Approaches to Teaching
Approaches to teaching
Approaches to teaching
This section will firstly explore the main pedagogical principles that influence and underpin IB programmes, along with associated teaching strategies. It will then offer further guidance on five key areas related to approaches to teaching in the DP:
Teaching with ATL in mind
Pedagogy or andragogy?
Utilizing technology effectively
Every DP teacher is a language teacher
Planning
Pedagogical principles underpinning the DP
What is of paramount importance in the pre-university stage is not what is learned but learning how to learn … What matters is not the absorption and regurgitation either of fact or pre-digested interpretations of facts, but the development of powers of the mind or ways of thinking which can be applied to new situations and new presentations of facts as they arise.
(Peterson 1972)
From its beginnings, the DP has adopted a broadly constructivist and student-centred approach, and has emphasized the importance of connectedness and concurrency of learning.
There are six key pedagogical principles that underpin all IB programmes. Teaching in IB programmes is:
based on inquiry
focused on conceptual understanding
developed in local and global contexts
focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
differentiated to meet the needs of all learners
informed by assessment (formative and summative).
This document will examine each of these six principles in turn.
Teaching based on inquiry
One of the pedagogical principles that underpin all IB programmes is that of teaching based on inquiry. Being inquirers is one of the attributes of the IB learner profile, where the process is seen as involving the development of students’ natural curiosity, together with the skills needed to enable them to become autonomous lifelong learners.
DP courses often specify a large amount of content, with the area of study often defined in considerable detail, which means that the way in which this content is presented to students in class is critical. One of the most important considerations for DP teachers is, therefore, how to design teaching practice to produce effective inquiry learning given the quantity of important information in each subject area that needs to be addressed, the pressure of ongoing formative assessment and the culminating measure of a student’s academic performance being an examination-based summative assessment.
The inquiry learning cycle (figure 3) is recommended as the basis for both the design and the implementation of classroom teaching practice in the DP, and in IB programmes more generally.
Figure 3
Inquiry process from What is an IB education? (2013)
Inquiry-based learning and teaching takes many forms; for example, “Structured Inquiry, Guided Inquiry and Open Inquiry” (Staver and Bay 1987) or “Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, POGIL” (Lee 2004). There are also a number of other methods that have their own structure, but which owe their essential design to inquiry learning, such as experiential learning (Kolb 1984), problem- and project-based learning (Prince 2004), case-based learning (Fasko 2003) and discovery learning (Prince and Felder 2007). Whichever approach is adopted, what is essential is that each student is actively engaged in classroom activities, and that there is a high degree of interaction between students and the teacher, and also between the students themselves.
What matters is, therefore, not whether DP teachers adhere to any particular model, but that they focus on making sure their students are engaging in inquiry, on finding their own information and constructing their own understandings, as often as possible in their classrooms. In an inquiry-based approach, learning is self-directed “because it is driven by students’ own decisions about appropriate ways in which an issue or scenario might be approached. They bring to bear on the topic any existing knowledge or experience relevant to the issues … The process is student-centred, with the onus always on the student to take initiatives, propose routes of enquiry and follow them thoughtfully” (Hutchings 2007: 13).
Two particularly well known inquiry-based approaches are experiential learning and problem-based learning.
Experiential learning
Experiential learning is an approach based on “learning activities that engage the learner directly in the phenomena being studied” (Cantor 1997). It is a type of inquiry often structured around site visits, field trips, work experience placements, exchange programmes, projects, service learning, and so on. However, it can also occur very effectively within a normal classroom environment.
In experiential learning, students learn from their experience by following the four steps in figure 4.
Figure 4
The four phases of experiential learning (Kolb 1984)
Experiential learning is most powerful when the experience is something new for the student, where there is challenge and action, and where the reflection step is well set up and thoroughly applied. It is, therefore, crucial that time is dedicated to careful design and planning of experiential activities. As Dewey (1997: 25) commented, “the belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.”
Problem-based learning
Another popular inquiry-based approach is that of problem-based learning (PBL). In PBL, students analyse and propose solutions to a real-world problem that is usually presented to them in an unstructured and often open-ended manner. PBL originated in medical education where it is still extensively used today, but it has also found application in many other fields. The main advantages of PBL are that it has been found to lead to improvements in information processing, skill proficiency (Prince 2004) and the development of a variety of skills, including problem-solving, reasoning, teamwork and metacognition.
As Prince and Felder (2007) identify, in PBL, the students usually operate in teams or collaborative groups and work through a problem-solving process to:
define the problem precisely
find out what they know and what they need to know
decide how to proceed to find out what they need
gather all the information—this can be provided by the teacher, or not
analyse all the information gathered
create possible solutions
work through the feasibility of each one
narrow the possibilities down to their best, justifiable solution (which may then be presented to the rest of the class, and a whole-class analysis of the possible solutions undertaken).
(Prince and Felder 2007)
PBL can be a hugely powerful teaching strategy that promotes active learning and a student-centred pedagogy. It is important, though, to take care that students are exposed to a balance of both positive and negative scenarios in order to avoid an overly pessimistic focus on problems.
Teaching based on inquiry does demand a shift in teaching style from teachers whose primary role is to supply answers to teachers whose primary role is to promote questions. It also involves a shift in some of the responsibility for learning from teachers to students (Oliver-Hoyo, Allen and Anderson 2004). While this can seem a major challenge for some teachers, there are two key underlying principles that can help teachers to understand the change to inquiry-based methods.
Learning is constructed by a process that moves from real-world examples to concepts, ideas, theories and facts.
Students are responsible for finding much of the information themselves, and processing it to draw the important conclusions.
At a more practical level, simple things that teachers can do to introduce a more inquiry-based approach include:
posing questions, outlining problems, setting challenges, giving clear measurable objectives
putting students into small groups (3–4 students), assigning clear roles and allowing for role rotation within each group
enabling and helping students to connect to the best subject-based resources
focusing the students on both the answers they are finding and the research skills they are using
viewing their own role as facilitators of students’ journeys, rather than simply providers of answers.
The potential benefits of an inquiry-based approach can be seen in the example of DP science lessons, where adopting such an approach can help students to learn the process of scientific inquiry through being involved in an inquiry themselves: “students are presented with a challenge (such as a question to be answered, an observation or data set to be interpreted, or a hypothesis to be tested) and accomplish the desired learning in the process of responding to that challenge” (Prince and Felder 2007).
EXAMPLE
The key steps of inquiry learning in a science lesson:
engaging with a scientific question, participating in design of procedures, giving priority to evidence, formulating explanations, connecting explanations to scientific knowledge, communicating and justifying explanations.
(Quigley, Marshall, Deaton, Cook and Padilla 2011)
Although these methods can require time and effort to set them up, they have the major advantage that learning by inquiry means that students are developing better skills of inquiry, which are the key skills of the self-managed, self-directed, self-regulated, lifelong learner who fulfills all the aspirations of the IB learner profile. By engaging in effective inquiry, students will develop skills in research, self-management, collaborative learning, communication and thinking, as well as problem-solving.
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Teaching focused on conceptual understanding
DP courses have always had a focus on developing conceptual understanding but, within DP subject guides and teacher support materials, the focus on teaching through concepts is becoming increasingly explicit.
Concepts are broad, powerful organizing ideas that have relevance both within and across subject areas. Exploring concepts helps students to build the capacity to engage with complex ideas, and discussion of the “big ideas” behind a topic can help students get to the heart of why they are learning a particular unit or option. There is also a strong link between teaching through concepts and moving students to higher-order thinking; for example, it allows students to move from concrete to abstract thinking, and facilitates the transfer of learning to new contexts.
Some DP subjects explicitly construct their subject guides around key concepts; for example, the new DP global politics course. This can be an effective way of framing course content, as well as inspiring more explicitly conceptual assessment tasks. Other DP guides are arranged and framed in different ways. Whichever DP subject guide a teacher is using, and however that guide is presented, it can be a very powerful teaching strategy to teach through concepts, and all DP courses are designed to lend themselves to this type of teaching.
DP courses are based on an interrelationship of concepts, content and skills. The emphasis on this interrelationship is important because it helps to address the concern that concept-based curriculums focus on concepts at the expense of content, rather than in conjunction with content. These curriculum models “value a solid base of critical factual knowledge across the disciplines, but they raise the bar for curriculum and instruction by shifting the design focus to the conceptual level of understanding” (Erickson 2012: 5).
Figure 5
Interrelationship of skills, concepts and content
Anderson and Krathwohl, in their update to Bloom, argue that conceptual knowledge plays a crucial role in moving students from knowledge to understanding. They argue that “students understand when they build connections between the ‘new’ knowledge to be gained and their prior knowledge. More specifically, the incoming knowledge is integrated with existing schemas and cognitive frameworks. Since concepts are the building blocks for these schemas and frameworks, conceptual knowledge provides a basis for understanding” (2001: 70).
TEACHING IDEA
When planning a unit for your DP class, explicitly identify the relevant key concept(s) and conceptual understandings. For example, a DP history unit on the causes of the second world war could focus explicitly on an exploration of the concept of causation. This should then enable students to transfer their conceptual understanding to new contexts—in this instance, their understanding of the underlying concept of causation aiding their understanding of the causes of other historical events.
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Teaching developed in local and global contexts
Learning is most significant and lasting when it is connected to the world around the student.
(Judith Fabian, IB Chief Academic Officer, in Walker 2010)
There is a strong connection between contextualized learning and the approaches to teaching outlined in this document. Contextualized learning places an emphasis on students processing new information by connecting it to their own experience and to the world around them. In this approach, learning occurs when students “process new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them in their frame of reference … This approach to learning and teaching assumes that the mind naturally seeks meaning in context—that is, in the environment where the person is located—and that it does so through searching for relationships that make sense and appear useful” (Hull 1993: 41).
Grounding learning in real-life contexts is one of the six pillars Guy Claxton (2008) identifies as fundamental to student engagement. The other five are responsibility, challenge, collaboration, respect and choice (2008: 94). Grounding teaching and learning in local and global contexts can help to make it more authentic and more meaningful for students; the exploration of real-life problems, rather than the imaginary/pseudo problems often used in classrooms, can be more interesting for students because they are more relevant and authentic.
Another advantage of grounding learning in real-life contexts is that it helps students to see the “why”, and the applications, of what they are learning. In Making Learning Whole, David Perkins (2010) argues that students need to see the whole picture, to see why they are doing what they are doing.
TEACHING IDEA
Make use of real-life case studies.
Several DP subjects, for example, business management and global politics, explicitly ground their exploration of abstract concepts, such as power, in real-life case studies. Case studies are most often used in group 3 subjects but can also be used effectively in other subjects, such as the sciences. The use of case studies can help students to see things from multiple perspectives, as well as relating student learning to real-life contexts.
In addition to helping students to see connections between ideas, and helping to ground abstract concepts in real-life situations, there is also an important link between the contextualization of learning in global contexts and the development of international-mindedness. International-mindedness is at the heart of an IB education; this can be seen by the way it is presented as underpinning all IB programme models, including the DP model.
Exploring local and global contexts can help to develop international-mindedness in students by providing opportunities for sustained inquiry into a range of local and global issues and ideas, and opportunities to explore global concerns such as development, conflict, rights and the environment. The Global Engage website (globalengage.ibo.org) supports teachers in engaging with global issues, and includes information, resources, ideas and opinions, links and suggestions for action, as well as reports on actions undertaken by the IB community.
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Teaching focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
A key focus of the teaching in the DP is on teamwork and collaboration. This principle applies to promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but it also refers to the collaborative relationship between the teacher and students.
Collaborative learning is an approach deeply rooted in the work of Vygotsky and Piaget, both of whom saw learning as a social phenomenon. It is also closely associated with the approaches of shared, situated and embedded cognition, which view learning as the result of a complex interaction of minds within specific cultural contexts, and emphasize the social structures within which those interactions occur. In these approaches “knowledge is not something that is handed down from one partner to another. Rather, knowledge is co-constructed through interactions among collaborators” (Lai 2011).
Collaborative learning activities include activities such as group projects, debates, role plays, and other activities with shared goals. There are, therefore, extremely close links between social skills, such as negotiation, and collaborative learning. Across the world, students in IB schools are engaged in a wide range of collaborative projects and activities in every subject. These types of activities encourage students to engage with other students collaboratively and cooperatively. There are many websites teachers can visit for practical help in designing and developing collaborative projects for their students, many of which also provide opportunities to connect learners together, either locally, nationally or internationally.
One issue for teachers to consider when setting collaborative tasks is that of whether to award a group or individual mark. Awarding a single grade to a group of students for a group task can be concerning to teachers as they may worry that a student is receiving credit for work produced by other members of the group. However, assessing the individual contribution within a group can cause students to focus on their individual role rather than on the group goal, and can, in some instances, actually promote competition within the group rather than collaboration. The concept of taking collective responsibility is an important idea for students to grasp, and awarding the same mark to all members of a group encourages all students to take responsibility for the performance of the group as a whole.
In addition to fostering collaboration between students, collaboration is also at the heart of the relationship between DP teachers and students. McWilliam (2005, 2008) argues that there has been a shift from the role of the teacher being the “sage-on-the-stage” to the “guide-on-the-side”, but that this shift does not go far enough and there needs to be a further shift to the role of the teacher being the “meddler-in-the-middle” (2005).
A key aspect of fostering a collaborative relationship between teachers and students is through encouraging effective dialogue and feedback on what students have, and have not, understood during their lessons. Encouraging students to give regular feedback on the things they have not yet understood gives teachers valuable information that can inform future planning and ensure that all understandings are being attained. This kind of feedback can be done by discussion, on paper or even by Twitter at the beginning or end of any lesson, week or unit. For example, a teacher could ask their students to read through the material covered that day and to tweet to them either a thoughtful question on anything they did not understand from the lesson, or an “all OK” signal. That way, the teacher can immediately see if the understandings they were looking for were achieved, or if there is any trend of misunderstanding. Any problems can then be addressed immediately in the next lesson, before the lesson sequence continues. This keeps all students up to speed and is also a way to encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning; it is up to the students to check and make sure they understand as they move through the syllabus.
TEACHING IDEA
Developing collaboration skills through the group 4 project.
The group 4 project is an opportunity for students—and teachers—to collaborate across subject disciplines. Why not consider teaming up with another school to encourage students to collaborate not only with other members of their own school communities, but with other school communities too?
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Teaching differentiated to meet the needs of all learners
Differentiation is more than a strategy or series of strategies … it is a way of thinking about teaching and learning.
(Tomlinson 2000: 13)
Differentiation is “an approach to teaching that advocates active planning for student differences in classrooms” (Tomlinson and Allan 2000). It is a process of identifying, with each learner, the most effective strategies for achieving agreed goals so learning opportunities can be created that enable every student to develop, pursue and achieve appropriate personal learning goals. There is, therefore, an important link between differentiation and thoughtful and adaptive planning. There is also an important link with the idea that every DP teacher is a language teacher, as teachers also need to consider each student’s language profile when considering pedagogical approaches to meeting individual learning needs.
The IB identifies four important principles to promote equal access to the curriculum for all learners and to support the development of the whole person through differentiated teaching and learning.
Affirm identity—build self-esteem
Promote environments that welcome and embrace learners.
Foster high but realistic expectations.
Value and use the diversity of cultural perspectives.
Liaise and collaborate with parents.
Understand student learning preferences and interests.
Identify and teach through student strengths.
Value prior knowledge
Identify prior knowledge and activate prior learning, including that learned in other languages.
Map language and learning profiles.
Build new knowledge onto existing knowledge.
Scaffold learning
Support new learning through the use of graphic organizers (writing frames, Mind Maps®), which are pictorial forms of promoting, organizing and constructing knowledge; visual aids, drama, demonstrations, etc.
Encourage collaborative learning groups/peer support.
Scaffold tasks through use of strongest language where appropriate.
Extend learning
Combine high expectations with opportunities for learner-centred, experiential practice and interaction with cognitively rich materials, experiences and environments.
Use technology and assistive technologies to enrich learning and to ensure that all learners have the same opportunities.
Student learning is enhanced when these four principles of good practice are considered in conjunction with the approaches to teaching and learning. For detailed information, see the IB publication Learning diversity in the International Baccalaureate programmes: Special educational needs within the International Baccalaureate programmes (2010).
Differentiated teaching may involve using collaborative and cooperative learning, a variety of learning practices, creative approaches to teaching and learning, differing formats and modes of exploring and presenting knowledge and understanding being made available to the students. By providing students with multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement as in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), students are given equal opportunities to learn (www.cast.org).
Powell and Kusuma-Powell (2008) suggest that in order for teachers to differentiate teaching effectively, they need to engage in five on-going professional inquiries. These inquiries focus on knowing your students, knowing yourself as a teacher, knowing your curriculum, knowing how to use formative assessment data effectively, and knowing your collegial relationships.
Knowing your students as learners
This entails systematically and deliberately exploring your students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds, family circumstances, learning styles, intelligence preferences, readiness levels, interests, and other individual learning traits and then using this information to address specific learning needs by providing meaningful, respectful and challenging work.
Knowing yourselves as teachers
Developing professional self-knowledge includes probing your own cultural biases and assumptions, discovering your own preferences about learning that may have translated into your preferred and dominant teaching style, and recognizing underlying beliefs and expectations that you have about students in general or about certain students specifically.
Knowing your curriculum
Knowing your curriculum includes being able to discriminate between content and transferable concepts, identifying the truly big ideas and enduring understandings, and recognizing that they are many possible paths to conceptual understanding.
Knowing your formative assessments
This encompasses selecting and designing tools to match specific learning objectives, offering students some choice in formative assessment so as to enhance engagement and motivation, and bringing students inside the formative assessment process so that they become the end-users of formative assessment data.
Knowing your collegial relationships
Effective differentiation is challenging and frequently involves enlisting the help of other professionals with different experiences, backgrounds, and expertise to support us in planning how to best serve student learning. Education is a complex profession – it is counterproductive for teachers to “go it alone”.
Differentiation, as many other aspects of approaches to teaching and learning, is most effective when it becomes an embedded part of the culture of a school and of classrooms. Schools should aim to foster a school-wide culture of collaboration, inquiry and inclusion.
Related resources
Teaching informed by assessment (formative and summative)
Evaluation which is directly related to the teaching–learning process as it unfolds can have highly beneficial effects on the learning of students, the instructional process of teachers, and the use of instructional materials by teachers and learners.
(Bloom 1969: 50)
Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting learning as well as in measuring learning. In the DP, assessment is intended to support curricular goals and to encourage appropriate student learning. DP assessments are based on the course aims and objectives and, therefore, effective teaching to the course requirements also ensures effective teaching to the formal assessment requirements. The DP places an emphasis on criterion-related (as opposed to norm-referenced) assessment. This method of assessment judges students’ work in relation to identified levels of attainment, rather than in relation to the work of other students. (See Guidelines for developing a school assessment policy in the Diploma Programme 2010.)
Although the two are inherently linked, an important distinction must be made between formal IB assessment and the supporting formative assessment processes that schools develop for themselves. Formative assessment encompasses “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (Black and Wiliam 1998: 7). Formative assessment is, therefore, a tool or process that teachers can use to improve student learning; it is about assessment for learning, rather than simply assessment of learning.
One of the most comprehensive analyses of factors affecting student learning was undertaken by John Hattie of Auckland University in New Zealand, and published as Visible Learning (2009). This study was a synthesis of 800 meta-studies of 52,637 papers, including results from more than 200 million students worldwide, from early childhood through to adult education. Two of the top ten teaching-related factors that Hattie identified as having the most effect in positively influencing student learning were providing formative evaluation, and feedback. Effective assessment, therefore, has a crucial role to play in student learning. In particular, a key function of assessment in the DP should be that of providing feedback: feedback to students, and also feedback to teachers on students’ particular strengths and limitations. This feedback to teachers plays a crucial role in guiding future planning.
Providing formative evaluationFeedback
“Feedback to teachers on what is happening in their classroom so that they can ascertain ‘How am I going?’ in achieving the learning intentions they have set for their students, such that they can then decide ‘Where to next?’ for the students.”
(Hattie 2009: 181)
“Feedback is most powerful when it is from the student to the teacher … when teachers seek, or are at least open to, feedback from students as to what students know, what they understand, where they make errors, when they have misconceptions, when they are not engaged—then teaching and learning can be synchronized and powerful.”
(Hattie 2009: 183)
TEACHING IDEA
Wiliam (2011) described assessment as “the bridge between teaching and learning”.
With another DP teacher, review the assessment tasks and assessment processes you have identified for an upcoming unit. Do you think these tasks will successfully provide this “bridge” between teaching and learning?
If yes, what specifically about them is it that you think will make them successful in this regard? If no, what amendments could you make to improve them? Ideas to consider could include using strategies such as peer feedback, ensuring students will receive evidence-based feedback that focuses on helping them understand how to improve, ensuring that the objectives and criteria for the task are clear to the students, and ensuring that the assessment tasks themselves are rich enough to give teachers an insight into student learning.
Related resources
Teaching the DP with ATL in mind
Teaching with ATL in mind needs to begin with a clear and explicit identification of what types of skills and dispositions are trying to be developed.
In general terms, the development of every ATL skill can follow the same seven basic steps.
Decide which particular and specific skills are going to be focused on in your classroom/subject/department/school.
Make the skills to be focused on explicit by clear description of each skill and by using examples of high and low skills proficiency.
Allow the students to self-assess their perceived competence in the skills in question.
Analyse the class results obtained, looking in particular for any general skills deficiencies across the class.
Develop mini-lessons or tutorials, or find online exercises for students to complete to bring all students up to the same skill level.
Build into subject lessons exercises that enable students to practise and improve the skills in focus.
Ask the students to continue to self-assess their proficiency.
Teaching with the development of ATL skills in mind impacts significantly on the wider pedagogical approach adopted by teachers, and in particular on how teachers view their role in the classroom. Teacher regulation of student learning is sometimes described in a continuum from strong, through shared, to loose regulation.
Strong teacher regulationShared teacher regulationLoose teacher regulation
Teacher controls all information, regulates student processing, answers all questions, clarifies, explains, summarizes.
Student thinking at a minimum, teacher as maximum support.
Teacher provides access to resources, skills training, questions, problem statements, concepts, ideas, learning outcomes.
Students actively engage with information in order to answer questions, follow leads, solve problems.
Student thinking engaged, teacher as guide and support.
Teacher’s only functions are supplying the learning objectives and assessing the students’ level of achievement against them.
Student thinking at a maximum, teacher not involved in student thinking or learning at all.
A drawback of the strong teacher regulation model is that it can reduce the potential for the development of students’ skills of self-regulation. The loose teacher regulation model also has limitations, as although it does allow for growth in students’ self-regulation skills, this growth only occurs if it is instigated by the student. In contrast, adopting a shared regulation style in the classroom can be an excellent means to achieve growth in students’ self-regulated learning skills.
An example of a teaching approach that can support the development of ATL skills and, in particular, students’ self-regulation skills, is that of “process-oriented instruction”. “Process-oriented teaching is teaching that facilitates independent learning, supporting students to become proficient learners in the field concerned and preparing them for lifelong learning” (Bolhuis and Voeten 2001). Process-oriented instruction is often contrasted with more traditional methods where the emphasis is on the transmission of information, where the teacher spends most of the time explaining the subject matter, and the main activities expected from the student are listening and writing notes. The teacher does not engage much with the students except to answer questions, assign tasks or give instruction concerning the learning process. In process-oriented instruction, the focus of the teaching is placed on the strategies and techniques the students are using to process the subject information. The teacher “teaches” learning skills by modelling, demonstration, creating skills-based tasks, monitoring performance, asking for feedback and helping build the students’ metacognitive awareness (Bolhuis 2003).
In many schools, transmission is still a dominant teaching style. In 2001, a study of Dutch secondary schools observed 130 lessons—in foreign languages, Dutch, mathematics, science, social studies and the arts. The time spent by teachers using each of these teaching styles was found to be as follows (Bolhuis and Voeten 2001).
30% transmission— the teacher explains, the students listen, the teacher questions the students
40% activating—the teacher gets students to process information through directed tasks, using student feedback to guide the lesson
25% procedural and behavioural instruction
5% process-focused teaching—teaching the students to set learning goals, choose and execute learning strategies, diagnose and monitor the learning process.
Moving from a traditional subject-focused style of teaching to a skills-based, process-oriented style aimed at promoting self-regulation of learning by students can be challenging for both students and teachers, but it has the potential to yield excellent results in terms of student engagement and development of learning skills.
Whether ATL skills are taught entirely through being infused into subject lessons, or by being supplemented with standalone skills lessons, a key concern is ensuring that students transfer the skills learned in one context to other contexts. Because students often find it challenging to transfer these skills, it is important that the teaching of ATL skills also includes a focus on the importance of transfer. This “bridging” work is a vital aspect of the effective teaching of skills.
The DP encourages transfer through its emphasis on concurrency of learning. By studying different subjects and the core concurrently, it is intended that students will have more opportunities to make links and connections than they would otherwise. However, solely studying different subjects at the same time is not enough to guarantee that students are effectively transferring their learning. Instead, there needs to be explicit teaching for transfer; for example, explicitly encouraging transfer by exploring concepts across multiple subject areas, or by encouraging students to make connections between their learning in the different subjects.
Related resources
Pedagogy or andragogy?
Pedagogy is defined as “the art and science of teaching children” (Ozuah 2005: 83), in contrast to andragogy which is the art and science of helping adults learn (Knowles 1980: 43). When considering teaching strategies suitable for 16–19-year-old DP students, it may be useful to move away from some pedagogical approaches towards more andragogical approaches in order to design teaching more appropriately matched to the developmental stage of the students.
According to Knowles (1980), pedagogical approaches tend to assume that child learners:
are dependent on teachers
prefer learning that is subject centred
respond well to extrinsic motivators
do not have enough life experience for it to be relevant to learning in the classroom.
In contrast, andragogical approaches tend to assume that adult learners:
prefer to be responsible for their own learning and involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction
can use their own life experience as a rich resource for learning
prefer learning that is problem centred rather than content oriented
respond better to internal, rather than external, motivators
need to understand the reason for, and importance of, all their learning
It is interesting to consider whether DP students, and their attributes as learners, fit a more andragogical or pedagogical teaching structure. If the DP is a preparation for further learning as an adult, then getting students used to more adult ways of learning while still at school could potentially be advantageous. It can also be argued that inquiry-based learning, as it is described in most IB documents, is in many ways, a more andragogical teaching strategy than a pedagogical one.
Related resources
Utilizing technology effectively
Throughout this document and the accompanying resources, many of the activities draw heavily on technology. Technology can play a key role in supporting and enabling innovative approaches to teaching, such as the “flipped classroom” (see, for example, Bergmann and Sams 2012). In a flipped classroom, students acquire new knowledge and information at home before the lesson, for example, by watching lectures or reading materials, which then frees up the lesson itself for activities focused on the application of that knowledge, and on discussion. Flipping the classroom has close links to other approaches to teaching, such as differentiation, as “flipping the classroom establishes a framework that ensures students receive a personalized education tailored to their individual needs” (Bergmann and Sams 2012).
There are many technology integration frameworks, or ways of thinking about how technology should be integrated into classrooms, that can help teachers think about how to use technology effectively to enhance their students' educational experiences. Examples of such frameworks include “TPACK” (the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework, see http://www.tpack.org) or “TIM” (the Technology Integration Matrix, see http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/faq.php). These frameworks help teachers to think more systematically about technology use; encouraging them to reflect not only on how, but also why, they are using technology in the classroom.
Another well known technology integration framework is the SAMR model proposed by Puentedura (2013). This framework highlights that technology is often not used to its full potential as it is often used only as a substitute for an existing tool, rather than utilizing its potential to transform a task.
Figure 6
Puentedura’s “substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition” (SAMR) model (2013) Image reproduced with permission of the author.
In this way, effective use of technology has the potential to enable teachers and students to engage in tasks and opportunities that would otherwise be impossible or inconceivable, such as tasks requiring communication and collaboration between students on different sides of the world. One project that highlights how technology, and specifically social media, can be used effectively in education comes from the “Flat Classroom Project” run by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis (see http://www.flatclassroomproject.org). This project consists of a wide range of collaborative initiatives where students from schools around the world collaborate using synchronous documents, collaborative workspaces and social networks.
Digital citizenship
Underlying the effective and responsible use of technology in its myriad forms is the concept of “digital citizenship”. Digital citizenship is a set of values that provides a framework for online action and behaviour. It is about encouraging and expecting students to act in an ethical manner, to be respectful of themselves, other people and intellectual property. Many students have grown up surrounded by, and immersed in, technology, and are “digital natives” (Prensky 2001). However, “even when students are comfortable using technology, they may not be using it appropriately. Likewise, educators of all skill levels may not understand how to use digital technology effectively. Both students and teachers need to find a common ground. They all need to become members of a digital citizenry” (Ribble 2011).
Related resources
Every DP teacher is a language teacher
Language wraps itself around, in, through and between everything that we teachers and learners do in the classroom.
(Ron Ritchhart 2002)
The development of international-mindedness is central to an IB education, and this term explicitly encompasses the three aspects of multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement. Language is, therefore, highly valued by the IB, not least for the crucial role it plays in the cultivation of intercultural understanding. Every DP teacher plays an important role, and has an important responsibility, in supporting and reinforcing students’ language development.
Multilingual classrooms are fast becoming the norm, with students having increasingly diverse language profiles. All DP teachers need to be able to build on these profiles, understand how their diversity is a potential resource for learning, and develop every student’s academic language. DP teachers should, therefore, use teaching approaches that ensure all multilingual students, including those learning in a language other than their mother tongue, are able to have access to the curriculum. The document Language and learning in IB programmes (September 2011, updated August 2012) proposes a pedagogy that emphasizes four dimensions of teaching that are particularly important in ensuring learner participation, promoting engagement and successfully constructing understanding.
Activating prior understanding and building background knowledge
There are a number of strategies that teachers can use to activate prior understanding and build background knowledge. These might include using the mother tongue and other languages when appropriate; using their knowledge of students’ prior understanding in all languages to differentiate tasks and activities that will build up the further background knowledge necessary for new learning to occur; or recording information in student language profiles and maps that will support planning for future differentiation.
Scaffolding learning
Examples of scaffolding strategies teachers can employ include the use of visual and practical aids, graphic organizers, demonstrations, or small, structured collaborative groups.
Extending language
Teachers can help students extend their language by combining high expectations with numerous opportunities for learner-centred practice and interaction with cognitively rich materials and experiences. In practice, this could mean encouraging students to read extensively both inside and outside the DP curriculum and to write in a wide range of genres.
Affirming identity
Teachers should aim to create the social and emotional conditions for learning that value all languages and cultures, affirm the identity of each learner, promote self-esteem and develop intercultural awareness. Some learning conditions that schools and individual teachers may wish to create in order to affirm students’ identity include promoting a class and school environment that welcomes and embraces the diversity of languages, cultures and perspectives; valuing and using the diversity of languages, cultures and perspectives to enhance learning; and liaising with parents to establish understanding of how best to collaborate to achieve shared goals.
For more detailed information and guidance on this area, please refer to these additional IB resources, all of which are available on the OCC.
Thought, word and deed: The roles of cognition, language and culture in teaching and learning in IB World Schools (2011)
Learning in a language other than mother tongue in IB programmes (2008)
Guidelines for developing a school language policy (2008)
Guidelines for school self-reflection on its language policy (2012)
Related resources
Planning
All DP teachers should engage in explicit planning. The IB does not prescribe a particular format for how this planning should be undertaken. However, the process of planning may be supported by using one of the three template DP unit planners developed for DP teachers. These DP unit planners are not intended to mandate or restrict what DP teachers can or cannot do. Rather, they are intended to inspire and support teachers to think more about not only what they are teaching, but also how they are teaching.
A unit plan is part of the written curriculum and can be defined as a planned study, of various lengths, concluding with summative assessment. Each subject-specific unit plan should:
stand alone as a significant, engaging, relevant and challenging learning experience
enable students to demonstrate development against objectives
contribute to a coherent, school-wide commitment to inquiry that is framed by contexts of personal, local or global significance
be driven by inquiry that is conceptually based and contextually framed
involve students in a range of learning experiences planned in response to inquiry-based questions
build on the prior knowledge of the students
be planned and taught to promote positive attitudes and development of the attributes of an IB learner
have a summative assessment that gives the students the opportunity to demonstrate achievement of the DP objectives set for the unit
require students to reflect on their learning and encourage them to engage in principled action or service.
Template DP unit planners
The three template DP unit planners are all divided into the same three sections: inquiry, action and reflection. However, they have been designed to offer teachers a chance to reflect on how they are teaching at three different levels of detail.
Planner 1 provides a low level of detail, asking teachers to:
think concretely about transfer goals and essential understandings as they relate to content, skills and concepts
list formative and summative assessments
check boxes with regard to ATL skills, pedagogical approaches, connections to TOK, and so on
reflect on the learning and design process at the end of the unit.
Planner 2 provides a medium level of detail, asking teachers to:
think concretely about transfer goals and essential understandings as they relate to content, skills and concepts
create inquiry questions to aid in the teaching and learning of essential understandings
list formative and summative assessments
check boxes with regard to ATL skills, pedagogical approaches, connections to TOK, and so on
reflect on the learning and design process at the end of the unit
reflect on the level of success with transfer.
Planner 3 provides a high level of detail, asking teachers to:
think concretely about transfer goals and essential understandings as they relate to content, skills and concepts
identify and list likely misunderstandings students may have before/while learning the content, skills and concepts of that unit
create inquiry questions to aid in the teaching and learning of essential understandings
match assessments with essential understandings
check boxes with regard to ATL skills, pedagogical approaches, connections to TOK, and so on, and an additional box on metacognition
reflect on the learning and design process at the end of the unit
reflect on the level of success with transfer.
Features of the planners
The first section of the planner provides a space for practical information, such as subject group and course, year and level, dates the unit is being taught at the school, a basic description of the unit, any selected texts used, and any DP assessments linked to that unit or performed during the unit. The three template DP unit planners are then all divided into the same three sections: inquiry, action and reflection, following the three elements of the inquiry learning cycle (see What is an IB Education? 2013) and mirroring the format of the MYP planning template. Below is a brief explanation of some of the key elements of the planner templates.
Transfer goals
In the inquiry section (in all three versions of the planner), the first item is “transfer goals”. Transfer is taking what has been learned in one context and being able to apply it effectively in a new, unfamiliar or independent context. Transfer is at the core of student understanding, as “you truly understand and excel when you can take what you have learned in one way or context and use it in another, on your own. The successful driver, soccer player, historian, or mathematician can size up a new challenge and transfer learning efficiently and effectively. Someone who learned only by rote cannot” (Wiggins and McTighe 2011). Identifying transfer goals early in the unit planning process helps teachers to direct their attention at the key goals for the unit, focusing on the question of what students should be able to know, do and understand independently with a new set of data or an unseen text when the unit is finished.
Essential understandings
In planners 2 and 3, after the transfer goals have been identified there is space for identification of essential understandings. In planner 1, this section comes at the beginning of the action section. The “essential understandings” space is the opportunity for teachers to break down the unit’s individual goals relating to content, skills and concepts. Here, teachers can identify the core content that must be covered (for example, a key historical event), the skills students will learn as they make sense of that content (for example, writing a cogent essay on the event) and the concepts that are vital for students to be able to fully understand the importance and context of the material (for example, there are multiple perspectives on why the event took place and it is not always possible to know which one is “right”). Identifying enduring understandings helps to move the focus of the unit beyond facts to “the big ideas, the important understandings, that we want students to ‘get inside of’ and retain after they’ve forgotten many of the details … enduring understandings go beyond discrete facts or skills to focus on larger concepts, principles, or processes” (Wiggins and McTighe 1998: 10).
Inquiry questions
In planners 2 and 3 there is also a space for teachers to turn the essential understandings into inquiry questions. These are probing, student-friendly questions that can lead to essay topics, interesting discussions and debates. Teachers should feel free to add to the list of inquiry questions, beyond the ones that are derived from the essential understandings, as there may be further questioning that helps to support understanding and transfer in the unit. A good strategy for developing inquiry questions is to check if the questions inspire student discussion or debate, and whether they are questions that require further probing, questioning or solving. Examples of inquiry questions include: Why can’t you divide by zero? Who is my audience and what am I trying to make them think or feel? Can, or should, natural resources be owned by groups or nations?
Action
The “action” section of the planners asks teachers to think about the ways in which their unit is taught and the many connections in the unit to other IB elements. The “ATL” box asks teachers to think about the students’ various approaches to learning in the unit, and the other boxes ask teachers to consider how the students approach, learn or connect to language and learning, TOK, CAS and differentiation in the unit.
The “learning process” box is key to all of the planners as it asks teachers to identify the various pedagogical methods used in teaching the unit. While teachers have their preferred and practised modes of teaching, many find that the check boxes are a helpful reminder to aim for some variety throughout each unit. Finally, at the end of the “action” section, there is a space to identify the resources used for the teaching of the unit.
Reflection
The final stage on all three planners is for reflecting on the unit during and after it is taught. This helps teachers to identify what was successful in the teaching of the unit, what was not, and what improvements the teacher could make for next time. In planners 2 and 3, there is additional reflection on the transfer goals, which asks teachers to reconsider the initial transfer goals from the “inquiry” section and reflect upon whether the students achieved those transfer goals by the end of the unit.