Curriculum, learning and teaching
Is the IB Diploma for everyone? SEE Learning certainly is Carol Inugai-Dixon evaluates a new socialemotional and ethical learning curriculum
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Approaches to Learning (ATLs) further emphasize social and emotional wellbeing as well as thinking and research skills, all of which are necessary to inform responsible action. The Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course is crucial for refining critical thinking and expanding awareness of the nature of knowledge and how it impacts our decisions and actions. The Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) component of the IBDP core links learning to agency and action. But none of these essential qualities of international mindedness are assessed and awarded a numerical score as the six group subjects are. And of course this highlights the point that it is the high and overriding significance given to those subject assessment scores that ultimately leads to the idea that the IBDP is not for everyone, resulting in a large part of the written curriculum remaining just that rather than being manifested in practice. Over the years, I have been in discussions where it has been suggested that the way to increase the practising of the written principles describing the development of international mindedness would be to identify its qualities and then assess them using criteria in a similar manner to the way in which this is done with the other IB Diploma subjects. The suggestion was invariably rejected with the argument that, whereas students might quickly learn to display the
A student sharing a resource for SEE Learning for young children.
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In a recent casual conversation with fellow educators, someone brought up the notion that International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma students have so much work to contend with that their physical health is sometimes at risk. Another responded with the idea that the Diploma Programme (DP) is not for everyone, suggesting a kind of ‘survival of the fittest’ approach to education. There was general agreement, and the conversation moved on to another topic. I missed the opportunity to voice my lack of agreement then but, having just finished planning some classes on the concept of agency, I think I should do so now. Education serves many purposes. Providing qualifications for further education and future employment is one of them, and it is important. The IB Diploma is a seminal example of a qualification that is well respected for its rigorous assessment, and hence validity for entrance to universities around the world. On the other hand, the Diploma Programme is fundamentally an expression of the IB mission which has an overriding goal to make a better and more peaceful world through education for international mindedness. So what is implied then, if the IBDP is not for everyone, is that the mission is to be left in the hands of an elite who have the stamina and wherewithal to take and pass the DP examinations. Surely a lesson from the early twentieth century is that such top-down systems do not yield peace and a world of wellbeing that is better for all. Rather, among the original drivers of the DP was the aim of promoting the development of critical thinking as a guard against blind allegiance to authoritarianism, and of aiding the flourishing of individual agency for participation in a democracy working to maximize the wellbeing of others as well as oneself. This means that an international education, as conceived in the IB mission, must be for everybody. And it must develop the personal attributes, conscious awareness and embodied values that will underpin the agency and actions of an internationally minded person. These are essential qualities and are additional to academic prowess. There are, in fact, many references to the essential qualities of an internationally minded person to be found in IB documentation beyond the mission statement. The Learner Profile, said to be the IB mission statement in action, describes the ideal student as knowledgeable but also caring, compassionate, emotionally well-balanced, and responsible in his or her actions to respect all people everywhere. The
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