The International Schools Review Forum

.isr

[quote]'the real purpose of course behind the IB (MYP and DP) is to funnel a VERY lucrative Asian/European student body into Western Universities'...too funny, it just has to be time to sign out on this one...[/quote]

Yes, that was a rather unfortunate way of saying that the MYP, at the basest level, is a money-making scheme. And that is where the big issue lies. I don't think people who are 'defending' MYP are actually defending the program itself. What they are defending is good teaching practice. I'm not sure why schools need to pay money for that.

I am new to this program, I am not a dinosaur, nor am I resistant to change. I have been trying to wrap my head around it for three months. I have attended the school-based PDs and will be going to another one in Europe next week. What I find is that even the veteran MYP teachers nod their heads in tacit agreement when I get off on one of my rants. Its not the 'teaching philosophy' that I object to. Its the practicality of having five AOIs, with 6-content based criteria (assessed on a 6 point rubric) and then converting that to a 7 point scale. At that point, what do all of those numbers even mean to a 12 year old kid? Or a 16 year old for that matter?

Having done workshops on developing and using rubrics for years, coming into this program has kind of blown my mind. Rubrics are supposed to make the learning goals explicitly clear to students, and when done well, they work. Students know exactly what is expected and know exactly why they achieved whatever score they may have had. Do MYP rubrics do this? No, they don't. And, unfortunately, my hands are tied when it comes to developing task-specific rubrics, because they don't fit nicely into the MYP criterion. It is very frustrating, because I am at my desk trying to explain to students why they got the scores they got because of a vague, wavering rubric. This fosters student confusion, not understanding. The practices in MYP are common to ALL good teaching practices; the assessment needs a complete overhaul.

I am the author of the article ‘MYP: A Refutation’. I have read the many comments and come to the conclusion that MYP is like religion – you either believe in it or you don’t. I am an MYP atheist, and I doubt if anything can make me a True Believer. My belief that MYP has no educational value has not been altered one iota by anything I’ve read here. Some of the proponents of MYP are obviously fine teachers, but, for the life of me, I don’t understand why they like it. I can only think that MYP, like religion, fulfils some emotional need.
That’s my last word here. Over and out.

Hello my fellow MYP casualties - a friend of mine came up with a more gentle and perhaps more appropriate pseudonym. He called it the 'Five Areas of Interruption'... :wink:

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I do not want to run through the arguments for and against MYP, but I did look over the data about MYP and results in DP published by the IB and I think I can see the flaw in it. (Correct me if I am wrong.)

All the DP schools I have ever worked in (in Europe, Asia and Africa) get DP scores above the world average. These are also the schools that are most inclined to introduce MYP - that is International Schools around the globe. Not surprising most get better results now as most were getting better results anyway, being commited to the DP (and perhaps to the IB in general as much as to MYP in particular.)

Flip side somewhere in the world there must be a group of schools getting below average DP scores. The biggest proportion of DP schools in the world is still in U.S.A. Many of those are not international schools and I suspect are not really commited to the DP in the same way. The schools that I am talking about would not be offering MYP, which in any case does not fit at all well with the Middle School / High School system practised in U.S.

Hence the data is unlikely to be comparing like with like. It would take longer but be more valid to compare the same schools DP results before and after the introduction of MYP.

.isr

To Des: I agree with your conclusion. If the IB wants educators to consider their research legitimate, then they need to be a bit more serious about how they carry out their work. Yes, comparing exam scores before and after implementation of the MYP is the way to go.

I think it's also necessary to consider schools' student populations, too. A school in a difficult neighborhood in Brooklyn, USA will likely have different scores than the big schools in Europe and Asia. This seems obvious to me, no?

You would also have to consider what type of international school you would include in the survey. All in Asia? Schools that have had the DP for 10, 15, 20 years? How would you treat many of the schools in Europe that don't pay much attention to internal grades or WASC/NEASC/SACS diplomas? These are schools whose students depend almost exclusively on their IB results for university acceptance.

Very complicated matter, indeed.

I used to say that MYP stands for "Make your poster."

Dear Jeff,

Sorry, but I just couldn't resist you...just had a quick look through the MYP guide - can't see a single mention of posters. Never mind though, it is clear that you have a very good understanding of the programme...

.isr

.isr