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Is the IB Diploma for everyone? SEE Learning certainly is, Carol Inugai-Dixon
Is the IB Diploma for everyone? SEE Learning certainly is
Carol Inugai-Dixon evaluates a new socialemotional and ethical learning curriculum
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 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.
A poster linking IB Approaches to Learning (ATLs) and SEE Learning.
prescribed criteria, there would be no way to know that these were necessarily authentic indicators of the transformative nature of the aspirational education being referred to in the concept of international mindedness. But no other suggestions were ever given instead. And so schools deal with the issue as best they can.
In my experience, how much the aspirational dimension of the IBDP has been core practice or perfunctorily side-lined has rather depended on the vagaries of individual leadership. And as I have worked in a range of situations, I have come to suspect that those who have side-lined it sometimes just did not know what to do. Maybe this is partly because beyond the descriptors there has been no explicated curriculum framework or scope and sequence of practices available, either from the IB or from other providers. Or rather there hasn’t been, until the launch in April 2019 of SEE Learning.
SEE Learning is a social-emotional and ethical learning curriculum developed by Emory University in the USA. It is an evidence-based framework with a scope and sequence for elementary students upwards. Informed by contemplative science, neuroscience, psychology and education, the teaching resources for elementary and middle school are already available, along with an orientation course. Materials for older students will become available soon. The strengths of SEE Learning are numerous. On a very practical level, it provides a clear curriculum that can be planned for and timetabled, along with a rationale that will make sense to parents and teachers, as well as (of course) to students. It builds on and extends the current range of social-emotional learning available, to include practices for the development of higher order emotions such as compassion. Through this, the natural link between social and emotional wellbeing and ethical action becomes clear. Most importantly, this link is developed through nurturing personal critical insight leading to transformational learning and not through didactic sermonizing. Furthermore, with an understanding of systems thinking students learn how ethical action at the very local level of their individual agency will have global outcomes.
SEE Learning most certainly is the missing piece that many of us, drawn to the DP because of the IB mission, have been hoping and searching for as a means of completing a holistic curriculum for developing international mindedness. Its significance for shifting the central focus away from examination scores towards the original mission is enormous. To inform authentic agency, SEE Learning can connect and invigorate the potential powerful leverage of the Learner Profile attributes, ATLs and TOK that currently lack strong cohesion. And because it is developmental, all students can participate. It is absolutely for everybody. And actually that also includes those who are not in IB contexts, since the orientation and resources are online and free – and can be found here: https://seelearning.emory.edu/user/register
