IB Teachers have different teaching perspectives profile

I read about the research studies released by the IB in the latest IB News Update for Heads. One of these concerned a study on the IB teacher - The IB teacher professional - identifying, measuring and characterising pedagogical attributes, perspectives and beliefs, based on a research report prepared for the IB by Liz Bergeron and Michael Dean.
The study used various methods and included the Teaching Perspective Inventory (TPI) developed by Pratt, Collins and Selinger (2001).

Personal results:
This is an interesting inventory to take and I have included my result in this blog post. About ten minutes is all that it takes and it is to be found at the Teaching Perspectives Inventory website.

There are five perspectives and these are well described on the website:

• TRANSMISSION:
  Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter
• APPRENTICESHIP:
  Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral norms and ways of working
• DEVELOPMENTAL:
  Effective teaching must be planned and conducted "from the learner's point of view"
• NURTURING:
  Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head
• SOCIAL REFORM:
  Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways

 and each is divided into Beliefs (what you believe about teaching and learning), Intentions (what you try to accomplish in your teaching, and Actions (what you do when your are teaching).
Using the Dominant and Recessive lines above, you can see I show as dominant in Developmental and Recessive in Transmission. Since I had to think of a particular teaching example whilst doing this inventory, I chose what I currently teach - IB Theory of Knowledge.

Results from the IB Research:
They found that in general, IB teachers are similar; responses are fairly consistent on the TPI, focus groups and open ended survey items, that they carried out.
The average IB teacher and the average TPI database teacher are similar. They have as dominant NURTURING, with backup APPRENTICESHIP and DEVELOPMENTAL.
However, IB teachers value ALL perspectives more and scores are relatively close, whilst in the TPI database only one or two are higher.
Naturally, the study found that IB teachers would describe themselves best by using the IB Learner Profile. SOCIAL REFORM average for IB teachers was higher than 60% of all teachers completing the scale (Pre-kinder to 12th grade sample) - the study wondered if the international dimension could be a factor here.
IB teachers also value using inquiry based instruction and also flexibility in their use of professional judgment, to form their teaching practice.
Could there also be a difference in dominant perspectives in terms of PYP, MYP and Diploma IB teachers?


Pratt, Collins and Selinger (2001) Pratt, D., Collins, J., and Selinger, S.J. 2001. "Development and Use of The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). Unpublished paper presented at the 2001 AERA annual conference, Seattle, Washington, USA.