Teachers of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) have identified curriculum design areas in IB surveys that have posed challenges in fully implementing the MYP. The challenge areas that rose to the top were creating effective curriculum, implementing the MYP Core which includes interdisciplinary teaching and learning, MYP pedagogy, documenting the programme requirements, and designing effective assessments. In this blogpost, we will explore ideas for overcoming these challenges and ways to “ensure that teachers and leadership participate in appropriate and timely professional learning to inform their practice.” (Programme standards and practices 0203-02)
Understanding Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning
IB teaching and learning is student-centered, conceptual in nature, inquiry-based in approach, significant, engaging, relevant, and challenging. It is contextualized, collaborative, differentiated, and assessment informed. Additionally, MYP teaching and learning has eight subject groups that provide disciplinary content that provide the knowledge and skills for the units. Whenever possible and minimally according to the MYP requirements, interdisciplinary learning is planned and facilitated.
Interdisciplinary teaching and learning occur when the subject groups blur through purposeful conceptual and contextual connections. It is often compared to a soup with various ingredients that cohesively come together in one dish yet remain distinguishable. During the collaborative curriculum planning process, we can imagine ways to make learning relevant and real-world by looking at the concepts in the global contexts for the unit and reflect on how another subject group might enhance learning. For instance, designing teaching and learning in history could potentially be enhanced by the similar concepts to be explored in art. Our previous blog, MYP Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning, provides in-depth knowledge to help with understanding this curriculum dimension as background information for overcoming the implementation challenges for planning this aspect of the work.
School Strategic Goals: Creating effective written curriculum
The academic and social-emotional goals of the school’s strategic plan can be effectively and thoughtfully addressed using the IB framework and philosophy. The state, national, or local curriculum standards embody processes that delineate the depth of knowledge level that students will demonstrate specific content. The embedded processes align with the approaches to learning skills that are explicitly planned for and taught in the MYP. These skills, communication, research, thinking, social, and self-management, help students learn how to learn, learn across the curriculum, and acquire 21st century skills.
Engaging strategically in the curriculum design process is essential to overcoming many of the MYP challenges. Valuing the process over the product will provide a professional collaborative environment that immerses educators in thinking, reflecting, analyzing, and revising units of instruction to be more like a gourmet meal and less like fast food in nature. Using a backwards design approach to creating effective curriculum, units are developed from carefully crafted statements of inquiry, inquiry statements, or inquiry questions that embody the conceptual understanding designated in the various content from the standards. By leveraging all the IB core elements in the MYP curriculum designing process, learning experiences can be mapped out to line up to the goals.
Implementing MYP Core elements
We can use the MYP framework to plan for using our subject group content and concepts, approaches to learning (ATL) skills, and global contexts to implement inquiry-based teaching and learning and overcome implementation challenges. Here are some ways we can think collaboratively in our school context to work through these challenges.
Conceptual Understandings: We can
determine the “What” we want students to understand from the teaching and learning. This determination can come from the curriculum requirements and standards that we have from our organization when we collaborate with colleagues to think about what transferable and timeless big ideas are embedded there.
Global Contexts: We can determine the global context we want to use to work through the “Why” are we learning this question. We can think about our target conceptual understanding(s) and select the context lens that can serve as the conduit for ushering in the real-world perspective.
Approaches to Learning Skills: We can think through the ATL skills that are needed to be explicitly addressed and arise from determining “How” will students pursue and show their understanding throughout the learning process. We also can reflect upon the skills that are needed for achieving success during the entire learning process and how best we can have students engage with learning them.
Inquiry-based Approach: We can think through which inquiry approaches to engaging learners into the learning experiences can work best for each unit. Using provocations involving visuals, videos, literature, objects, facts, figures, scenarios, field trips, and thinking prompts with the mindset of increasing students’ curiosities that lead to them formulating their own inquiries about the learning targets will set the stage for them to possess agency over their learning.
Additionally, we can use the Teacher Support Materials (TSM) on the My IB Programme Resource Centre for additional resources to overcome challenges.
Guidance on collaborative planning
When collaboratively planning a unit, we can decide to begin the process through context, content, concepts, or skills. The MYP curriculum designing philosophy emphasizes process over product. Working together to think through the design of the MYP and deciding what is best for all of the students in our school context is a valuable pathway to overcoming implementation challenges.
Implementing MYP Pedagogy in the classroom
If implementing inquiry and concept-based approaches to teaching pose difficulties, this might indicate a need for more professional learning, coaching, and/or support. Discovering the value of implementing a conceptual, inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning could also be a productive strategy.
An empowered professional learning community with agency to communicate differentiated professional development needs for being equipped to deliver the MYP pedagogy can be an important step. Providing various types of professional learning opportunities with an overall plan of action for building capacity among all can be beneficial for a consistent and pervasive implementation on the MYP. This plan could include the IB’s Nano PD’s usage, virtual and in-person official IB and local training, tailored consulting, coaching, book studies, peer observations, teacher support materials, and self-guiding checklists and tools. By collectively cultivating a culture of respect for the professional growth of everyone in inclusive ways, we can have what we need to inform our practice.
Documenting programme requirements
The required documentation for MYP includes the unit plans, subject-group overviews, and ATL plans. To overcome challenges for documenting these elements, we might benefit from embracing a culture of agency and empowerment for ourselves as curriculum designers. To operate as agentic, collaborative curriculum designers, we may need to form a collective understanding of the value for why certain actions are required, how our learners learn best, and our own determined purposes for teaching.
A possible strategy for planning for the documentation challenges is to engage in professional inquiry that allows us to reflect and express our ideas, beliefs, and possible solutions in settings like regularly scheduled department/grade level meetings, faculty meetings, or professional workshops.
Designing effective assessments
Designing assessment criteria based on skills can be challenging. The tasks that may be challenging include making rubrics, creating effective common formative and summative assessments, alignment to the IB model, and finding the time to get everything done.
As curriculum designers, we can remember that as we are engaging students in inquiry, action, and reflection processes that contribute to learning. The way in which assessments actually support learning is through teacher analysis of student authentic performance tasks so as to provide feedback that is helpful in their development of skills, knowledge, and understanding according to their subject-group objectives. By imploring again our backwards design process that begins with the central learning ideas that are set, continuing to how learners will show the learning in the assessments, and then to thinking about what is needed to guide the rubric creation and what should be included in it, a clear pathway can be realized and documented. The rubrics communicate where we intend the students to go in the learning and the steps along the way that we will coach them through. The authentic performance tasks and a real-world student roles perspective for designing can help. Rubrics will assist with the MYP assessment process by providing clarity in purpose, aspirations for the learning, a pathway for getting to the learning goals, and student engagement.
Conclusion: Enhancing Your Approaches to Learning Journey with CASIE
Engaging with CASIE events and IB workshops can enhance your approaches to learning planning and implementation. Register for our upcoming, in-person or virtual IB continuum Approaches to Learning IB workshop, tailored consulting, other IB workshops, and events at our IB Workshops and CASIE Events webpages. If you have questions, please contact us at info@casieonline.org and we will be happy to assist.
