From UK National Curriculum to IB?

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jmods
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:35 am

From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by jmods »

Ive just started my International teaching career and Im loving it. Im teaching at an International school that follows the UK national Curriculum from primary all the way through to secondary. So Im thinking when I leave here and try and move on, I know a lot of International Schools offer the IB (PYP, MYP and IB DP).

So my question is how is that transition, from teaching the UK NC to teaching the IB? Is there anything I can do now to increase my chances of interviews, jobs offers etc in the future?

If anyone can share some advice etc that would be great!!

I have also had a look online for resources of MYP Units etc but cant seem to find anything. Any further info would be great!
Yantantether
Posts: 168
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:41 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Yantantether »

jmods: The biggest difference you will find as an educator is the philosophy/approach and coming from the ENC that could prove significant. Having said that, it really depends on you and whether you can embrace the IB philosophy to learning which is an enquiry based, student -led approach, as opposed to a teacher-led approach that most UK style schools will follow. There's an element of teacher/student freedom teaching the 'IB way' that some teachers embrace with both hands. Conversely, depending on the school, the curriculum may not be as structured and solid as a school following the ENC which may or may not bother you. Some love the IB,some hate it. Others can't really make their minds up.

Personally, I find the UK curriculum schools far too rigid and one-dimensional about too many aspects of teaching, planning, assessment etc which is perhaps a hangover from OFSTED induced nightmares that they don't seem able to shake off. Or perhaps it's just the 'British' psyche!? However, I do value the checks and balances that ensures a strong and regulated content based curriculum. (Yes, I guess I am contradicting myself somewhat). As for the IB.....I will tell you in a year or two which side of the fence I fell off.

Re. improving your chances: read up on inquiry based learning (Kath Murdoch), look on the ibo website, do an IB course?
I'm sure others more versed in the IB MYP will give you more pertinent advice and tips soon.
Bij Bam
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2014 9:08 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Bij Bam »

I have no experience with the UK curriculum per se, but the IB - yes, I'm one of those who love it. My experience is mostly from the PYP, but if you want to get into it, taking an IB course corresponding with your areas of teaching will be a great plus on your CV. At least that's what they *say*.

The courses aren't exactly cheap, but you really learn a lot. I did the online course of Making the PYP Happen in the Classroom last year. Online course is about half the price of the course on location (to which you have to add hotel and travel costs). It does have its drawbacks meeting your course leaders and fellow students only online, but on the upside: we got to finish all our assignments. Whereas I've been told that in those residential courses, most assignments are cut off before they are completed, in order to move on to the next topic for reasons of time management. So there you get a lot of incomplete training.

See http://www.ibo.org for info! Or if you want to know more about how the online courses run in practice, let me know :-)
auntiesocial
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 1:10 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by auntiesocial »

From someone who has also made the transition, Yantantether provides a pretty balanced synopsis.

I would add a couple of things. Firstly, it depends on which age level you are teaching. My girlfriend teaches PYP and would concur wholeheartedly with Yantantether's summary. However, at the Diploma end of the spectrum, teachers and students are confronted with the highly prescribed, content driven curriculum, which is identical in most ways to A-Level. In fact, for my own subject, I would argue that the A-Level course is more applied and skills focussed when compared with the highly traditional, highly technical IB diploma course. The contrast between the IB diploma and the very open and often ambiguous MYP scaffold frustrates a lot of professionals who teach both. Teachers used to a standard curriculum have a hard time grasping the concept that the MYP is not a curriculum, but a framework for how your curriculum is designed (by you) to suit the unique context of your school. For people who are used to off-the-shelf curricula like GCSE, this can be daunting and confusing. Furthermore, the MYP documents are unnecessarily convoluted and contradictory in my opinion.

Good, creative, organised and accountable teachers can thrive in an MYP/PYP environment. However, teachers can interpret inquiry based education very loosely - often incorrectly. Some teachers will often remove any guidance and structure on the basis of their rigid interpretation of inquiry, often neglecting basic numeracy and literacy skills. Content is considered anathema to many IB zealots which, again, is contrary to the philosophy of the IB, which still holds content in high regard. To make the MYP consistent and accountable requires quite a lot of planning. Teachers need to be far more collaborative, assessments need to be moderated and departments need to be highly reflective in a very structured way. Otherwise it can be a flowery free-for-all.
SuzieQ
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Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:31 pm

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by SuzieQ »

The only advantage of UK type syllabus offers is that it will quickly provide you with 'pedagogical content knowledge'- the range of strategies to teach the types of content that is common to many courses around the world. This can be an advantage if you really have no idea - for a year or two - to get you started. But then what? You are not an automaton, and your lovely students are not all identical robots. Let's leave that thinking in the past century, where it belongs.

With IB courses (particularly PYP/ MYP) get ready to fly! Start thinking about the broad concepts behind these ideas. Look at other constructivist curricula world wide (e.g. - Australian Curriculum/ some of the new material coming out of the USA ) and you will start to understand 'Big Ideas'/ 'Key Concepts'/ Marco Concepts' as the recurring themes guiding your planning, not the life measured out with coffee spoons with a few extra factoids thrown in as students 'progress' to the following year. When you start thinking from this perspective, the scope of your courses is limited only by the interest of your students, and your focus shifts to learning yourself.

In addition to Kath Murdoch I also recommend books by Lynn Erickson.
Cheery Littlebottom
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Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:32 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Cheery Littlebottom »

Personally, I found the transition relatively easy because as a science teacher I had been conducting criterion based assessment for many years in the UK. The principles of MYP are easy enough to grasp, the content tends to be less. At DP you won't find too many differences. Science in the UK is very practical so enquiry based courses aren't too stretching.
All in all, not to difficult.

The things that were difficult were
1. total lack of well-thought-out training from my school
2. the fact that MYP requires a high degree of executive function from the students, so the immature, the disorganised and the disaffected find it harder than a traditional content based structure. This makes it (in my less than humble opinion) utterly unsuitable for our students. As a result I have developed a passionate loathing for it, and I am extremely glad I shall never, ever be teaching it again.
PLEASE don't go off on one at me, this is from the perspective of one school. In all honesty, this was one of the schools that wanted to flaunt the "IB World" label more than it wanted to choose a suitable programme for it's kids. I am sure MYP is all sweetness and light where YOU are........
auntiesocial
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 1:10 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by auntiesocial »

Suzy Q says: "the scope of your courses is limited only by the interest of your students"

This is complete hyperbole of course. In MYP/PYP, departments and year groups are still required to form guiding questions and create the units of inquiry in collaborative agreement with other colleagues. As I expressed above, it's only lazy and deluded teachers, as well as pie-in-the-sky, out-of-touch administrators that preach the intellectually bankrupt 'knowledge is useless' mantra, peddled by many on this board. Skills and key concepts cannot be developed in a knowledge vacuum. The ironic danger with this mis-interpretation of MYP/MYP is that many students are absent of core skills and academic discipline once they are confronted with post-16 rigour.

Furthermore, the notion that the UK education system is so rigid that it drains any creativity from teachers and students is borne from people with childish axes to grind or with hefty chips on the shoulder (I'm not British by the way). Having structured, off-the-shelf curricula does not prevent creative, inquiry based learning - just as much as MYP/PYP does not guarantee it. There is still a very key danger that, with PYP in-particular, poorly designed and implemented units of inquiry do students a massive disservice. Working in what is considered a tier 1 international school, I witness this on a daily basis. Furthermore, every MYP workshop I have ever attended has an alarming majority of very experienced professionals bemoaning the ambiguity and lack of clarity of the guiding documents.

When going to an full IB school, don't be intimidated by zealots who will preach the new dawn of progressive education. If your school has no accountability or consistency within its curriculum, there will be problems. Good learning is still good learning.
Cheery Littlebottom
Posts: 207
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:32 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Cheery Littlebottom »

My Dear AuntieSocial
You are my new paragon of eloquence! I could not agree more.
I actually found my UK experience to be very hands on, and very enquiry based. I AM English, and I sometimes encounter the expectation that I am a modern day Mr Gradgrind.
We have few zealots at this school, excepting the new MYP co-ordinator.
I did an MYP Level 3 science course a few years ago in Germany. There were 24 science teachers from 22 schools and everyone said the same thing: It was an over-complex course with a huge burden of assessment, and both these characteristics ended up passed on to the students. The MYP staff at the IB are quick to tell you when they think you are wrong, but will never have the cojones to tell you how to do it right.
Thanks once again for totally nailing down how I feel about it!
Bij Bam
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2014 9:08 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Bij Bam »

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a curriculum or teaching style that suits *every* student. There are students who thrive in a 'rigid', teacher-led education, and students who thrive in an environment where it's totally up to themselves what and how they want to learn. In an ideal world, teachers should teach the way that suits *them* best, while only having students for whom that particular learning style is the best way to learn. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that...

I've taught both in regular national schools in two countries in Europe, and I've taught PYP. Plus I have a healthy interest in other teaching styles (like Reggio Emilia and Waldorf). In every class I've taught I've seen students who I expect would do far better in a different learning environment.

For me, the PYP is pretty much the ideal way to teach (and don't worry: coming from a rather conventional school background, I consider reading, writing and maths (even rote learning) of paramount importance, because without those, your inquiry falls pretty flat!). At least it's the best way for me that I'm aware of at the moment. But I can easily imagine that this is not the case for every teacher. Like the students, some teachers thrive in a structured setting, others in a free setting. And I think each of us knows almost by intuition where on that scale we stand. The trouble is to find the school that suits our preferred teaching practice...

(This is not meant as criticism on the MYP teachers mentioned above btw - it's just a reflection :-)
shadylane
Posts: 133
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2013 7:11 am
Location: SE Asia

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by shadylane »

Bij Bam wrote:
> There are students who thrive in a
> 'rigid', teacher-led education, and students who thrive in an environment where it's totally up to themselves what and how they want to learn.

These are two extremes. I wouldn't want either for my child.

As an IB teacher, I dislike the straw man argument that other systems are all teacher-led, rigid, spoon feeding environments. This view implies an air of superiority and arrogance that doesn't sit well, and surely can't reflect the ideals of the learner profile.
SuzieQ
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:31 pm

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by SuzieQ »

I would completely agree that any teaching requires content! But any experienced teacher, of (for example, science) takes a statement like 'genetics describes how information is transferred down generations' (using an AC content example) and instantly recognises that this may require the teaching of Mendelian genetics, Punnett squares, interpreting family trees (this is what is meant by pedagogical content knowledge). A teacher of MYP is encouraged to also examine problematic knowledge with her students, perhaps around genetic testing/ manipulation etc. .... how genetic information informs the science of cladistics and the limits of that knowledge for understanding evolution ... on and on according to the what engages your class, and thereby connect the 'textbook stuff' to what is happening in the ever changing world of contemporary scientific research, and making the learning authentic. And this applies to all MYP subjects.

Until I experienced the IGCSE as taught in Asia several years ago, I had never come across a system where teachers actually refused to discuss science knowledge with their students they deemed was 'beyond the scope' of the syllabus, where students spent hours and weeks practising old exam papers downloaded from extremepapers.com. And this comes at a price: these chilkdren may score well at the 'skill' of completing an external exam, but can they communicate and synthesise their thoughts in an argumentative or persuasive essay? Can they design their own investigation into a phenomenon?

Alas, there is but 24 hours in a day, so the decision is how to spend it. Which toolbox prepares students better for future education in the modern world?

I cannot deny that there are excellent teachers out there who can turn a rigid syllabus into something alive and interesting, but now in my second international school, I have also witnessed the reverse, and it is disappointing.
shadylane
Posts: 133
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2013 7:11 am
Location: SE Asia

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by shadylane »

SuzieQ wrote:
> A teacher of MYP
> is encouraged to also examine problematic knowledge with her students,
> perhaps around genetic testing/ manipulation etc. .... how genetic
> information informs the science of cladistics and the limits of that
> knowledge for understanding evolution ... on and on according to the what
> engages your class, and thereby connect the 'textbook stuff' to what is
> happening in the ever changing world of contemporary scientific research,
> and making the learning authentic. And this applies to all MYP subjects.

And it equally applies to IGCSE and no doubt good American, Canadian, Australian and other national systems.

I love (and prefer) the MYP for all sorts of reasons (as well as the PYP and IBDP) - but this idea that IGCSE is a rigid, content over skills, teacher-led curriculum is way off base.
Bij Bam
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2014 9:08 am

Re: From UK National Curriculum to IB?

Post by Bij Bam »

Quote:

"These are two extremes. I wouldn't want either for my child.

As an IB teacher, I dislike the straw man argument that other systems are all teacher-led, rigid, spoon feeding environments. This view implies an air of superiority and arrogance that doesn't sit well, and surely can't reflect the ideals of the learner profile."

Don't worry, I wouldn't want either of these extremes for my (non-existing ;-) child either. I was using the extremes only to illustrate that different styles suit different children. And I certainly wasn't referring specifically to the UK curriculum - which I've never even taught! Although that misunderstanding was easy to come up indeed, since this thread was about the UK curriculum and the IB. My fault not to make that clearer!

I agree with you on the second part. There are lots of wonderful and creative pedagogical styles out there, and even inquiry based learning isn't limited to the IB. And many 'regular' public schools have incorporated these other styles into their program, leaving teacher-led, rigid, spoon feeding lessons to a minimum.
In fact, the argument I was trying to make was that although the PYP is the best way of teaching *for me* at the moment, that doesn't mean it is *the best* way there is - period. :-)
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