ULP philosophy

The International School of Geneva’s La Grande Boissière and UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education have collaborated on a 21st century curriculum that develops competences in young people so that they are prepared to thrive in our world and act for the public good.

These competences, identified by some of the world’s top researchers and practitioners, are:

Lifelong learning: knowing how to learn affords people the regenerative capacity to reinvent themselves for changing contextual demands. It is the source of currency innovation, adaptability, agility, and resilience.

Self-agency

This demands capacity and empowerment to analyze the demands of one’s environment and apply all resources at hand (knowledge, skills, technologies, etc.) to take self-benefiting and self-fulfilling action.

Interactively using diverse tools and resources

These tools include intellectual, cultural, religious, linguistic, material, technical, fiscal, physical, and virtual resources, the interface of the self and machines in smart factories as envisaged in the concept Industry 4.0, the use of multiple technologies, and of time.

Interacting with others

This demands collaboration to resolve complex problems and create integrated solutions across contexts. It reaches beyond productivity to humanity. It is also a key competence for social interaction, social cohesion, harmony, justice, and ultimately a peaceful and reconciled future.

Interacting with the world

This enables awareness, sensitivity, and advocacy for collective challenges and opportunities at a local, national, regional, and global level. It entails multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual perspectives that embrace diversity as an enriching asset.

Multi-literateness

The 21st century requires people to be multi- literate and to deploy these literacies flexibly. These go beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic to include micro competences like digital, cultural, financial, health, and media literacies.

Trans-disciplinarity

Increasing complexity requires ever more sophisticated solutions that integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines and from domains of knowledge. (UNESCO, IBE)

Our curriculum is universal in its reach and addresses timeless areas of human activity. Our cohesive programmes focus on the process of learning in the broadest sense — covering intellectual, creative, social, ethical and physical development.

Our ambitious goal is to develop citizen learners for humanity’s future. We achieve this by following a student-centred teaching philosophy, one that includes:

- Bilingual instruction and plurilingualism

- Differentiated instruction to challenge every learner

- Discovering gifts within students and helping these gifts to emerge

- Student agency and voice

- Students participating in the construction and ownership of their own learning

- Concepts-focussed learning

- Specialised programmes such as Extended Support, World Languages, Language Support and Learning Support

- Individualised guidance and coaching

Our teachers, as researcher practitioners, base their teaching practices on current educational research. We continually liaise with leading organisations such as the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the University of Geneva, Durham University and our official partner, UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education.

The competences that drive learning in our curriculum are grouped into four themes, each driven by a guiding question:

- Character – Who am I?

- Passion – What is my purpose?

- Mastery – How can I go further?

- Collaboration – How can we work together?

🠞 Find out more about the ULP