, their data, and their learning to date. The meeting served to encourage participants to reflect on the data and to refocus on their goal. The meeting also supported participants by bringing them together to share stories about their individual efforts.

The data from each individual participant were combined to create an overall summary of classroom interaction at the school. Teachers could then make two helpful comparisons. First, teachers could compare their initial two observations with their final five observations to see if they were in fact making a change in classroom interaction patterns. Second, teachers could compare their individual picture of classroom interaction with that of the school.

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The point of the data collection was not to assert that there is one best way to teach, but rather to illustrate classroom interaction patterns in order to support reflection on teaching and learning. In theory, the teacher should benefit from discussing actual observed interactional data. Conversations with the data collector and between participating teachers helped support self-reflection and self-adjustment of teacher practice in the classroom.

The pilot semester During spring semester 2011, LAS piloted the program. One data collector observed in several classes across many subjects. He took notes during data collection about how well the instrument was able to portray what was actually happening in the classroom, revising the instrument for clarity and ease of use before beginning observations of the two pilot teachers. The pilot teachers were native speakers of English in mid-career. One teacher was new to the school and the other in his fifth year. They were both volunteers who were paid CHF250 for their participation. For the purposes of discussion, the teachers will be referred to as Ellen, the history teacher and John, the government teacher.

Ellen was observed three times before deciding to end her involvement, citing discomfort with some aspects of the pilot. She objected to the manner the piloted data collection instrument judged students to be on task. She also did not like the idea of the students being surveyed. Although Ellen chose to quit early, she reported that the program helped her address issues ‘that were making teaching more difficult and less effective than it should have been’.

John had a less dramatic experience with the program. He was observed seven times, receiving the data after each observation. Students completed surveys on motivation about which John never expressed a strong opinion, perhaps because the students reported high motivation. While John was an eager participant in the pilot, he seldom looked at his own data unless it was during a meeting with the data collector. In contrast to Ellen, he did not report making any significant changes to his teaching.

The take-away from the experience with the two pilot teachers is: The purpose of the data collection needs to be clear: the data do not show which way is best to teach – the data do show the classroom interaction patterns of teachers.

Presenting options to participants grants a measure of control during a process that may otherwise feel uncomfortable.

Goal setting is important to focus the teacher on a single aspect of teaching and learning, and on an aspect that the data can actually address.

Conversations about teaching must be the emphasis of the program.

Even when the data are telling a particularly poignant story, two

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(or more) people in conversation and reflection provide the richest professional learning experience.

The program in its first year During the 2011-2012 school year, nine individuals participated in the program, representing the subjects of art, English, ESL, mathematics, music, and world language. Students were from grades eight to 12. The LAS school population overall has slightly more boys than girls and students from over 50 countries.

The most prevalent native languages are Arabic, English, Russian, and Spanish.

For successful completion of the program teachers were paid a stipend of CHF250. All teachers were self-selecting volunteers.

The program for the first seven teachers (cohorts one and two) varied only slightly from the pilot. Key adjustments included revisions to the data observation tool; and making the survey optional and teacher-created. Only two of seven teachers chose to create their own survey. The program for the eighth and ninth participants (cohort three) developed an interesting twist, discussed further below.

The data observation instrument Data collectors (a sole individual for the first cohort, two individuals for the second cohort) used the data observation instrument found in Appendix A. Teacher and student behaviour, classroom groupings, and the classroom topic were recorded each minute and reported as individual data points in five-minute summaries. An observation is considered complete with eight five-minute code strings of classroom interaction. These data provide the basis for teacher selfreflection and discussion.

The four principal categories of the data instrument are Teacher Talk, Student Talk, Grouping, and Topic. For example, a code string of a ‘traditional’ classroom interaction pattern is P-L-w-cc (the teacher Presents while students Listen in a whole group to course content) and a common group work pattern is C-D-s-cc (the teacher Circulates while students Discuss in small groups about course content)). The categories are summarized in Table 1 overleaf.

Two success stories One participant, a math teacher we’ll call Peter, experienced remarkable success. After three observations, Peter asked the data collector to observe a different class at the same level, claiming that the classroom interaction data would look very different. The data proved this was indeed the case – this second section of math students exhibited a classroom interaction pattern in which the students consistently presented and explained concepts to one another with only occasional prompts from the teacher.

In the data, this pattern is represented as L–P–f–cc (Teacher Listening while students Present in fluid groupings about course content). It was remarkably different from the other section at the same level, in which the pattern of International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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TABLE 1: Data Codes Teacher Talk Presenting/Explaining

P

Circulating

C

Answering

A

Discussing

D

Writing or Reading

WR

Listening

L

Other

O

Student Talk Presenting/Explaining

P

Answering

A

Discussing

D

Writing or Reading

WR

Listening

L

Other

O

Grouping Individual, one-on-one

i

pair work

p

small group

s

whole group

w

fluid

f

Other

o

Topic course content

cc

rapport/sidebar

rs

discipline

d

management

m

other

o

A handbook was provided to explain the codes in detail so as to help the data collector code accurately and the teacher interpret correctly.

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P–A–w–cc (Teacher Presenting while students Answer questions as a whole group about course content) was most prevalent.

At the end of the lesson, Peter explained to the data collector the reason he chose such different approaches to the same math course. One class had only one student in the school’s ESL program. The other class was filled with intermediate ESL students. Then, before the fourth observation, the teacher shared with the data collector two articles and a draft survey he wanted to give to his students the following week. He explained that he was going to do a heavily teacherfronted lesson so that the students would be able to complete a survey about which teaching style they preferred. He then taught the class and administered the survey. He also kept track of test scores over time for these two class sections.

In summary, Peter was adjusting his classroom instruction by tracking achievement results and surveying student opinion. In sum, Peter was directing his own professional learning, through an action research model, informed by observation data, academic articles, experimentation, achievement data, and survey data.

The data collector helped Leo, an ESL teacher, work toward a very specific improvement goal. Leo was a veteran teacher who did an excellent job setting up individual and pair activities in his class, only to interrupt the students with additional tips and comments once they started working. Because the data easily show a difference in how often the teacher is talking, Leo decided to see if he could reduce the number of interruptions.

By his fifth and sixth observation, the number of interruptions had indeed decreased (with a corresponding increase in other Teacher Talk categories, such as Circulating and Listening). He accomplished his goal in part by conferring with another teacher in the department, who recommended Leo display a timer once the activity started, during which time he would not make additional (distracting) comments.

In these two success stories, Peter had developed an approach to professional learning that has a good chance of continuing long after the program ended.

Leo found a way to conquer a habit that he may not have realised he had. One can of course argue that both teachers may have arrived at these goals without the professional learning program. We’ll never know. What we do know is that they did arrive at a new place in their understanding of their own teaching … and they happened to be involved in the professional learning program when that happened.

A new twist Through discussion with a colleague experimenting with the program in another school, a new model emerged and was piloted with the final two participants (cohort three) of school year 2011-2012. Using the same data observation instrument, the teachers paired up and, after each observing two lessons with the data collector, completed the next five observations by observing each other.

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What was lost in the integrity of the data (more data collectors means more error in how the codes are assigned) was gained in that participants now observed seven classes they would not have observed otherwise, and learned more about the instrument and classroom interaction as well.

The future of the program The next step forward with the program is to make data collection and analysis easier. We are currently developing a web-based application that will allow classroom data entry with a laptop, tablet, or phone. Teachers will be able to access their data using a password-protected site. They will be able to compare their data with the data of other teachers at the school, whether it be all teachers in a semester or academic year or all teachers who teach in the same subject area.

The collaborative work that we have done with an additional school highlighted how important two conflicting attributes of the data collection tool are. On the one hand, the data tool needs to be static enough so that the process can be explained and the data usefully compared. On the other hand, the tool needs to be flexible so that teachers and administrators can adapt it to their needs. Fortunately, moving the instrument from paper to the web allows a greater degree of customisation without sacrificing the ability to compare teacher results across time, subject areas, and schools.

We will continue to explore the alternate model in which teachers observe each other. This is a hallmark of our school’s original professional learning program from which the program described evolved. Instead of the data collector learning from multiple observations, teachers should themselves experience that learning.

We recently planned our first research study using data collected with the program’s observation tool. As we collect more and more quantitative observation data from our own teachers, we should be able to look at teaching and learning with fresh eyes, informed by data. New initiatives can be compared to existing classroom practices in measureable ways.

Finally, we have begun planning how professional learning can dovetail with teacher supervision. Such a move requires a shift in our professional learning program. First, the use of teacher stipends may have to be modified as the program becomes a mainstream part of professional practice, even though our data suggest that stipends provide a helpful dose of external motivation.

Second, combining our program with supervision means that in some cases the program will be required. Until now, the program has been voluntary, which we believe explains, in part, its success. Third, a whole school program means more teachers participating at the same time, which may tax participants, data collectors, and those in charge of program oversight.

The next few years will prove interesting as we adapt and monitor the growth of the program. During that time, we hope that many teachers benefit from the self-reflection the program supports. We also hope that educators at additional

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Appendix 1 Recording Sheet and instructions Program B 2011-2012

Teacher______________________________________________

Course_________________________________________________ Date___________ Observer_________________________________ Number of Students_______________ 1. Observer waits until class has settled down before beginning (2-4 minutes) 2. Observer ticks primary actions during each minute.

3. Observations are summarized in five-minute intervals with code string. A complete observation consists of eight 5-minute blocks (8 code strings).

4. Observer may write Notes (intended to help remember that specific portion of the lesson).

5. Observer completes summary on bottom of the second page.

Appendix 2 Example of Observer summary at 11- 15 minutes Teacher P C A D RW L O P C A D RW L O P C A D RW L O P C A D RW L O P C A D RW L O

Students P A D RW L O P A D RW L O P A D RW L O P A D RW L O P A D RW L O

Grouping i p s w f o i p s w f o i p s w f o i p s w f o i p s w f o

Topic Notes cc rs m d o cc rs m d o cc rs m d o cc rs m d o cc rs m d o

11-15 minutes

Summary Code String: Key and Summary fort Code Strings 1. Teacher Talk

2. Student Talk

Presenting/Explaining P

Presenting/Explaining

P

Circulating C Circulating

C

Answering A Answering

A

Discussing D Discussing

D

Reading or Writing

RW

RW

Reading or Writing

Listening L Listening

L

Other

O

O Other

3. Grouping

4. Primary Topic

individual / one-on-one i

course content

cc

pair work

p

rapport/sidebar

rs

small group

s

management of lesson

m

whole group

w

discipline of students

fluid

f other

d o

other o Complete instructions available at https://sites.google.com/a/public.las.ch/professional-learning/

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schools will ask for assistance in setting up similar programs so that, when we reflect on what it means to scale up the program, we aren’t bumping up against our own school walls.

Further information See https://sites.google.com/a/public.las.ch/professional-learning/ Dr Paul Magnuson directs professional learning during the academic year at the Leysin American School. During the summer he is director of summer school. He has a doctorate in curriculum & instruction and a masters degree in TESOL.

Acknowledgment Thanks to ECIS for selecting this project for a fellowship for the academic year 2011-2012; to the LAS administration for supporting it; to Ira Bigelow, Alex Copeland, Aaron Deupree, Hugh Kelly, Mauro Morales, Ruben Mota, and Christina Zinetti for their help and advice; and to all the LAS teachers who have participated in the program.

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Fostering criticality for the iGeneration Lodewijk van Oord and Ken Corn The iGeneration In 1991 Canadian writer Douglas Coupland both identified a generation and noted its most salient features in his novel entitled Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (Coupland, 1991). What Coupland recognised over 20 years ago was that the incipient growth of the new media led by the world wide web and the internet (amongst other things including ‘old technologies’ such as the prevalence of television and MTV videos) was changing the way the postbaby boom generation were engaging with the world, society and the self, often without clear sign-posts that would help them to navigate this Brave New World.

Looking back on that novel and some of its prognoses about how this Generation X was being affected by that world into which they were born, it all seems rather quaint, though in many ways prescient.

To this day we sometimes speak of Generation X as natives within the millennial moment of accelerated information technology, whereas many teachers and school administrators are rightly termed immigrants. When did we first start using email? When did we first browse the internet? For us (and for most readers of this paper, we assume) it was circa 1995, now 17 years ago.

Tellingly, this is the average age of the students in our senior classrooms. It may seem like a millennium away itself, but the internet and all its attendant spin-off technologies and applications is no more than an adolescent itself; awkwardly groping towards maturity. Though perhaps ‘groping’ implies a more measured search for meaning and purpose that doesn’t quite catch the head-long rush into an uncharted future that this technology is propelling us towards.

Statistics and figures related to the acceleration of digital data are mindboggling. Eric Schmidt of Google recently noted that ‘there is now more data produced in two days, than all the data that had been produced in the entire history of civilisation since its dawning up until 2003.’ According to numerous websites, 290 billion email messages are sent every day, and more than 80% of them are simply spam.

Interesting facts, yet how do we know they are true? How can we be sure that these figures are correct? Why do these quotations come without a name-date reference? The answer is obvious: we got it from the internet. Google was our guide…

The internet is about the age of the generation we might now identify as the iGeneration: a generation growing up with the omnipresence of the world wide web and the instant information and entertainment gratification it provides.

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information technology than their parents and teachers. They have iPads, iPods and iPhones; they download free music, free films and free school assignments without being overly concerned about intellectual property rights, plagiarism and appropriate referencing, concepts that are not part of the iGeneration’s intellectual vocabulary.

They build a social network by befriending and ‘defriending’ with the simple click of a mouse. For many of them, the internet has become their first and often only source of information, bypassing more traditional media such as books, newspapers and journals – the types of media ‘we’, the IT immigrants, would often consider more valuable. In addition, the availability of modern sources of communication and social networking has led to an ‘immediazation’ of knowledge acquisition, validation and utilization. For IT natives, academic questions and social needs are expected to be satisfied in a single-second Google search, and thought processes should ideally be narrowed down to 140 Tweet characters.

This paper discusses the pedagogical challenges and opportunities to educators presented by the iGeneration. We will argue that age-old pedagogical notions can be revisited in ways that enable the iGeneration to develop a critical capacity, allowing them to live intelligently in a highly technological yet increasingly fragmented and unintelligible world.

Plus ça change…

In recent years, scholars have started to theorise the implications of the rise of the internet and internet-related technologies. Of interest, for our purposes, is the question to what extent the age of the internet should be considered as a radically new phase in human history; a paradigm shift? In his work, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr (2010) suggests that we are only beginning to understand the far-reaching impact the internet will have on human cognition.

He argues that ‘The net is literally rewiring our brains, inducing only superficial understanding’ (2010). MIT professor Sherry Turkle (2011) analyses the social implications of computer technology. She argues that modern technology has started to change how we develop relationships, and the way we understand privacy and community, intimacy and solitude. As technology ramps up, she says, our emotional lives ramp down.

A recent article in The Guardian (UK, 9th October, 2012) gives examples of what Turkle may be hinting at. According to research carried out by Aric Sigman, British teenagers spend an average of six hours a day looking at screens at home – not including any time at school. In North America, it is nearer to eight hours. Yet the negative effects on health become apparent after about two hours of sitting still. The American Academy of Pediatrics has identified what they term ‘Facebook depression’ which includes ‘an increased risk of disengagement, vulnerability of victimization, poor social skills, and impaired ability to express empathy.’

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There is little doubt that these changes are significant. And yet, as the French saying would have it, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our contention in this presentation is, that despite the immensely accelerated culture amidst which we, as educators, are currently trying to maintain some semblance of equilibrium, with a little bit of perspective and some sagacity, we might simultaneously and calmly assert that human civilisation is not fundamentally all that much changed.

Yes, there have been paradigm changes in the way we view and engage with the world, and the internet is certainly proving to be one of these. We nevertheless postulate that mere data and information do not equal knowledge, and certainly not wisdom. They never have and never will. Data and information are pathways towards these higher-order educational and lifetime aspirations.

They always have been, and always will be. Only now they are faster.

Within this speedy bombardment that young people (indeed all of us) are subjected to, we as educators need to be the ones who will help to steer them (and ourselves) through the perils and pitfalls of all that is sometimes laughingly (and appropriately) dismissed as ‘too much information’.

The data-wisdom continuum As educators, we must simultaneously seek to understand the iGeneration and their worldview and become what is sometimes termed their ‘critical friends.’ In our classrooms, we should be prepared to mix a little bit of healthy scepticism with the appropriate awe at the opportunities and challenges that technology has presented us with. This duality of challenges and opportunities is the key.

In this construction there is a dichotomy: there are positives and negatives; good stuff and bad stuff; pathways to knowledge and dead-ends of infinite bytes; what Nate Silver of the New York Times hopes to differentiate between in his recent work as ‘The Signal and the Noise’ (2012). Our job is to help those in our charge to discern the difference and it is not always evident which is which (and sometimes they are both).

Educators must endeavour to assist this iGeneration to become critical thinkers in their own right and in their own worlds. We need to guide them to, and also along, those pathways towards knowledge and understanding that may, in the long run, lead to a well-exercised judgement and a more profound moral understanding of the world.

The data-wisdom continuum (Figure 1) may help illustrate what we are coming to. Although we devised this particular continuum graphic ourselves, we also are aware that there was little new under our sun: A quick internet search revealed a variety of similar or slightly different models.

Fostering criticality The data-wisdom continuum can be used by students in the mapping of the overwhelming amounts of data, information and knowledge that society throws at them, allowing them to ‘process’ these impulses in a systematic manner.

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Figure 1: The data-wisdom continuum 1.

Data

Bare, undigested facts

2.

Information

Selected and contextualised data presented in a narrative

3.

Knowledge

Analysed and ‘socialised’ sets of information presented by means of a theoretical framework or conceptual model

4.

Understanding

Transformed knowledge applied in new, unfamiliar situations

5.

Wisdom

Exercised judgement based on lived values and a profound moral understanding

Take once again the following phrase: 290 billion email messages are sent every day, and more than 80% of them are pure spam. How should such a statement be classified? As bare, undigested facts – as data, in other words? Or as information, as the two sets of fact (290 billion messages a day and more than 80 percent spam) together form a selected and contextualized narrative? Where does the boundary between data and information lie? Is it perhaps a mental boundary, existing only in our minds?

Inevitable questions following such a conversation are: how do you know this claim is true? How can you find out? Can you ever be sure? If not, how can you effectively deal with this ambiguity? In other words, the more subtle and nuanced intellectual and academic skills associated with critical thinking.

The ability to classify data, information, and knowledge, and to categorize and make connections in order to develop a genuine understanding and, in the long run, even wisdom about the social world is an increasingly important thing to learn. This ability, which we call ‘criticality’, can be fostered through education,

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particularly when the teacher adopts a questioning and somewhat sceptical approach to the knowledge claims that we are continuously bombarded with.

The teacher assumes the role of co-learner, someone who is trying to make personal sense of all of this as well. Instead of giving the right answers the teacher will guide the students in searching for them. The students will have to do the work; they will have to take responsibility for their own making sense of the world. It is the analysis inquiry, argues Paulo Freire, that helps students develop their ‘power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves’ (Freire, 1972). Criticality helps students discover that the world is not a static reality, but a social environment which is amorphous and transformable, and that data and information are often used to do just that: transform and amend reality.

Our continuum ends with wisdom, a level of criticality that is hard to define, let alone grasp. Perhaps the following Socratic quotations come close to an appreciation of what wisdom might be. When asked who should be considered the wisest man on earth, the Pythian oracle answered: ‘Socrates.’ Yet the marketplace philosopher himself thought differently. “I know one thing,” he said, “and that is that I know nothing.”

FOSTERING CRITICALITY

Figure 2: Fostering criticality Conclusion Fostering criticality is the process of helping students move to the right of the continuum (Figure 2). They learn how information is always an interpretation of data, how knowledge is derived from selected sets of information and theory, International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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and how that might lead to the construction of understanding. And it is in the execution of judgment, in other words: during the act, when we discover whether our actions are wise or unwise.

Interpretation, selection, construction: the data-wisdom continuum demonstrates that the way we navigate around our hyper-accelerated culture will always be a matter of choice, in which the individual has to decide what to value and what to dismiss. Criticality is needed to make these choices, and it is here where educators can play a decisive role. In the end, a student might have to conclude that it is all too complex, and that the only thing he or she knows is that s/he knows very little, perhaps even nothing. The world has changed, but that conclusion will ring as true as it did 25 centuries ago.

Acknowledgement This paper was presented at the Sixth Alliance for International Education conference held in Doha, Qatar 20-22 October 2012. We acknowledge Professor Jack Levy and the strand participants for their thoughtful questions and remarks.

References Carr, N. (2010) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. London: Atlantic Books.

Coupland, D. (1991) Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Freire, P. (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Silver, N. (2012) The Signal and the Noise. New York, Penguin Press.

Turkle, S. (2011) Together alone: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other.

New York: Basic Books.

Lodewijk van Oord is director of studies at UWC Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland, where he also teaches IB peace and conflict studies.

Email: lvanoord@waterford.sz Ken Corn is director of outreach at UWC Atlantic College, where he also teaches IB English Literature and Theory of Knowledge.

Email: ken.corn@atlanticcollege.org

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Educational and online technologies and the way we learn Lawrence Burke There’s no doubt that the iPad and its multiple applications, along with other mobile devices and online learning, could bring amazing resources into the very foundations of the educative process. Yet the global educational sector is conflicted. On the one hand it argues for building educational institutions which nurture a unique community of learners, while on the other hand it embraces technologies, some of which have the most devastating and alienating effects on communities and undermines the very concept of nurture and a duty of care in schools, colleges and universities throughout the world.

I am in the fortunate position as an educator of being able to use the very latest in educational technology, as do the students in my courses. For example, we use BbbVista, BBlearn, Quom interactive boards, iPads and their multiple applications, AppleMacs, all the Microsoft suites on the latest platforms, as well as our own mobile devices should something untoward go wrong in the high tech classroom – as it inevitably does.

And, as a backup in case of a power cut or battery outage, I keep a stock of pencils and note pads and a few white board markers – remnants of a bygone era but seldom used. With our ed tech we can paint, draw, write, publish and print our own text books, create our own diagrams for analysis and even use virtual reality to create those quintessential educative moments where our students can understand a concept or idea in real time. We can share information, collaborate with tasks, set secure online examinations, give instant feedback, chat and all of this can occur at the same time, across classrooms, communities, cities, countries and the globe. And this is just the start.

Furthermore, for those who may struggle with adjusting to assimilate their corporeal selves into the ubiquitous digital world of constant change and upgrade we have at our disposal Puentedura’s adjustment and integration modelSAMR, a deterministic behavior modification model marketed as a supportive sociological and psychological tool.

In addition to my hands-on approach in the 21st century digital classroom I am also involved with a major publishing house in trialing their various interactive educational materials as they embrace educational technology in its various formats. Yet, notwithstanding all of the above, my schooling up to and including my post graduate training and research has taught me that a critical understanding of what we use in today’s classroom, and why we use it, is the foundation on which teaching and learning in the 21st century must be predicated. With this caveat in mind it is quite extraordinary and exciting to anticipate and debate where technology in the educational sector is leading us today.

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Critical engagement with change The subsumption and assimilation of education into the information technology industry has been likened to industrial and technological changes that have shaped education in the past and defined the course of its social history. The printing press, the lead pencil, vinyl records, television and VHS tapes are samples of past innovations that were once prophesied as detrimental to teaching and learning. Most of us have read the funny quotes from the past about 16th century students not preparing their bark properly to calculate problems and how those 20th century ballpoint pens would be the ruin of education and so on.

There are even some educators who use these examples as indicators of those who oppose or obstruct change.

Yet there are some of us who do pose critical questions about the rapid assimilation of our schools, colleges and universities into the virtual world of technology and mobile learning without sufficient research having been carried out as to its effect on the mental and physical well-being of our student populations. For this kind of reputable critical enquiry we often find ourselves bullied through name calling; we are labeled Luddites, stickers in the mud, resisters, troublemakers and inflexible.

Luddites is the most common term used, and is somewhat of a misnomer because it isn’t that well understood. As Postman (1992) points out the Luddite movement was a protest movement, similar to the Occupy Wall Street Movement, that indignantly resented the new pay cuts, child labor and the abolition of laws and customs that had once protected skilled workers and artisans. One could ask: has anything changed in the 21st century?

As educators, critical enquiry is our avocation. We have a professional, ethical responsibility to keep ourselves informed and up-to-date on what is happening in our profession. For example, I read voraciously about new developments, new trends, the latest research and innovations because I value and appreciate the vital and responsible role teaching and learning has in creating good citizens and a civilized society. I am a committed teacher who is passionate about education and the direction the profession is heading. And it is my well founded conviction that a critical review of technology and its profound and life-changing effects on learners today is necessary and essential if we are to provide the very best educational opportunities and experiences for future generations of children and young people.

In 2011 Abilene Christian University produced a paper entitled iPad or iFad, in which the writers produced a rigorous defense of using ed tech through the iPad device as an instructional tool in the paperless classroom; yet they provided no evidence of improved learning outcomes through academic success.

Pepperdine University in the USA is currently the only tertiary institution to have undertaken a longitudinal case study on the use of the iPad as an instructional and learning device in an attempt to establish the validity of claims made by Apple Inc that their device is the future for education. They framed their study around two key questions:

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Does the iPad have the potential to enhance students’ performance on course learning objectives?

Can we develop a formula for success?

The results that Pepperdine have posted online to date do not show any statistical evidence that using the iPad has ‘enhanced student performance on course learning objectives’, and the results from their questions and surveys do not indicate they have yet ‘developed a formulae for success’ in using this device. It is evident that there are very different points of view. It is my opinion that there is an urgent need for more informed, critical debate on whether not just the iPad but ed tech in general is enabling learners to succeed whereas without the aid of these tools they would fail.

Mayer (1993) has argued since the early 1990s that there seems little point in infusing the debate with opinions about those who support or do not support the use of online learning and ed tech in teaching pedagogy. People being people take time to adjust to the new and untried. It is a matter of respecting this and ensuring that these differences of opinion do not overshadow clear critical thinking when considering what is best for today’s and future generations of learners.

Engaging with the research From an historical view point the educational sector, when it has had the means to do so, has always embraced new technologies for better or worse.

As stated earlier, from the days of the printing press to the invention of radios, the telegraph, television, vinyl records, tape recordings, videos, CDs, DVDs, internet resourcing, podcasts, wikis and so on, educators have taken to what works well and what contributes to the genuine development of sound pedagogical processes in teaching and learning.

It has never been a simplistic argument about those who embrace the new or those who resist the new and untried. Such a black-and-white perception of the IT revolution and what is occurring in education is profoundly naïve, simply because there is a huge difference between embracing technology in all its guises as an instructional interface and understanding how such devices affect pedagogical processes; and more importantly how they impact on the psychocognitive processes of learners.

Furthermore some of the researched literature on the effects of online learning and ed tech tools on children and students is heavily biased towards the organizations that fund the research. For example one key study by the Milken Exchange – a subsidiary of the powerful and influential Milken Family Foundation (Transforming Education through Technology, 1999) claimed that 11% gains made to elementary school learners through mathematics and vocabulary development were directly attributable to technology usage.

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Yet if these findings were tested more rigorously through applying a chi square statistical set, it would show that there are no significant differences between students who learn online and through ed tech tools, and those who learn offline without an ed tech interface. The differences claimed in the Milken Exchange study could have been due to many other variables in the teaching and learning processes.

I have found similar results in my own research (Burke, 2010, 2011) which suggests that there are too many variables at play to be able to find a control group that will give more than a 50% mean difference between different kinds of teaching and learning methodologies and processes.

Clarke (1983) argued that there were absolutely no accrued learning benefits through using media of any kind in teaching and learning pedagogy. His famous quip that a new Green Grocer vehicle won’t change the dietary habits of a nation is an interesting analogy for today. However we’ve moved beyond such a perfunctory view of ed tech tools and online learning to one where we are essentially concerned with the impact and affect on the cognitive processes of learners.

This is where the debate must center and focus for educators. We need to eschew the technophoria and hype, along with the awe and glamour of new devices, new applications and software, as well as the talk show type debates about online versus offline learning, and seek a clear critical understanding of how we learn and the cognitive processes most deeply affected through ed tech tools and online learning. A number of educators are engaging in this debate; Mayer & Moreno’s (1998, 2001, and 2002), well-founded research and arguments for controlled and discerned use of ed tech tools are where the debates should be centered today.

However it is unfortunate that this may not come about because the IT lobby, with its billions of advertising dollars, and its quasi-research projects – all biased towards their own outcomes – hinder a clear, critical public debate.

This is clear in the ITL research group’s recent report on innovative teaching and learning (2011) in which 95% of the report condemns schools and learning institutions for not using the latest products and gadgetry. There is no informed, clear critical research on how their products perform or affect learners cognitively or how they define the methodological and pedagogical processes in a constructive way. It is one thing to argue for every child having an iPad to reduce heavy back packs with lots of books, and quite another to pursue the argument that IT will increase knowledge gains for learners.

Traditional classroom style learning with its essential socialization and communicative processes, along with the lecture theater, are also targets of the corporate IT sector and some educators too. Bambi Betts, CEO of Academy for International School Heads (AISH), recently argued that it is ‘game over’ for education as we know it today through the flooding of the educational sector with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

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Her carefully chosen description of these courses as ‘disruptive innovations’ in mainstream education highlights the willfulness of forceful change being imposed on teachers, students, parents and some administrators who question the efficacy and legitimacy of MOOCs. The assumption that formal learning is an option which can take place anywhere and at any time is false and based on erroneous understandings about how we learn, why we learn, what we need to learn and how we measure and evaluate successful teaching and learning. An avatar lecturer or a video clip of a lesson hardly qualifies as innovate in terms of teaching and learning, but may well be disruptive to genuine critical enquiry, the acquisition of knowledge, and becoming a life long learner.

Teaching and learning is a highly sociable process. It is built on a fundamental axiom of clear inter-personal communication. Moreover, schooling and tertiary studies is a highly controlled social process as well as an intellectual one. We require those who graduate from our high schools and universities to be civil to others and to have good manners and treat people respectfully. Working in the isolated vacuum of virtual realities where ‘I am my screen’ and ‘I do not have to compete to share my thoughts and ideas’ does not contribute to positive social learning outcomes at all. I’m all for ‘rethinking education’ and embracing technology; but it should be an intrinsic part of any performance management plan that has as its core principle how students learn, not what they like using and doing best.

Where are we heading?

Bearing this in mind it should be clear that any relationship between internet usage and learning through a computer or mobile device is elementary. While there may be differentiation in the assignments or tasks undertaken (personal as opposed to specialized), the media interface is identical.

For example, researching for a project or reading through an online publisher’s book-like interface, or playing a video game, or updating Facebook, or social networking, or using a movie making application, or a language or mathematics based application for school or college courses, all involve similar cognitive processes which utilize our working memory, reasoning and creative brain functions.

They also involve similar interactive relationships between a human being and a machine, no matter what type of branding and packaging of the machine be it an iPad, a Samsung Galaxy, a Microsoft or Lenovo tablet, or any other of the myriad hand-held mobile devices on the market today. So to distinguish between an internet addiction and an addiction to a mobile device is useful only insofar as it delineates the purpose, not the interface used for that purpose. Spending six to eight hours online at school or college or playing games or chatting or surfing the net watching YouTube clips or using a computer or mobile device to study or complete research for an assignment all carry the same psychological and physical health risks.

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We know very little about the longterm psychological and physical effects contemporary technology has on people in general and youth in particular, except that some of the early studies are indicating that fundamental changes in social behavior and mental and physical health after extended periods of time using technology are deleterious to human physical well-being, human social relationships and the human character.

For example, there’s evidence to suggest people behave more rudely and aggressively online. Psychologists call this the disinhibition effect – a sophisticated euphemism for bad-mannered, belligerent, antagonistic and outright cruel and rude anti-social behavior. It is argued people feel less inhibited when not seen and feel they can express themselves more freely and without feeling vulnerable to criticism. But the results of this kind of reasoning put into practice can have devastating and tragic consequences.

Recently, a 13-year-old girl hanged herself after being bullied at school for months by a group of her peers who tormented her with names and threats of violence. Seventh grader Rachel Ehmke killed herself after what her parents said were months of abuse at her Kasson, Minnesota, middle school. Several days before she took her life, an anonymous text message was sent out to other students at the school calling her a ‘slut’ who needed to be forced out of the school (Thompson, 2012).

In another tragic case, a young Indian student committed suicide by hanging herself after two boys posted obscene comments about her on Facebook (Jalandhar, 2012). But probably the most cruel and sadistic example of online anonymity and the disinhibition effect is the tragic and untimely death of 13 year-old Megan Meier.

Megan began receiving nasty messages from a boy a few weeks after she met him, via her MySpace account. After many messages of kindness and support she received one telling her the ‘world would be a better place without you’.

Megan believed she had been rejected by the boy and committed suicide in her home. However, the boy never existed. He was an online character created by Lori Drew, a 47 year-old married woman and a mother herself, who lived four houses down the street.

But it is not only social networking and the improper use of mobile devices that are having such a deleterious effect on our social relationships and our innate capacity for civility, compassion and kindness. The formal use of technology in education is undermining teaching and learning processes and the quest for knowledge. I mark hundreds of essays written by high school seniors every year for an international examining body, and I’ve noticed an exponential increase in the copying and pasting of information from websites – especially Wikipedia – without any real understanding of content. Moreover, I’ve also noted a reduced capacity for critical thinking and in-depth analysis from graduating high school seniors across the world.

Whereas teachers were once the bridge between the curriculum and the

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student, facilitating the teaching and learning processes, now technology is usurping that role, and the once strong, stable pillars of human reasoning, experience, empathy and understanding are being replaced by bridges of aluminum, fiberglass and fairy dust courtesy of Apple Inc, Samsung and Microsoft et al.

These mobile devices are simply edutainment platforms for audio-visual media, books, periodicals, movies, music, games, apps and web content. They are being peddled and publicized by a marketing team of corporate moguls and educators with vested interests and embraced by some teachers and administrators caught up in the youthful but naive claim that teaching and learning methodology and content is outdated and needs to be relevant (to what?), and realistic (whatever that means) and catch up to the 21st century.

Some international schools are even engaging in the marketing and advertising of children as young as five years old as digital natives in a bid to win a greater share of the increasing lucrative IT funded educational sector. Children and young people, regardless of their age, are no less human and no more technologically enhanced than their forebears. But they are vulnerable to ideological manipulation by those charged with their care.

Time for reflection There’s been no conclusive research which suggests that online education, such as MOOCs, or any mobile learning device, is going to enhance and transform the learning success of school, college and university students. What we do know through research is that the kinds of experiences the iPad, laptop or desk top computers or any other piece of educational technology offers is limited to the innate ability of the user to use these tools and to learn.

In other words, we could convert every curriculum into an online course, and distribute a mobile learning device or computer to every pre-school, school or college age student in the entire world, yet this will not make an iota of difference to whether they learn or not. Why? Well leaving aside intrinsic motivation, country, culture, social class and equal educational opportunities, the same cognitive processes are involved in learning whether the instructional tool is a person or a machine.

Working memory, the key cognitive bridge between knowledge maintained and knowledge transformed through building on what’s retained, functions under whatever environmental conditions it encounters in the teaching and learning process. However, the caveat is this: cognitive overload is a psychological and intellectual state which occurs when too much material of an auditory, visual, spatial or narrative nature is presented, and undermines and prevents the uptake of key information and knowledge sequences in the teaching and learning process. And currently the educational technology used in schools and colleges without impunity are designed to increase rather than decrease the likelihood of cognitive overload.

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Tools and applications that encourage multi-tasking (a very dubious concept in itself) in learning, do not always act as facilitators of learning; they simply provide seductive distractions to what is required to be taught, learnt and remembered. Human beings on the other hand, are better placed to avoid this pit-fall, as they understand and have empathy with the learning process – two key human qualities not yet mimicked through any technology available anywhere in the world.

The long-term effects of technology use on physical health are only beginning to be understood. Changes in the physiology of the brain have been detected through long-term online interaction. For example microstructure abnormalities in adolescents with internet addiction disorder suggests that poor goal directed behaviors, along with impaired working memory, are the direct result of prolonged longterm exposure to a computer or mobile learning device (Yuan, et al, 2011).

In the meantime the destructive and negative effects spawned through technology-induced social behavior are now self-evident. The international mental health encyclopedia known as the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM-IV) will include internet-use disorder as a condition ‘recommended for further study’ in its May 2013 edition. As educators, regardless of our personal opinions and vested interests, we would be welladvised to take heed of this, and to monitor the implementation of educational technology and the effects it has on the impressionable, vulnerable minds and bodies of those in our pre-schools, schools, colleges and universities.

It is one thing to be swept up in the hype and technophoria of the moment; and quite another to be held accountable for the long term psychological and corporeal effects and consequences that mobile and computer based learning is having on the physical and mental well-being of present and future generations of learners.

References: Burke, L & McLaren, P, Spelling Achievement & Ability in ESL Tertiary Learners, Empowering Learners through Educational Technology, TESOL Arabia, 2011.

Burke, L, Multi-Tasking, Working Memory & Brain Functionality, Empowering Learners through Educational Technology, TESOL Arabia, 2011.

Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of Educational Research, 43(4), 445-459.

ITL Research: Innovative Teaching & Learning, www.itlresearch.com/images/stories/reports/ ITL%20Research%202011%20Findings%20and%20Implications%20-%20Final.pdf Jalandhar. (2012, August 16th). Student hangs herself over obscene Facebook comments.

Retrieved October 13th, 2012, from Deccan Herald: www.deccanherald.com/ Mayer, R. E.; R. Moreno (1998). ‘A Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: Implications for Design Principles’. www.unm.edu/~moreno/PDFS/chi.pdf.

Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. (1999). ‘Cognitive principles of multimedia learning: The role of modality and contiguity’. Journal of Educational Psychology 91: 358–368.

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Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moreno, R. & Mayer, R. E. (2002). Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning: When reading helps listening. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 156-163.

Mayer, R. E. (2002). Cognitive theory and the design of multimedia instruction: An example of the two-way street between cognition and instruction. In D. F. Halpern & M. D. Hakel (Eds.), Applying the science of learning to university teaching and beyond (pp. 55-72). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Milken Exchange Study on Ed. Tech. Meta-analysis (1999) www.mff.org/pubs/ME161.pd Postman, N, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Vintage Books, 1992, New York Thompson, P. (2012, October 13th). Girl, 13, hangs herself after months of torment at hands of girls who scrawled ‘slut’ on her school locker and warned her to leave. Retrieved October 13th, 2012, from Mail Online: www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html Yuan, K., Qin, W., Wang, G., Zeng, F., Zhao, L., Yang, X., et al. (2011). Microstructure Abnormalities in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder. PLOS, 1-21 Dr Lawrence Burke teaches in the education faculty of the Higher Colleges of Technology, Al Ain Women’s College, in the United Arab Emirates. His research interests and writing are in critical literacy, educational technology and how we learn.

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A theatre for action: adopting the Khan Academy in support of a classroom model in the MYP Eoin Lenihan The problem Having taught for several years in the international school system at both established and younger schools, and having attended conferences for international school teachers, I have identified a number of challenges to the teacher in employing an inquiry-based approach in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) classroom. This article will focus on two key problems and suggest a place for the Khan model in promoting inquiry in the MYP. Generations of constructivist student teachers and seasoned practitioners weaned on Dewey and Piaget will mock with fervor the ‘chalk and talk’ approach of archaic times. Even W B Yeats sounded the death knell for such teachers, stating that ‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.’

Sadly, a great many of us in the international system still concern ourselves, and at great personal strain, with filling the pail. I first became suspicious of the prevalence of this practice in an international school where an open door policy was announced at the beginning of the school year only to be cast aside by the end of the first week.

Naturally the chalk and talk method is sister to the other great enemy of the constructivist, student boredom. As an experiment, shortly after the lock out – or lock in depending on your point of view – I found excuses to investigate behind these barriers. Without fail, I found a sight painfully familiar from my own schooldays: practitioners sitting, or standing, behind the safety of their desk, students ranged out anywhere from active note-taker to comatose. To summarize, rumors of the demise of the teacher-led model of education in the international system have been greatly exaggerated, and this automatically stifles any meaningful student action.

A second barrier to meaningful student-led action is the insecurity many teachers feel with the MYP curriculum framework – designed to ‘provide appropriate direction and advice to schools, and ensure commonality among MYP schools worldwide’ (2009, 5). A regular visitor to the Association of German International Schools (AGIS) conference, held annually in Hannover, I have found the fewest participants inevitably to be the MYP practitioners. Time and again in conversation, I have detected a certain frustration at the perceived ambiguity of the MYP framework. In several cases, I have heard the practitioner

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lament the lack of prescribed curriculum documentation, perceiving the MYP to be too ‘up-in-the-air’.

And I do extend a certain amount of sympathy for this position. For example the 2012/13 Humanities Guide (2012, 2) states in its rationale that ‘MYP humanities involves inquiring into historical, contemporary, geographical, political, social, economic, religious, technological and cultural contexts that influence and have an impact on individuals, societies and environments.’

That is somewhat daunting and even more so when it has to be equipped with aims, objectives and assessment criteria. Noting the reluctance of some of my AGIS peers to draw some flesh over the admittedly bare skeleton of the MYP curriculum framework, I again observed my school colleagues in classes and planning meetings and quickly noticed a tendency to substitute the ‘inquire into’ of the MYP for ‘cover all of’ the prescribed curriculum, thus placing an unrealistic burden upon themselves.

By extension, seeing MYP curriculum as something insurmountable to be covered, these same practitioners, when struggling for resources or content, retreated to the safety of their own national curriculum, abandoning the Learner Profile, AoI and IB Mission altogether. Many, faced with the pressure of IGCSE examinations in G10 or G11, adopted the prescribed Key Stage 3 curriculum in advance of the IGCSE programme. With the seemingly more tangible and more immediate K3 curriculum becoming an MYP substitute, curriculum quickly becomes the sum of prescribed content. Too often the first casualty of trying to ‘cover’ everything is time – there is always an exam to be studied for. With time of the essence, inquiry, the guide through the lofty ambitions outlined in the subject specific MYP rationales and IB Mission, is rationalized away and, with it, student-led action.

Eradicating the ‘chalk and talk’ teaching method means empowering the MYP practitioner by facilitating an inquiry-based approach that is based on presenting practical, tangible resources that focus on key concepts across the range of MYP subjects, thus promoting a classroom environment that becomes a collaborative theatre for meaningful action. What follows is a model for practice.

Step 1: key concepts. Adopting the Khan Academy model The Khan Academy (khanacademy.org), recently featured on TED talks (March 2011) and in Time Magazine (July 2012), is an online resource that provides in excess of 3200 videos, mainly YouTube, in all traditional subjects.

The videos introduce a key concept but allow the student to interact with the material by completing practice exercises (at the moment this option only exists for math) and giving detailed data reports that allow the student and teacher to assess, in detail, the student’s level of achievement in the task before moving on.

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taken it on themselves to create off-campus interactive forums to connect with and extend student learning, via blogging, Facebook profiles and, as in this case, self-made YouTube videos. By accessing the video at home, the student arrives in class with a strong conceptual footing in the unit, and working alone, is able to progress on a topic at his own speed, thus facilitating student differentiation.

What makes the Khan Academy novel is that students can complete selfevaluations and all stakeholders have access to this performance data. What this means is that the teacher, armed with individual student performance data from the concept attempted the night before, is now free to focus class time on those students that have demonstrated difficulty in attaining understanding of the core concept and extending those that demonstrate outstanding comprehension.

This Khan model could be easily extended to allow for time effective formative and summative assessment when used in conjunction with simple interactive whiteboard add-on technology. For instance the Promethean ActivExpression tool (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb2HOPPw-4) allows the teacher to input both multiple choice and long answer questions into an interactive smartboard quiz that is simultaneously and privately operated by each student, while compiling comprehensive data collection and on the spot corrections, thus freeing up both classroom and planning periods of concept acquisition and grading.

Step 2: teacher as facilitator in the inquiry classroom The model presented by the Khan Academy proposes a flipped classroom where students take responsibility for the acquisition of key concepts at home and then in class essentially complete extension tasks and gauge understanding while freeing up teacher time for in-depth student assistance. However, now chiefly concerned with student assistance, one must beware of the chalk and talk practitioner, ever diligent to see the freed-up class time as time for IGCSE exam preparation or testing time.

The constructivist practitioner must instead create in this time a theatre for action, thereby assuming two essential roles – both of which demand a facilitator and not a lecturer. Armed with individual student data and freed up from his lecturing burden, the teacher can now spend more time than ever previously possible with students that are struggling to grasp key concepts. Using the Prometheus system, this becomes a targeted, graded and efficient affair. A second role is rather exciting, turning what was the classroom, the place where the pails lined up waiting to be filled with wisdom, into an authentic theatre for action as demanded by the IB Mission Statement: ‘These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners…’.

What is meant by action is defined in the MYP Principles into Practice document (2008, 21): ‘Whatever the action, it is expected that the students will

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themselves be changed by the process and that significant learning will result.’

The classroom must then become a theatre for action, a place that facilitates student change through engaging real-world problems that put into effect the concepts and skills acquired by the student and evidenced by meaningful and tangible student-led action.

This theatre for action can only exist in a dynamic co-curricular environment.

Key to this is a collaborative, cross-departmental attempt to create the ‘Universal Unit’. I define the Universal Unit as one that is concerned with the Stage 1 of the MYP Unit Planner and driven by cross-departmental accessibility to the Unit Question and Area of Interaction (AoI) sections, which must be concerned with inquiry and co-owned by all departments in a Middle School.

Once the cross-departmental team has identified the subject specific Significant Concepts section of the planner for each unit (see below), they are then entrusted to the student to take home and explore and self-assess with the Khan Academy. This leaves the teaching team tasked only with ensuring that students have cause to implement the key AoI for that unit during class time.

Section 2 of the Planner is filled out by subject specific practitioners, ensuring that subject specific objectives are met. Key to the success of the Universal Unit is the co-owned Unit Question, which must allow for authentic student inquiry and action.

The action proposed, that is the vehicle of putting the ATL into practice, should be a structured personal project that has real world outcomes that allow students to see the trans-disciplinary nature of an MYP education while preparing for the MYP Personal Project. By catering for subject specific content in the Concepts section and in Section 2 of the Planner, students can move easily to the prescribed nature of the Diploma Programme. The Universal Unit concept expects that teachers plan collaboratively, echoing the consistency of the single classroom practitioner in the PYP while ensuring that subject specific concepts are identified and understood by students outside of the classroom, then actively applied in it. Perhaps the best means to demonstrate how this might look is through a simplified outline.

Step 3: empowering the Universal Unit The MYP (2008, 21) employs an Inquiry Cycle that is concerned with Awareness and Understanding, Action and Reflection. In accordance with Wiggins and McTighe’s (1998, 71) three-ringed approach for clarifying content priorities, which identifies with the Significant Concepts section of the MYP planner, here the practitioner is concerned with what students should retain for years into the future.

By co-authoring a Universal Unit, individual departments must be able to deftly differentiate between concepts ‘worth being familiar with’, concepts that are ‘important to know and do’ and concepts that constitute ‘big ideas and International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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core tasks’ in order to focus efficiently student inquiry. A cross-departmentally planned Unit could look like this: How are clouds formed? – G6 Significant Concepts – At home (Khan Academy) Humanities = Water Cycle Music = Natural environments as ambience Math = Average Rainfall and Graphing German = Local Case Study – Effects of acid rain on the Schwarzwald Science = Composition of gasses and environmental implications of acid rain English = Structuring a lab report; Poetry including weather or nature reference Art = The colour wheel and perspective with perspective fading to grey Area of Interaction Focus Environments – What are the impacts of acid rain on our locality?

AoI – In-class (subject specific) Humanities = Diagram practice of Water Cycle Music = Creating a Garage Band music track consisting only of natural sounds Math = Climate Graph German = PowerPoint and oral presentation on Case study Science = Lab Report and experimentation English = Lab report writing and editing/reading and writing ‘weather poetry’ Art = perspective artwork Action Creating clouds. Students hypothesize if clouds can be made in a school environment. Students make clouds in beakers with ice in the lab. Students write up lab report. Students modify experimentation to create acid rain.

Findings influence German case study.

Depending on the unit being taught, the student acquired concepts, the central AoI foci and the action involved could, and should, employ a variety of co-agreed methodologies and instructional approaches in individual subject classrooms. Tomlinson and McTighe’s (2006, 110) essential questions, six facets of understanding and WHERETO framework, would form an ideal basis for the planning of meaningful action and inquiring into the Unit Question.

Conclusion I return then to the filling of pails behind the closed doors of international schools and my disgruntled colleagues at AGIS. In order to move toward the classroom as a theatre of action, there needs to be greater buy-in among teachers for the MYP framework. What the Khan Academy offers is the freeing up of

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class time for in depth student assistance while entrusting the MYP student to take control of their rate of concept acquisition at home.

This facilitates the MYP Inquiry Cycle, which demands a conceptual transition from traditional classroom to theatre for action where students apply conceptual understanding actively and in solving real world problems. The IB would do well to work collaboratively with the Khan Academy to ensure a resource that will satisfy the Aims, Objectives and Assessment Criteria of the individual MYP subject guidelines. Ideally, by developing a similar model, the IB would create a globally accessible database of video and interaction that would cover many likely significant concepts horizontally and vertically per MYP subject.

This would continue the spirit of the framework curriculum of the MYP while offering more tangible support and curricular ‘commonality’ to those MYP teachers in need of something less ‘up in the air’. Supplied with a concept-driven database of videos and assessment, MYP teachers are free to move towards collaboratively planning Universal Units which focus on subject specific AoI and real world action. All that is left to do is open up the door and let the students take action.

Bibliography IB (2012) Middle Years Programme Humanities Guide 2012/2013, Cardiff: International Baccalaureate.

IB (2009) The Middle Years Programme: A basis for practice, Cardiff: International Baccalaureate.

IB (1998) MYP: From Principles into Practice, Cardiff: International Baccalaureate.

Tomlinson, C.A. and McTighe, J. (2006) Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding

by Design, Virginia: ASCD. Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2001) Understanding by Design, Virginia: ASCD. Eoin Lenihan is currently reading for a Ph D in Education at the University of Augsburg, Germany. As a humanities practitioner, he has experience of teaching the MYP Programme and K3 Curriculum. He was, most recently, the teacher of humanities at the International School Augsburg, Germany.

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Describing the dynamic nature of mathematics as a cultural product M Sencer Corlu Introduction The purpose of this ethnographic study is to describe the formal mathematical enculturation (Bishop, 1988) of middle school students at an international school. Specifically, I shall examine the ongoing creation of a mathematical culture within the classroom and show how class members define, maintain, and share the unique mathematical culture of the classroom, understood in terms of ideas, norms, and values.

The Middle Years Programme (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB), a five-year program for students aged between 11 and 16, is used by a large number of international schools (IB, 2010). Although this program is flexible in the sense that the course of study is determined by the school, all versions of the MYP foster a common understanding of the fundamental IB concepts: holistic learning (integration of mathematics into other disciplines); intercultural awareness (how cultural forces help foster developments in mathematics); and communication (how to effectively use the language of mathematics) (IB, 2000; 2002a; 2002b; 2005; 2007).

These fundamental concepts ensure that the MYP mathematics program is congruent with the notion that mathematics is embedded in a cultural context that gives it its purpose and meaning (Wiest, 2002). Mathematics education in the MYP is a reflection of the culture of those using it and can thus be utilised to understand other people with whom we share the planet (Barta, 2001). Thus, mathematics education in the MYP may provide opportunities to create healthy connections among people of different cultures.

An ethnography of the mathematics culture of an international middle school class A total of 29 students – 17 in grade 6 (G6) and 12 in grade 7 (G7) – participated in the study. The students, who attended an international IB school in a major city in Turkey, held non-Turkish passports (although some had Turkish parents).

They had come to their host country from different parts of the world. They were of high socio-economic status and were economically privileged and culturally aware. The language of instruction at this school was English.

Because the transience of international school student tenure at a particular school, due to the high mobility of their parents, made the culture of the classroom highly volatile, the expectation of change was an integral part of

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the cultural setting. Thus, the interpretivist paradigm (Glesne, 1998), which portrays an ever-changing reality, influenced the methods utilised in the study.

As the investigator and the students’ mathematics teacher, I was the main qualitative data collector for this one-year-long ethnographical study. Data collection occurred during my second year at this school and was designed to be a ‘dialectic and responsive process’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 44). The process employed multiple trustworthiness strategies (Gonzalez y Gonzalez, 2004) to overcome the difficulties emerging from studying my own class (Glesne, 1998).

For example, in addition to typical data collection methods, such as observations, interviews, classroom documents, and audio-visual materials (Creswell, 1998), I collected unobtrusive data, including students’ comments posted to the study’s social media environment, students’ personal mathematics diaries, and several other teachers’ observations (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, & Sechrest, 2000).

I analysed data in three stages: description; analysis; and interpretation of the culture-sharing group. The findings also included a section on my own mathematical enculturation in order to provide the readers with a sense of why the research was designed, implemented, and analysed the way it was (Kirby & McKenna, 1989). To achieve this goal, I kept a reflective journal in which to note down my experiences.

The mathematical enculturator Over the course of my own middle school years, my mathematical enculturation turned me into a rote learner, through a process of repeatedly practicing algorithms to achieve mastery. I did not remember any of my mathematics teachers utilising any teaching material other than textbooks and chalk.

Things did not change much at university. As a mathematics major, I was now expected to memorise the proofs of theorems. Interaction remained minimal and lecturing was essential.

In an effort to address the shortcomings of my own mathematical enculturation, when I started teaching at a national school it was with the motivation of showing the beauty and practical side of mathematics to my students. In one of my algebra classes, for instance, I was particularly excited about teaching how trigonometry was used by people in the past to solve real-life problems in astronomy. However, one of my students complained that that material would not be covered in the high-stakes tests completed by public school students at that age.

Bored with teaching mathematics in a highly structured curriculum with students lacking motivation other than to get good test results, I finally decided to become a mathematics teacher at an international school. I wanted to teach mathematics for a meaningful purpose, and not just ‘teach to the test’.

The first week His hand raised and with hesitation in his voice, Oliver (British; G6) said, “But this is the very first week. We can’t do maths!” While the G6 students were International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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quietly trying to figure out their new life in middle school, I was introducing a mathematical icebreaker. In the activity, I asked students to find a method to represent the common and different interests of the members of their group, using a single sheet of paper. I used this opportunity, which emerged during a conversation with Sofia (Italian; G6), to introduce John Venn (1834–1923), a British mathematician who invented the Venn diagram, a notation used in set theory.

Sofia: “I think I know what you are trying to teach.”

Teacher: “What is it?”

S: “It is Venn diagrams, isn’t it?”

T: “So, you know about John Venn?”

S: “Not really, but look! We drew a map of our countries; and this is [pointing the intersection of two Venn sets] United Nations for our common points.”

Students in G7 were less shy about complaining about mathematics during the first week of school. However, it was not long before Nur (Malaysian; G7) stepped in to motivate the class: “Come on, guys. Remember, he continued teaching until the last bell [sounded] last year.”

I wrote in my journal after the end of the activities: I learnt a great deal about my new students today: Three students in G6 and two students in G7 are new to the school; one speaks little English; others are native speakers [of English], but this is going to be their first experience of being abroad.

The first term I organised a meeting with my G6 students’ teacher from the previous year to gain some insights about their readiness for middle school mathematics.

The teacher gave me some information about the Primary Years Programme (PYP) which helped me perceive the continuities from PYP to MYP. However, I realised that not all students in G6 were proficient in some basic mathematics skills that they would need to be successful in G6. I changed the order of a number of units in my plan for the year, and decided to extend the time devoted to some topics. My students in G7 were going to learn many new topics, like integers and equations.

I was satisfied with their performance during the first term; they knew what I wanted them to do and I knew what they could do. The adaptation of newcomers to the class culture was going smoothly. One student who knew little English (Albanian; G7) and who was having difficulties had changed the climate of the class, in that several students, as well as the school’s English as a Second

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Language (ESL) teacher, were trying to help this student. Meanwhile, I was trying to find some mathematics activities in this student’s own language on the internet.

In November, I announced that I needed volunteers to help me publish a mathematics gazette. Among the ten students that volunteered, only two came from western countries. All but three were G7 students. Unfortunately, we could publish only two issues, as it was not easy to find a meeting time that suited us all. I regretted that I had voted in favour of limiting recess time to five minutes at the teachers’ assembly, since we could otherwise have met at recess.

The second term ‘Spy Game’ was the name of a two-month long activity in number theory, combinatorics, and graph theory, which I designed around a cryptology theme.

After a careful planning period of 15 days on my part, the game commenced with training sessions for both classes in March. The Spy Game included different activities for G6 and G7, which were implemented during a set period each week.

Some students had obviously heard of cryptology. During the training sessions, Chloé (Swiss; G6) wanted to share her ideas about the Enigma machine, which she had learned about from a TV documentary, while Jack (Irish; G7) asked whether barcodes would count as an example of cryptology. After the G7 class learnt how cryptology had affected people’s lives throughout history, Madison (American; G7) expressed her anxiety about using her father’s credit cards for internet shopping.

However, Daniil and Maxim, two G6 students from Russia, were, less interested: Teacher: “Did you not find cryptology interesting, Daniil?”

Daniil: “Yes, it is interesting. Is this going to be on the test?”

T: “What do you think; is code-breaking worth putting on the test?”

D: “It looks hard; please don’t put it in.”

Maxim: “They don’t teach these in Russia. We never learnt these things before.”

T: “Did you know that there were Russian cryptologists who were trying to break the codes of the Americans?”

M: “Really? I don’t know. Will you talk about them? I’d like to learn about Russian cryp-tolo-gists [having some difficulty in his pronunciation].”

Later, Mary (a newcomer, American; G7) surprised me with her independent discovery of the method used by a famous Arabic cryptologist, Al-Kindi (c.

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801–873). Mary had guessed that the most frequently appearing letter in the encrypted text, G, could be substituted by E, the most frequently used letter in English. Mary’s method did not work for the particular text given to her group (the names of four famous mathematicians), but it did provide me with the opportunity to jump ahead and talk about ‘frequency analysis’, which Al-Kindi invented to read the texts encrypted with Caesar’s letter transition method.

Teacher: “How did you know the most frequent letter was ‘E’ in English?”

Mary: “From the internet. I read that kind of stuff, but it did not work.”

T: “Why do you think it did not work?”

M: “Because none of these mathematicians are American [looking annoyed].”

T: “Do you think your method would work with any four English names or words?”

M: “It should; you have to do some guessing, too.”

I chose four random words from the dictionary, encrypted them using the Caesar’s transition method, and asked Mary to apply her method on these words.

The rest of the class was curious about where this challenge was going.

T: “Why do you think your method did not work this time?”

Ananya (Indian; G7) was at the back listening and then raised her hand.

She said: “I think you need more words, Mary. With four words, it is impossible.”

At the end of this part of the Spy Game, the students were surprised to discover that Blaise Pascal was represented by their French deputy principal, Aryabhata was their Indian IT teacher, and Isaac Newton was their guidance counsellor from England. Finally, Ulugh Beg was their Turkish language teacher.

During the class discussions, I asked: “what would happen if Newton was born in India and Aryabhata in England?” Nathan (French; G6) had an interesting point: “Newton could not have found gravity in India, because I don’t think there are apple trees in India.” Some students pointed out that, given the vast advantages Newton had in England, such as a much stronger intellectual community in the field of mathematics, Aryabhata could have discovered greater things than Newton had he been in England.

However, someone said, “Aryabhata and Ulugh Beg were the only clever people in their countries.” When I criticised this viewpoint, asking, “Why do you think we all know about Newton but no one knows about Ulugh Beg, and only Ananya knows Aryabhata?”, Sofia (Italian; G6) commented: “I think it is because of TV or because all books are written in English. I think English

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people are more sensible towards their culture, because I did not know Fibonacci before you told us about the golden ratio. I never saw his name in Italian books before.”

All the students in G7, but only the western students in G6, knew of at least one mathematician from their culture, and none of the G6 students from other parts of the world could name a mathematician from their countries. I believed the G7 students had better knowledge in this regard because of the project they had completed the year before, when they had presented the life and works of a mathematician who was born in their home country. I realised that the majority of the discussions in G6 were dominated by the western students, while other students were silent and would not join the discussion unless I directed a question to them.

Some other interesting patterns appeared in the Triangle Game, in which G6 students had to place numbers from 1 to 8 in circles located on the sides of a triangle. The goal was to obtain the sum 13 on each side. Neither I nor the other teachers helping me noticed a negative atmosphere during our observation of the game until Emil, (a newcomer, Norwegian; G6) brought to our attention that the number 13 had made him ‘feel sick’ during the game because of its ‘evil powers’. Six other students in G6 agreed that they were not comfortable with working with 13. In other words, although, the majority of the participants disagreed, much of the G6 class seemed to agree with the idea that some numbers have special powers.

Jennifer (American; G6) explained: “I believe that numbers have special powers; in a way they affect people. For example, if a person sees his lucky number in a math problem, they will do better, because it is in their brain.”

She continued speaking in an excited, rapid tone: “Some numbers are scary. I fear that something is going to happen on the 6th June. It is the Devil’s birthday.

I am not going to leave my room on that day and I also have 13 in my life, so bad things happened to me. I fell down the stairs and broke my leg last year, and it was the 13th of the month, and many other bad things happened to me on the 13th.”

Harry (English; G6) further commented: “I think if you search for a certain number you will find it, everywhere. Let me pick, say, hmm, let’s say 134 is my unlucky number. Ok? Is there going to be something bad in 30 minutes?

Because it is now four past one. Or, does it mean anything if you open your emails and find 134 emails in your inbox.”

When I extended this conversation to my G7 class, Jack (American; G7) had a totally different perception of the number 13. He said that 13 was a lucky number for Americans, because “on the flag there are 13 stripes and 13 colonies” and about the 6th June, he said, “I will feel so confident that I will insult the devil on that day.”

Students in G7 tended to agree that the powers of numbers are limited to individual perception and that this is psychological in nature, or as Filip (Polish; International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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G7) said: “we just notice it because we say that number is lucky or unlucky.” We all also learnt that there are other numbers with special meanings in different cultures, as Ananya (Indian; G7) explained that the number six has a very spiritual, positive meaning in Indian culture.

The last week At the end of the game, many students expressed their appreciation and said that they had never participated in such activities in their home countries.

When I asked Madison (American; G7) what was special about the Spy Game, her answer was “the Spy Game was a multicultural game and we learnt that there were mathematicians in all cultures.” Grace (British; G7) said that she had previously participated in classroom activities like the Spy Game in her former school in Botswana, but that they had not been as well planned as this one. Emil’s (Norwegian; G6) mother wrote a letter of thanks to the school with regard to the Spy Game and for training her son as a multicultural person and expressed her appreciation to us for decreasing the anxiety caused by leaving his home country.

The game ended with the presentation of gifts to participating students by the Headmaster. I was happy to be the teacher of this exceptional group of students and grateful for the support of the school administration, which had allowed me to teach in the way I believed would help the adults of tomorrow learn to coexist peacefully through their experiences learning mathematics.

Discussion and conclusion The students, throughout the study, consistently referred back in their comments to their homes or the cultures in which they were initially enculturated, comparing them to the mathematics culture of their current class. They also expressed their appreciation of the Spy Game for helping them change the way they thought about the people doing mathematics, moving them away from the ethnocentric assumption that mathematics is largely a product of the intellectual work of Europeans (Sleeter, 1997). It is evident from the present study that mathematics is a cultural product, in keeping with Bishop’s theory of mathematical enculturation (1988) and D’Ambrosio’s ethnomathematics (2001).

The study shows that mathematics is a dynamic form of knowledge, created by and in different cultures.

This study did not aim to model the international school at a macro level, for instance by performing an analysis of its curriculum or administrative setting.

There have been many such studies conducted in the past that have been very valuable to researchers. Nor are the results generalisable to other school settings.

However, I wanted to convey to curious minds the insights that can be gleaned in the more intimate setting of a mathematics classroom in an international school in the hope that this ethnographical study the reader has developed a better understanding of what can go on in international school mathematics classrooms.

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References Barta, J. (2001): By way of introduction: Mathematics and culture, in Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(6), pp305-311.

Bishop, A. J. (1988): Mathematical Enculturation: A Cultural Perspective on Mathematics Education. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Corlu, M. S. (2005): Creating an international culture, in International School magazine, 8 (1), pp29-30.

Creswell, J. W. (1998): Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

D’Ambrosio, U. (2001): What is ethnomathematics and how can it help children in schools?, in Teaching Children Mathematics, 7 (6), pp308-310.

Glesne, C. (1998): Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An introduction. New York: Longman.

Gonzalez y Gonzalez, E. M. (2004): Perceptions of Selected Senior Administrators of Higher Education Institutions in Mexico Regarding Needed Administrative Competencies (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (UMI No. 3157028).

International Baccalaureate. (2000): Middle Years Programme Mathematics. Geneva: Author.

International Baccalaureate. (2002a): A Basis for Practice: The Middle Years Programme. Geneva: Author.

International Baccalaureate. (2002b): School’s Guide to the Middle Years Programme. Geneva: Author.

International Baccalaureate. (2005): Program Standards and Practices. Cardiff: Author.

International Baccalaureate. (2007): Middle Years Programme: Mathematics Guide. Cardiff: Author.

International Baccalaureate. (2010): Middle Years Programme Mathematics: Preparing Students for University in the 21st Century. Geneva: Author.

Kirby, S. &K. McKenna (1989): Experience, Research, Social Change: Methods from the Margins.

Toronto: Gramond Press.

Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. (1985): Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park: Sage.

Merryfield, M. M. (2000): Why aren’t teachers being prepared to teach for diversity, equity, and global interconnectedness? A study of lived experiences in the making of multicultural and global educators, in Teaching and Teacher Education, 16 (4), pp429–443.

Murphy, E. (2003): Monolingual international schools and the young non-English-speaking child, in Journal of Research in International Education, 2 (1), pp25-45.

Sleeter, C. E. (1996): Multicultural education as a social movement, in Theory Into Practice, 35, pp239-247.

Sleeter, C. E. (1997): Mathematics, multicultural education, and professional development, in Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 28 (6), pp680–698.

Walker, G. (2012): Tea and oysters: Metaphors for a global education, in International Schools Journal, 31 (2), pp8-17.

Webb, E. J., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D. & Sechrest, L. (2000): Unobtrusive Measures.

Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Wiest, R. L. (2002): Multicultural mathematics instruction: Approaches and resources, in Teaching Children Mathematics, 9 (1), pp49-55.

Dr M Sencer Corlu is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He facilitates teacher education courses at Bilkent, which qualify prospective teachers for Level 1 IB teacher awards. He has taught mathematics in international schools in Morocco, Switzerland, and Turkey.

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Education beyond frontiers: early signs of international mindedness Ian Hill and Caroline Ellwood At the meeting of the Alliance for International Education Conference in Doha in October 2012, for one of the plenary sessions Ian Hill considered the ideas of some early thinkers and philosophers that could be related to international mindedness He spoke specifically about Comenius and Rousseau and his address led to considerable discussion around the topic of great thinkers on education, particularly since we were in Doha, provoking suggestions of influential early Islamic philosophers and teachers and the influence of their ideas.

This article will therefore bring east and west together, in no sense of competition but in the spirit of celebrating diversity and some shared values.

Part 1: Evolution of education for international mindedness Ian Hill My presentation assumes that the product of a successful international education is international mindedness (IM). The concept of IM goes back a long way but the term itself is more recent. My selected starting point for the concept of international education is 17th century Europe. A perspective of IM antecedents from the Middle East, Africa, or Asia could lead to a different discourse.

In 17th century Europe there was no compulsory schooling and no organised systems of education. Schooling was only for the rich and rarely for girls, and when it did take place it consisted of the drilling of facts for memorisation and regurgitation with little understanding of what was drilled.

By the end of the 17th century the ‘New World’ had been discovered and first encounters with the natives of foreign lands had taken place. Passenger travel across Europe by land occurred in various forms of horse-drawn carriages, and only for the rich. Trade routes such as the ‘Silk Road’ trade with China: a network of interlinking paths which spanned the land mass connecting Asia, north and east Africa, and the Mediterranean and European world, had existed for centuries.

These voyages were reserved for a small, enterprising section of total populations. Land routes were later supplemented by sea routes that included the slave trade across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The fastest method of communication was by horse and shipping postal services. Knowledge about other ways of life was very limited and travel for the general public around the globe did not exist.

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John Comenius (1592-1670), Czech pedagogue, philosopher and humanist, was regarded by Piaget as a pioneer in international education. His Collegium Lucis was intended as an international ministry of education. It would, amongst other functions, facilitate student exchanges across frontiers; provide universal text books in a common language; promote creative pedagogical ideas; oblige the upper classes to ensure the education of a nation’s entire youth; and enable whole populations to emerge from ignorance by teaching ‘everything to everyone’ and from every point of view (the pansophic philosophy of education by which people become ‘all-knowing’). Comenius also wanted to bring scholars from many countries to study together in a ‘Pansophic College’. This democratic system, which he advocated for girls too, would serve to educate nations.

While Head of his last school in 1650 he espoused the following teaching principles: Proceed by stages.

Examine everything oneself, without submitting to authority.

Act on one’s own impulsion: ‘autopraxy’. The pupils shall themselves seek, discover, discuss, do and repeat by their own efforts; the teachers being left merely with the task of seeing whether what is to be done is done, and done as it should be.

So nothing is really new in education; it’s rediscovering ideas to be in tune with the times.

Each of the above is expressed today as: paced and/or sequential learning; critical thinking; constructivism, child-centred education, and the teacher as facilitator.

The Geneva-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) in his Emile (1762) described how he would raise an imaginary boy, Emile, placed in his charge from childhood to the end of adolescence. Rousseau’s thesis was that learning should be heuristic, stemming from natural curiosity and personal experience; rather than imparting facts, teachers should foster self-discovery or what we would call today ‘constructivism’ which is an important pedagogical process for facilitating international mindedness.

Rousseau has been criticised for promoting nationalistic fervour, to the detriment of international understanding, but the following advice to Emile indicates otherwise: ... not only is it always pleasant to have a correspondent in foreign lands, it is also an excellent antidote against the sway of national prejudices...

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Nothing is better calculated to lessen the hold of such prejudices than a friendly interchange of opinions.

Emile is one of the first books to link the educational process to a scientific understanding of children, of how they learn and how they develop. He was a precursor of child psychology which Piaget developed almost 200 years later.

However, in his final section on the education of an imaginary girl, Sophie, he encouraged teaching girls to be entirely subordinate and dependent on their husbands.

Victor Hugo (1802-85) thought profoundly about the concept of international mindedness when he said: One day, we hope, the world will be civilised. All points of this human abode will be enlightened and then the magnificent dream of intelligence will have been achieved: to have as one’s homeland the World, and as one’s nation, Humanity.

He considered all civilisations as his homeland; a homeland ‘which has no other border except the sombre and fatal line where barbarity begins.’ (Les Burgraves 1843). Hugo’s stance is a timeless reminder that there is still much to be done to fulfil ‘the magnificent dream’.

Some 20 years later, in 1864, Charles Dickens (1812-70) wrote an article entitled ‘International Education’ in which he proposed the creation of a system of international schools in a number of European countries where students of different nations would practise the language of the host country as they moved from school to school.

The curriculum and the sequence in which it was taught in each institution would be virtually the same to facilitate mobility. In line with Victor Hugo, Dickens talks about each student in these schools being ‘a citizen of the world at large’ and goes on to say that such schools ‘would not denationalise the young English mind’. Dickens also spoke about developing ‘tolerance that comes of near acquaintance with different ways of thought’.

In 1807 the first recorded fare-paying passenger railway service in the world was established in Swansea, Wales. During the 1800s railways started to spread within and between countries in Europe and elsewhere. Towards the end of the 19th century the first automobiles with gasoline-powered combustion engines started to appear in Europe, heralding the beginning of longer distance travel over land for the few who could initially afford it, and aircraft prototypes were emerging but not for any commercial public travel. So the horse and carriage, and boats, supplemented by rail travel, provided the only ways of crossing frontiers, in addition to walking. Much of the cross-border movement was for military purposes connected with taking over other lands.

Adherence to one’s nation and suspicion of others did not promote a desire for international understanding. As with other centuries before it, the 19th

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century was strewn with many battles between and within nations. Hugo and Dickens are reactionaries of note to the malaise of their times who saw that education for intercultural understanding could reduce conflict and promote collaborative prosperity. Global issues as we know them today were not part of the discourse.

By the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, commercial air flights became available and increased in frequency, security and speed so that by the 1960s large commercial jet-propelled aircraft were operating across the globe. The commercialisation of long distance telephone calls took place during the first half of the 20th century. These advances facilitated the opening of company branches and the movement of embassy personnel around the globe. Commercial television emerged in the 1950s which assisted communication of events elsewhere. The world was starting to shrink. It was after the Second World War that an international school movement became recognisable to cater for students moving around the world with their parents.

To my knowledge the first use of the term ‘international mindedness’ was in 1951 when the Conference of Internationally Minded Schools was created under the auspices of UNESCO (the result of a first meeting of schools in 1949). This association was open to schools which ‘consciously aim at furthering world peace and international understanding through education’. The concept of IM has changed from the 17th century until today due to the impact of thinkers in education and to advances that have transformed international communication and travel: Emergence, recognition and interdependence of global issues.

Democratisation of international education into state schools and the introduction of programmes for difference student capacities.

Recognising that the development of international mindedness can take place in any type of school.

More access for speakers of languages other than English.

IM is not just for students, but for the whole community.

IM is about adaptability to a rapidly changing world.

References Dickens, C. (1864) International Education, in All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, XII pp281308 (cited in Sylvester 2007) Hugo, V.(1843) Preface to Les Burgraves – trilogie Paris: E. Michaud lettres.ac-rouen.fr/francais/romantik/ruy-blas/burgrave.html Downloaded 11.02.2012 Piaget, J. (1993) Jan Amos Comenius Prospects (UNESCO, International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIII, no. 1/2, p. 173-96. (Reproduction of a study by Piaget written in 1957) International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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Rousseau, J-J (1762) Emile ou de l’Education (Emile or Treatise on Education.) On line French/English version viewed from 25/06/2012 at www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/ Contents2.html Sylvester, R. (2007) Historical Resources for Research in International Education (1851-1950), in Hayden, M., Levy, J. Thompson, J. (eds) The Sage Handbook of Research in International Education, Sage, London pp11-24.

Part 2: Ibn Khaldun and ‘the essence of civilisation’ Caroline Ellwood The addition of ‘international mindedness’ to the terminology of international education is such a comparatively recent phenomenon that it might seem tortuous to start looking for examples in early Islam. Added to which there is no real consensus. Like all umbrella terms it can, as Humpty Dumpty says “mean just what I choose it to mean” (Carroll 1870). Ian Hill has provided some early examples of international mindedness in relation to the development of European philosophy and education. He emphasises the role played by communication in the development of what is (in another recent term) global education.

Certainly as we in the UK celebrate 150 years of the London Underground, the ability to move swiftly from place to place, meet other nationalities, see other ways of life is part of the meaning of international mindedness. What, to paraphrase Terry Haywood, can be summed up as ‘curiosity, open attitudes, knowledge and understanding, interconnectiveness and respect’ (Haywood 2007).

Consideration of international mindedness and early Islam could therefore well start with communication of ideas and scholarship. Cultural intolerance is strongly linked to nation building and nationalism and to religious conflict (Zigmunt Bauman 2012) and there is no doubt that Islam has its share of both political and religious strife. Nevertheless the binding factors of The Qu’ran and the common use of Arabic brought scholars together.

As the religion spread across continents, leaders established cities that became great centres of learning, particularly in the Ummyad (7th to 8th centuries) and Abbassid (8th to 13th centuries) empires, together with the Maghreb and of course Mecca itself. In these places important libraries were established: Damascus, Baghdad, Alexandria, Fez, Cairo, Timbuktu, Cordoba, the Silk Road centres of Samarkand, Bukhara and Isfahan were all the base for scholars, home to important collections of books and precious repositories of early classical texts. It was the translation of these texts into Arabic that formed the foundation of much of Islamic progress in the sciences, mathematics and philosophy.

Familiar with the idea of pilgrimage to Mecca, these intrepid and curious philosophers, scientists and teachers travelled across the continent, the Middle East and Africa to exchange ideas. (Harwood, R. 2012).

An Islamic scholar and philosopher who could be said to exemplify the qualities of international mindedness in Haywood’s list, and to which could be

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added Ian Hill’s point of ‘Awareness and recognition of the interdependence of global issues’, is Ibn Khaldun.

The Khaldun family were aristocratic, accomplished scholars and courtiers who settled in Andalusia but, when the Christian armies retook Seville, they moved to Tunis. There in 1337 Abd-ar-Rahman, Abu Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun was born. Ibn Khaldun was given the education usually expected of a rich aristocratic family, learning The Qur’an, philosophy, jurisprudence, poetry and grammar and taught by the best scholars.

In 1352, at the age of 20, he got his first government post. In 1354 he moved to the court at Fez, where he started to consider aspects of the study of history and where, accused of disloyalty, he spent a year in prison. Once released he joined the court at Granada, the first of a number of eminent but often shortlived positions, and at one point decided to join a monastic group of Sufis for four years. By 1387, when he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, he was accepted as one of the great scholars of the time.

As he wandered around the various courts and met other scholars, politicians and courtiers (he made a historic visit to Tamurlane) and moved across the Maghreb and beyond, Khaldun was studying society and what was needed to understand the history of peoples and their institutions.

He became convinced that history was the key to a comprehension of the way society worked and he started to write the Kitab al’Ibar (History of the World).

It took him four years to complete with ‘words and ideas pouring from my head like milk from a churn’ ( N J Darwood, 1967). Looking at the world as he knew it and considering the way historians then compiled their books, Khaldun made some remarkable observations that would change attitudes towards the writing of history.

International schools are well aware of the problems as to ‘whose history’ is taught. Khaldun realised that history always has the problem of bias or, as he termed it, ‘partisanship’. Historians can make the mistake of believing that they are writing the truth, not an interpretation of the facts. Historians can mislead when events are not placed in their real context. And there is no place for myths.

Historical records must be judged for their value by comparison.

Little effort is made to get at the truth. The critical eye is not sharp.

Errors and unfounded assumptions are closely allied, gossip is included.

Blind trust in tradition is an inherited trait in human beings … it takes critical insight to sort out the hidden truth, it takes knowledge to lay truth bare and polish it so that critical insight may be applied to it.

(Muquaddimah, p5).

Khaldun can be credited as the true inventor of historiography and as such worked on his theories and criticisms with a critical ‘mindedness’ that, so far as was possible in his day, was supported by international observation.

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he was describing as having common characteristics. He considered that groups either in cities or agricultural communities could be studied ‘scientifically’. This new science would eventually be called sociology. An example of his innovative attempts to discover pattern in human organisation is his theory of asabiyyah, which concerns the bonds humans make in forming communities. In simplistic terms it is ‘clogs to clogs in two generations’. (Muquaddimah, chapter 14, 19).

Does all this make Khaldun ‘internationally minded’?

Certainly, in respect to all the attributes that Haywood puts forward, he fits ‘curiosity, open attitudes, knowledge and understanding, interconnectiveness and respect’. And, as an international minded historian, how could I resist this description of my field: History is a discipline widely cultivated among nations and races, both the learned and the ignorant are able to understand it … it serves to entertain large and crowded gatherings and brings us to an understanding of human affairs.’ (Muquaddimah, p5).

References Carroll, L. ( 1870), Alice Through the Looking Glass Collins Classics Edition 2001.

Khaldun, (translation 196 ) An Introduction to History, The Muquaddimah, Rosenthall and Dawood, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Harwood , R (2012) Chapter 10, Learning and Teaching about Islam, Essays in Understanding.

Edited by Caroline Ellwood, A John Catt Publication.

Haywood, T. (2007) Chapter 7 The Sage Handbook of Research in International Education. Sage Publications.

Dr Ian Hill was until recently Deputy Director of the International Baccalaureate. Prior to joining the IBO in 1993 he was Director of the International School of Sophia Antipolis. From 1986 to 1989 he was senior private secretary/advisor to the Minister of Education in the State of Tasmania.

In Australia he held positions as a senior administrator in government schools, university lecturer in education and team member of an Australian national programme for curriculum development in schools.

Dr Caroline Ellwood has a long record of work in the field of international education as teacher, administrator and consultant. She is editor of International Schools Journal and of International School magazine (is) and editor of Teaching and Learning about Islam, Essays in Understanding (John Catt Educational Ltd, 2012).

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Historical vignette Fifty years of development: The American School of Barcelona Robin Berting The American School of Barcelona turned 50 in 2012-13 with a banner year of celebrations. In addition to the festivities themselves for community members current and past, the 50th anniversary has given us a chance to reflect on the school then and now, and to look toward the future. Obviously, the Barcelona of 1962 was an incredibly different place from the Barcelona of today, but the school has managed to maintain its place at the vanguard of education in the city.

The origins In 1962, Spain was ruled by the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

Schools were extremely strict and traditional, with boys and girls segregated even in the public schools. Spaniards had little contact with the outside world as the tourist boom of the 1960s had not yet begun. Any outward looking contact beyond the city’s own inhabitants came from the ‘immigration’ that was from southern Spain and not other countries, and few Spaniards could afford to travel.

Furthermore, in Catalonia, where Barcelona is located, the Catalan language was repressed.

In spite of this scenario, the American School of Barcelona opened its doors on 2nd October, 1962, with 100 students – boys and girls – from kindergarten to grade 5, and ten teachers. ASB was one of the only co-educational or English-language schools in the city. The school also boasted a warm, friendly atmosphere from the very beginning; former students recount how ASB students sincerely looked forward to going to school and have fond memories of their time there. The school was truly ahead of its time.

But ASB was not only avant garde because of its co-ed, English-language nature and family-like atmosphere; it was also revolutionary thanks to the manner in which it was born and the way it was governed. The school was founded by an enlightened individual, Dr Josep Maria Poal, who had studied medicine in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. So impressed was he by the free-thinking nature of American education that he decided to open a school for his eldest child, three-year-old Fernando Poal, the ‘first ASB student’.

What Dr Poal wanted was an American school for Spanish children. He succeeded in finding the teachers and space for the school in a beautiful old building in the Pedralbes district of Barcelona. However, it takes more than an individual to run a successful institution. In its second year, control of the International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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school was handed over to the parents, who formed a fully democratic, elected, non-profit parents association to run the school.

Still, the school had lots of room for growth and improvement. After all, in its early years, ASB was not fully accredited and it only catered for students from kindergarten through elementary school. Graduation for high school students did not come until years later, in the late 1980s.

Fast forward to 2013: staying on the cutting edge Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same. That could be ASB’s motto. There have been many improvements made at ASB, but they all have a common theme – the school has stayed at the forefront of the education scene in Barcelona while maintaining its family atmosphere.

A first big improvement to be underlined came with a change in facilities. As the school grew, the campus in Pedralbes was no longer big enough. Fortunately, in the late 1970s the parents’ association was able to sell the rights to the old building to developers and buy a beautiful piece of land with views of the sea on the hills next to Collserola Park in nearby Esplugues de Llobregat.

Through continuous improvements to facilities over the years, the purposebuilt facility we know today came to be. It has grown over the years to include a separate building for the early childhood centre, a covered gym, an artificial grass soccer field, state-of-the art science labs, and a completely wired campus with projectors, smart boards, and wifi access all over the campus today.

A second important change came with curriculum developments. With the advent of democracy in Spain in the mid-1970s and a ‘rebirth’ in Catalan culture, the school was eventually accredited by the Spanish Ministry of Education, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges in the US. Students could now study at the native-speaker level in English, Spanish and Catalan, graduate with both local and American credentials, and go on to university in Spain or abroad.

The biggest development in terms of academics came, however, with the adoption of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in 2007. ASB had been graduating students successfully for years with its US high school diploma and the Spanish Selectividad university preparation program. Still, the school’s population had become increasingly international, reflecting demographic changes in the city thanks to Spain’s entry into the European Union in the late 1980s, the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and all the accompanying publicity the city received, the advent of globalization around the world and massive immigration to Spain by the turn of the century. It became clear to many in the community that the increasingly international student body would benefit from this rigorous international curriculum. ASB was the first English language school in the city to adopt the programme and has had results well-above the world average every year since it began graduating students with the diploma in 2009.

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Still faithful to the family atmosphere But ASB has not lost its roots as the original family feel at the school has been maintained through all the growth and changes. Given the increasingly complex demands on running a school, the parents’ association governing structure has recently been transformed to that of a foundation, still comprised of a majority of elected representatives. Furthermore, the level of parent involvement at ASB is extremely high and communication between the school’s administration and parents is frequent and transparent.

Visitors who walk through the school, whether through the early childhood centre, the elementary, middle or high school, or who attend any of the school’s various community events, cannot help but catch the friendly spirit of the school.

ASB now has close to 700 students, about half local and half international.

Local/international synergies that develop open-mindedness among all community members are explicitly encouraged by a number of cutting-edge sports, leadership and service learning programs. The school was a founding member of the Atlantic Mediterranean Activities Conference in 2006. Through this program, ASB high school students have been able to participate in sports tournaments at schools throughout the Mediterranean – and on many occasions as the host school.

In 2007, ASB started a weekly cross-age program, Student Exploration, Experience and Discovery (SEED), in which community members lead groups of children from different grades every week through a wide-range of non-academic activities that foster life skills. The school has also been involved in the Model United Nations program for years, sending students to events in Lisbon, The Hague and Milan annually. ASB is also a leader in service learning programs and in 2010 received special recognition for it from US President Barack Obama.

In fact the school boasts a number of service learning programs which have a profound impact on the community and on the ASB students participating in them, such as the Sharing to Learn program, developed in partnership with the Catalan education authorities, in which about 40 ninth grade students act as language assistants every Wednesday in 13 public elementary schools in greater Barcelona all year long.

Most recently, ASB helped found the Barcelona International Schools Association (BISA) along with several other international schools. In addition to pooling resources with the Council of International Schools (CIS) for a largescale university fair, BISA has started preparations for a student-run talent show with acts to be performed by students from all member schools. All of these ‘experiential learning programs’ supplement the main curriculum and help make for more well-rounded students, sometimes profoundly changing their ways of seeing life.

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Facing the future optimistically The world in general and Spain in particular are facing a challenging economic crisis like no other seen for years. Public debt is high, cutbacks are the order of the day all around us, and unemployment has sky-rocketed. In spite of this, ASB has striven to move forward with progressive educational practices, a rigorous, modern global curriculum that fits with its highly international student body, and experiential learning programs that have a real impact on society and on student learning unlike anything ever seen before in the city.

But what has not changed in 50 years, what Dr Josep Poal fostered when he opened the school in 1962, is a strong sense of community and a daring spirit of innovation – the willpower to be different and to strive for the best for students.

References US Ambassador Visits the American School of Barcelona to Honour Students, In Spain Magazine, April, 2010, page 13. www.fifty.a-s-b.com Zilber, Ettie and Joaquín Sánchez. 40 years – ASB: Remember the past. Plan for the future. 19622002, American School of Barcelona and Alcograf, 2005.

Special thanks to Nancy Boyd, Mark Pingitore and Marta Vernet for their comments.

Robin Berting is admissions and community relations coordinator at the American School of Barcelona.

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Book review Internationalizing Teacher Education in the United States Edited by Beverly D Shaklee and Supriya Baily Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 261 pages ISBN 978 1 4433 1248 0 The editors of this work, as well as many of its contributing authors, are associated with the Center for International Education at George Mason University, Virginia, USA. An underlying theme of the book is that, although migration as a consequence of economic globalisation has contributed to changing attitudes to cultural diversity in the USA, American schools ‘are based on a nineteenth-century model developed with a monocultural focus’ (page 5).

The view of America as a cultural ‘melting pot’ creating a normative national culture by assimilation has been superseded by explicit multiculturalism. The challenge for education policy-makers and teachers is how to address increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the school classroom. A further challenge is how to change US teacher education for engagement with the world beyond US national boundaries.

It appears that economic globalisation is producing an environment that is ‘internationalizing students for competition in a global market instead of internationalizing teachers who are responsible for making this leap from a tradition-bound US teacher education system’ (page 8). Hence the authors seek to discuss reform of teacher education ‘around certain transdisciplinary elements such as the development of social justice perspectives, inclusion, respect, empathy, global issues, responsibility and agency, and the ability to take multiple perspectives’ (page 9).

The book is organised into two main sections. Chapters in the first section theorise international education by reference to issues such as the intersections between international and multicultural education; intercultural competence for teaching and learning; and the critical role of language in international classrooms. The second section deals with practical issues concerning the development and improvement of US teacher education.

Chapters in this section discuss how teachers might be engaged in building relationships with international families and communities; how international, national and state educational assessment standards might be reconciled; how science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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subjects can be promoted; and how pedagogical diversity between cultures and national might be bridged.

Natasha Kolar presents a critical review that compares international and multicultural approaches to education in the K-12 curriculum. She identifies three contrasting approaches to multicultural education, comprising ‘human relations’, ‘teaching the culturally different’ and ‘critical multicultural education’ respectively. Her discussion is framed historically within a context in which the white majority has attempted to maintain its hegemony over more recent immigrants to the US by a variety of means including marginalisation and segregation, assimilation and integration. She argues that ‘the history of the US school system has been shaped by both institutional injustice and the progressive movement toward social reconstruction’ (page 18). However, while there is reference to social justice and equity, Kolar does not appear to draw on economic, sociological or political theories to develop her arguments.

This is exemplified by the distinction drawn between global and international education that I find particularly challenging: The language of the former [global education] lends itself to framing topics, such as human rights, global warming, poverty reduction, and arts and culture as concerns currently facing residents of planet Earth regardless of their national residence. The latter [international education] explicitly positions the nation-state at the center of its language, facilitating activities such as the consideration of topics from the perspectives of multiple national governments, the comparison of historical events as experienced by people living in different countries, and any programs that prepare students to strengthen the economy and security of the United States (page 23).

Kenneth Cushner discusses the nature and development of intercultural competence in teaching and learning. He argues that teachers ‘must understand how their own rather narrow perspective and experience may influence their ability to accurately perceive and understand the children in their charge as well as the inherently narrow environment in which they work’ (page 47).

Such perspectives can be widened, Cushner proposes, by the use of internetbased social media to facilitate communication between teachers in different countries.

Rebecca Fox addresses the critical role of language in international classrooms.

She presents a typology of contrasting approaches to language acquisition policies including English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as a Second Language (ESL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), and English as an International Language (EIL). Fox recommends that ‘educators need to work together, along with researchers in second language acquisition, university educators, to find solutions that lead to academic success for all learners’ (page

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65). A laudable aim but this chapter could have been made more useful had it included discussion of whole school policies designed to promote language across the curriculum (Barnes et al 1971).

In a chapter entitled One Size Fits All, Laura Engel and Kate Olden review the conflicting demands for internationalisation and standardisation in the US education system. Curriculum innovation and implementation are being carried out against a background of core standards and mandated educational assessment. Educational standards are themselves globalised, through international comparative assessment exercises such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Engel and Olden conclude that the imposition of standards and mandated testing ‘limit a global dimension of learning in two ways: first, to a skills-based approach (ie the skills required to compete in a global economy), and second, to a nationalistic perspective of culture and cultural difference, rooted in a more superficial form of multiculturalism rather than a critical understanding about global citizenship and cosmopolitanism’ (page 89).

Libby Tudball discusses an Australian perspective on internationalising teacher education. She observes the increasing global flows of students, teachers, scholars, programs, courses and curricula into and out of Australia.

Such border crossing has led to demands for internationalisation at home as well as abroad. Tudball concludes that ‘pre-service teachers are entitled to an internationalised curriculum that gives them the capacity to understand their local, national, and global identity, leading to an appreciation of their future role as leaders of learning in the global world’ (pages 108-9).

Monimalika Day notes that migrant children invariably arrive in a new country with their parents and other family members. Limited access to English language skills may be shared by an entire family. Hence there is a strong motivation to engage whole families in education in order to overcome challenges of information, interpretation and relationships. Teachers need to understand that ‘the meaning of many literacy practices is grounded in cultural scripts and may be misinterpreted easily by members of other cultures’ (page 117).

Families fleeing from civil unrest or natural disasters are particularly vulnerable. Supriya Baily discusses the challenges for teachers of refugee migrants. Kimberley Daly presents an informative comparative study of College Board Advanced Placement (AP) and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). She comments that, unlike the IBDP, ‘there is no overarching idea of internationalism or global mindedness in the AP program, as the courses are not woven together in a cohesive, single program’ (page 161). Daly draws a contrast between the opportunities for continuing professional development of teachers offered by these programmes. She points out how the development of a Global Workshop Architecture is facilitating face-to-face professional training for IB teachers worldwide. On the other International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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hand, ‘in terms of teacher professional development, AP is internationalising this insomuch that potentially American teachers might be able to connect with teachers aboard through electronic discussion groups’ (page 162).

With particular reference to reciprocal visits by teachers from Russia and the US, Wendy Frazier, Rebecca Fox and Margret Hjalmarson consider how international teacher exchange programmes can be used to broaden and deepen understanding of teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines.

Rachel Grant and Maryam Salashoor return to the discussion of second language acquisition issues by highlighting the need for contextually responsive teacher education. That is to say, ‘teacher education programs in the United States must consider how best to address the needs of teachers whose sociocultural and sociohistorical orientations to teaching and learning differ from ESOL and EFL preparation in the United States’ (page 205).

Debra Sprague outlines the ways in which digital communications technologies such as multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) can be used to expand the horizons of teachers and students. She argues that the challenge is to move the users of such technologies away from the role of passive observer toward the role of active participant.

Drawing the various strands together in a concluding chapter, Beverly Shaklee identifies the need for internationalization and reform of US teacher education in a number of dimensions. They include the need to internationalise teaching faculty, develop new standards that acknowledge the international context, the recruitment and selection of candidate teachers, rethinking clinical experiences, the acquisition of world language skills and development of intercultural competence.

It could be argued that the title of this volume, although formally appropriate, is misleading. The prospective reader might be put off by its reference to teacher education in a particular national context. The scope of this book is much wider than that. It presents an up-to-date review of international education as practised in international schools and elsewhere in a synthesis with perspectives on comparative and international education in the multiple senses exemplified

by Bray (2010) and Piper et al (2006) among others.

As such, it deserves to be read by many in the ‘international schools and international education’ constituency. This book would make a useful acquisition for the professional development library of a school or an addition to the personal book collection of a school Head, teacher, administrator or governor. In particular, it would be of value to a person engaged in advanced professional studies in international or comparative education.

References Barnes, D., Britten, J. and Rosen, H. (1971) Language, the Learner and the School. Penguin Education, Harmondsworth.

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Bray, M. (2010) Comparative education and international education in the history of Compare: boundaries, overlaps and ambiguities. Compare 40 (6): 711-725.

Piper, B., Dryden-Peterson, S. and Kim, Y-S. (2006) International Education for the Millennium: Toward Access, Equity and Quality, Harvard Educational Review, Reprint Series No. 42, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

Dr James Cambridge is an international education consultant. He teaches at the International School of London. global.education.today@gmail.com

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Book review Taking the IPC Forward Edited by Dr Mary Hayden and Professor Jeff Thompson John Catt Educational Ltd (5 Nov 2012) Paperback, 197 pages. Price £15.99 ISBN 978 1 908095 48 0 Taking the IPC Forward includes chapters from educators who have been involved in the creation, development and implementation of the International Primary Curriculum since its launch in 2000. Editors Dr Mary Hayden and Professor Jeff Thompson point to ‘the strong reputation that the programme has established in the relatively short period since its creation’ with ‘over 1500 schools in some 80 countries as at October 2012’ and the collection provides a range of perspectives on the factors that have contributed to this very rapid growth and great success.

The book is organised in four sections: Part A: Origins and Background; Part B; The Curriculum Context; Part C: Teaching and Learning through the IPC; and Part D: The IPC as an Agent for Change.

In Part A: Origins and Background, Peter le Noble, former education adviser for Shell International, describes the initial development of the IPC as a curriculum for Shell schools and its evolution as a contemporary and very viable alternative to the fledgling IBPYP. Tracey Kelly and Henk van Hout, Shell’s current advisory team, expand on this, describing how ‘the IPC has become part of Shell schools’ identity: not only because of Shell’s initial sponsorship of the curriculum, but also because of a firm belief that the IPC embodies concepts that will leverage the best learning for children.’

These concepts include a multi-disciplinary approach; a neurologically-based definition of learning; a balance of knowledge, skills and understandings; and an explicit focus on international-mindedness. Steven Mark, IPC Director, then goes into further detail, giving a clear and comprehensive overview of the key structural features of the programme: Learning Goals that consist of subject goals, personal goals and international goals; Units of Work that focus on relevant, engaging and appropriate themes; and the Assessment for Learning Programme that combines assessment for learning and assessment of learning in an effective and efficient way. He summarises the IPC as ‘learning that is exciting, active and multi-perspectival’, a claim that is supported by comments throughout the book.

Part B focuses on The Curriculum Context and Yolande Muschamp sets the scene by examining the educational theories underpinning the IPC, highlighting

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links that range from Dewey in the 1900s through Piaget and Vygotsky to Alexander, Hopmann and Roth in recent years. Her chapter clearly conveys how the IPC synthesises the best from traditional approaches in ways that are modern and innovative.

Chapters 5 and 6 both focus on international-mindedness – a central aspect of the IPC. Jayne Pletser uses Haywood’s Simple Typology of Internationalmindedness to analyse the IPC and concludes that both the philosophy and the learning goals are closely aligned with the typology’s ten practical forms of IM. Barbara Devener similarly finds that the entry point and knowledge harvest elements of the units of work allow students to contribute their own experiences and cultural perspectives.

However, both authors note that as a curriculum that includes ‘typical western approaches to learning’ it may be not be considered internationally-minded in all cultural settings and Devener concludes that, to optimise internationalmindedness, teachers should receive explicit training about how best to implement the IPC with learners from non-Western backgrounds.

Part C: Teaching and Learning through the IPC begins with a study of student motivation. Joanne Marshall’s small-scale study in ten IPC schools reveals evidence that student motivation increased when the school adopted the IPC as part or all of its curriculum. Although her study did not pursue the detail of how or why motivation increased, she suggests the IPC’s ‘teaching themes to which children can relate in terms of their own life experiences and interests’ and the ‘wide variety of teaching styles and approaches’ it encourages as likely factors that help to ‘engage, enthuse and motivate’ students.

Malcolm Davis suggests that Bruner – as one of the early exponents of constructivism – ‘could be considered to have been a trumpeting herald of the International Primary Curriculum’ but, as the chapter title suggests, he dismisses any idea that the IPC represents ‘a return to 1970s-style trendy teaching methods’. Indeed, he describes how the subject-specific learning mileposts for ages seven, nine and 12 are a real strength of the programme, providing a rigorous attainment structure. He notes the difficulties of involving specialist teachers in the units of work; of genuinely involving parents in their child’s learning; and of helping parents understand progress as students ‘return to a new beginning’ with each new milepost level – difficulties that are certainly not unique to the IPC. Davis also discusses the IPC’s claim to be ‘brain-friendly’ and he emphasises that teachers must change their teaching to reflect current thinking about how children learn, a theme that is continued by Andrew Wigford in his chapter on teacher recruitment. Wigford poses the question, ‘To what extent should the curriculum a school uses impact on recruitment?’ and describes small-scale research investigating the experience, qualifications and characteristics sought by recruiters in IPC schools. He found many commonalities and he notes that while direct experience with the IPC was not seen as a pre-requisite, ‘a clear empathy International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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with the principles of the programme and its underlying philosophy’ was.

Estelle Tarry extends the focus on staffing with her examination of the teacher assistant (TA) role and the challenges it presents. She makes the important point that TAs are often local hires, established in the local community and wellinformed about local resources, who can be of valuable assistance to teachers using the IPC route planner to select appropriate units of work.

She outlines how TAs are regularly expected to support students with special needs and English as an Additional Language as well as assist with planning, preparation and assessment. She urges Heads of schools and teachers, as well as TAs themselves, to ensure that TAs have appropriate training to enable them to fully support the learning environment.

The final chapter in this section returns to international-mindedness as Mary van der Heijden describes her case-study of a UK state school using the IPC. It makes compelling reading and some of the students’ comments on ‘what an international person might be like’ are both profound and moving, showing sophisticated levels of understanding. While no claims are made regarding the IPC as a direct causal factor, the manner in which students reacted and interacted seems to be a testament to the IPC philosophy and pedagogy and van der Heijden’s proposal for ‘more challenging, or even controversial, content’ for Milepost 3 students, is a very appropriate conclusion.

Part D – the final section of the book – considers the IPC as an Agent for Change, starting with Graeme Scott’s description of the IPC accreditation process. The IPC offers two options: self-review only or with accreditation, and Scott favours a combination, concluding that ‘the school’s intimate knowledge of its students, stakeholders and unique situation can combine with the objectivity and clear success criteria provided by the accreditation process to produce a highly effective and accurate picture of the school’s performance and progress.’

Having been accredited at the highest of the three possible levels (Beginning, Developing and Mastering) Scott describes how the accreditation acted as a catalyst for even greater improvement after the accreditation. In chapter 13, three administrators from the United World College Maastricht describe the school’s turbulent evolution and the stability created by the adoption of the IPC as the central curriculum component. They praise the flexibility IPC offers schools to adopt and adapt the different elements and they describe how programmes such as English Language Learning, Science, Special Educational Needs and Service Learning were dovetailed with IPC units to enhance student learning.

In the final chapter, Richard Mast begins with the comment that ‘this was by far the best curriculum for primary-aged students that I had seen’. He talks of relieving teachers of the need to write curriculum, allowing them ‘to focus upon their core business: interpreting, implementing and then adjusting curriculum in the light of the students they teach’, facilitated by clear learning outcomes and articulated pedagogy.

He goes on to present a very coherent outline for future development: he

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disagrees with the exclusion of maths and language objectives and argues that ‘leaving a central component to the individual schools creates a risk to integrity’; he proposes that transdisciplinary learning outcomes such as the social and research skills that are so fundamental to the early childhood and primary years should be made more explicit; he requests guidance on standards-based reporting that so many schools still struggle with; and finally, he returns to a challenge already mentioned in previous chapters, how to transfer structures and pedagogical approaches between very different cultures.

The book is rounded off, very appropriately, by Martin Skelton, the IPC’s creator, developer and constant agent provocateur. He describes how the IPC has ‘never stood still; not for one second’ and consequently is much bigger, broader, deeper and more coherent now than it was ten years ago.

He tries to predict what the next ten years will bring: inevitable technologyfacilitated changes in physical format, pedagogical approaches and levels of collaboration amongst schools, teachers and students, and – his hope – the development of a substantial body of research that tests what the IPC claims it offers; that continually extends understanding of learning; that helps to predict the knowledge, skills and dispositions students will need in future; and that sheds more light on the elusive concept of international-mindedness.

It has been a real pleasure to review this very valuable collection of comments, insights and reflections and to learn so much from educators who have direct practical experience of, and great affection for, the IPC. The best summarising phrase is one that IPC itself has already coined: ‘great learning, great teaching, great fun’.

Dr Lesley Snowball has extensive experience worldwide, including as deputy director of The International School of Amsterdam, and currently as Director of Putting it into Practice Educational Consultants. She is a Trustee of the Alliance for International Education.

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NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS Editorial Policy: The International Schools Journal wishes to publish original articles on topics of interest to the school community internationally. Research articles should be in the region of 3000 words in length including tables, figures and references.

Submission of Manuscripts: Manuscripts are accepted on the understanding that they are original and not published previously. Papers should be submitted to the Editor of the International Schools Journal, Dr Caroline Ellwood, 23 Trooper Road, Aldbury, Nr Tring, Hertfordshire HP23 5RW, UK. Manuscript Specifications: Manuscripts should be submitted, in English as an email attachment to Caroline Ellwood (carolineellwood@ecis.org) and labelled with the file name of article using last name of first author. Please ensure that it is double-spaced, with generous margins. The manuscript should be complete in all respects, including a title, and with the name and a short biography of the author or authors. When preparing the article please note the following conventions for producing copy: Type all copy in upper and lower case – do not use all capitals.

Do not underline. Use italics or boldface for emphasis.

Do not put two spaces after periods (full stops) eg only one space after the end of a sentence or after a colon.

Do not use an auto-hyphenation program – allow the words to wrap to next line rather than break them.

When using the numeral 1 do not use the letter ‘l’ (el); do not use upper case letter ‘O’ (oh) for zero and vice versa.

At the end of paragraphs, headings, and sub-headings use only one hard return. Never use double hard returns.

When centering headings or indenting paragraphs DO NOT USE THE SPACE BAR use the tab and centering key functions.

Any forms should be created for an A5 format (not A4) as this is the size of the journal.

Style: Spelling should follow the Oxford English Dictionary and punctuation should conform to the British orthographic conventions, including the use of single rather than double quotation marks except for quotations within quotations and direct speech. Footnotes should be avoided. The text of researched articles should have the traditional format: introduction, method, results and discussion; review articles require a different structure depending on the nature of the material being discussed.

Permission to Reproduce: If illustrations are borrowed from published sources, written permission must be obtained from both publisher and author in advance and a credit line giving the source added to the legend. If text material totalling 250 to 300 words or any tables are borrowed verbatim from published sources, written permission is required from both publisher and author. With shorter quotations, it is sufficient to add bibliographic credit. Permission letter for reproduced text or illustration must accompany the manuscript. If you have been unable to obtain permission, please point this out.

References: Endnotes are preferred, as this system clearly indicates any missing references or works omitted in error by the author.

References should follow the conventions illustrated in the following examples Journal Articles Ogawa, R & Bossert, S (1995): Leadership as an organizational quality, in Educational Administration Quarterly, 31 (2), pp224-243.

Books Rosenthal, J W (1995): Teaching Science to Language Minority Students. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Articles in Books Coelite, G & Hoffman, L R (1979): Valence, satisfaction, and commitment of the group’s solution, in L. R. Hoffman (Ed), The Group Problem Solving Process, pp13-120. New York: Praeger.

Please do not use the Harvard system as this allows for a greater margin of error and omissions.

Copyright: Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that if it is accepted for publication, copyright in the paper shall be assigned to the Publisher. The Publisher will allow the author(s) to use the material contained in the paper in any subsequent publications, subject to full acknowledgement.

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International Schools Journal Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

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Our 186-acre wooded campus is situated in the safe and welcoming suburbs of northern New Jersey. Everything you need to live and learn at college is right on campus.

Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS JOURNAL

The Forest

International Schools Journal ARTICLES

A new language for culture, identity and values The World Studies Extended Essay: challenging students on global issues

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Professional learning with quantifiable classroom interaction data Fostering criticality for the iGeneration Educational and online technologies and the way we learn

Describing the dynamic nature of mathematics as a cultural product Education beyond frontiers: early signs of international mindedness Fifty years of development: The American School of Barcelona Internationalizing Teacher Education in the United States

We deliver full-impact learning

Drew University | College of Liberal Arts | Caspersen School of Graduate Studies | Theological School 36 Madison Avenue | Madison, NJ 07940 | +011 973.408.3739 | cadm@drew.edu

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The Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne: a clinical model for pre-service teacher preparation

A theatre for action: adopting the Khan Academy in support of a classroom model in the MYP

Forest and City

DREW

Vol XXXII No.2 April 2013

The City

Finding the value of X: re-exploring the influence of teachers’ interpersonal qualities on learning

2/25/13 12:40 PM

Taking the IPC Forward

A John Catt Publication 28/03/2013 16:04