Seeking a proper role and balance for components of the PYP approach to learning

The following is an excerpt from a Final Reflections document that I recently submitted to the FAST TRAIN program after having finished all requirements leading toward my receiving elementary and secondary teaching certification (from the state of Virginia). If you can make it past the first two paragraphs where I restate some blatantly obvious and widely agreed-upon ideas, you'll get to the parts that may be a bit controversial.

My two years of summer academic studies at George Mason University’s Fairfax campus, combined with my field experience and teaching internship at the International School of Tianjin, have buttressed my previously developed educational philosophy in unpredicted ways. In my many past years of experience in the business world, I have seen organizations fail or succeed based upon the degree to which they clearly articulated their mission and objectives and on how well they directed their efforts at accomplishing those objectives. This experience no doubt led to one of my earliest stated educational philosophies: that an educational institution needs a clearly articulated curriculum (with clearly stated goals of knowledge content and skills that are to be acquired by students at every stage), and that the actions that the teachers in the institution undertake must be directed at the successful fulfillment of this curriculum.

Since my business experience was largely within the information technology industry, I also came into the educational field with a predisposition that acquisition and utilization of educational technologies should always be done in the direct service of the curriculum. Curriculum should drive technology, not the other way around.

While these ideas are hardly controversial, my field work in a PYP elementary school has led me into a few ideas that might not be so universally accepted. Taken as a rather confusing whole, the ideas put forth in IBO publications such as Making the PYP Happen can be difficult for educators to immediately digest and put into action. To help allay this confusion, it is useful for me to think of all of the PYP concepts promoted by the IBO as constituting a technology, and like any other technology, the PYP should be singularly employed in service of a school’s clearly-articulated curriculum. But if we say that a school’s explicitly-stated curricular goals should drive its implementation of the PYP, how do we effectively bridge one to the other? In other words, how can we “map” curricular goals to PYP goals?

In my opinion, the most tangible aspects of the PYP approach to learning are stated in the various Scope and Sequence documents (IBO, 2008, 2009), and most vitally in the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills (IBO, 2007). In fact, I think that the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills (e.g., comprehension, cooperating, reading, writing, synthesizing information, time management, etc.) together constitute the most universally uncontroversial and immediately accessible part of the entire PYP world. The average forward-thinking corporate CEO can look at that list of skills and say unequivocally to an educator “Yes, these are the skills that our future workforce (i.e., your present students) need to be equipped with in order to effectively navigate the 21st century.”

I have come to believe that the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills and the IBO’s Scope and Sequence documents provide a tangible bridge between a school’s clearly-stated curriculum and some of the more obscure recommendations and imperatives of the PYP. They provide the means by which an institution’s curriculum can effectively and with minimal confusion be tied to its employment of PYP “technology”.

This all leads me to take a potentially controversial stand: The IBO seems to push the Learner Profile to a position of highest prominence in the PYP firmament. In my opinion, this is done to an over-weighted extent which potentially obscures and dilutes a much more vital focus that should be given to the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills. I have seen more than one institution in which the attributes of the Learner Profile adorn many of the walls. I for one would appreciate seeing the various PYP Transdisciplinary Skills just as prominently displayed and focused upon in each school’s daily unit and non-unit activities, with students at every level being assisted in setting and tracking their own goals for skill development. The Learner Profile certainly has its place, but it should be a properly balanced one.


Reference List

• International Baccalaureate Organization (2007). Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education. United Kingdom: IBO.
• International Baccalaureate Organization (2008). Science Scope and Sequence. United Kingdom: IBO.
• International Baccalaureate Organization (2008). Social Studies Scope and Sequence. United Kingdom: IBO.
• International Baccalaureate Organization (2009). Mathematics Scope and Sequence. United Kingdom: IBO.