IB Heads World Conference - Buenos Aires 2013

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Heads World Conference was held in Buenos Aires this last weekend. With the title IB in a Virtual World and with well known keynote speakers it promised a lot.
And it delivered. Perhaps not in the way I thought it would do but certainly as an opportunity to understand the topic of technology in education in a deeper way. The main take away point is that it is not about the technology, stupid.
I shall report on the messages from three keynote speakers and what I understood of them.

The conference opened with Charles Fadel - author and founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign. His M.O. seemed to be to want to shock the heads with what was just around the corner in terms of technology, and I think that he did that to many. Using examples such as high speed manipulation by robots to bring home the point about the future of manufacturing and other repetitive process, the way digital technologies can be almost approaching on the creative (examples from art and music) and the increase in computing power to match first a human brain and then, very shortly, ALL human brains, Fadel prepared us for his talk the following day. This was regarding the work of the Center for Curriculum Redesign [CCR] (and reported in his co-authored book: 21st Century Skills, Learning for Life in our Times) which came up with a four dimensional model of the knowledge and other aspects of learning which are needed. The process of working out what is needed in the future is an exciting one, and one which we have done in our school. The CCR model maintains Traditional Knowledge (but what should we exclude?), adds Modern Knowledge (but what should we include?) and adds Metacognition, Character and Skills.

(From Charles Fadel - PPP)
For the breakout sessions we were sent to discuss what we should include and what we should exclude. This proved to be a very difficult thing to do - not because there were not those willing to explore this, but the discussion seemed to go off in different directions. Perhaps the way we were doing it was at fault. When we did this exercise at school (with the SMT and separately with the Board), we broke off into smaller groups to do this, presenting our results on poster paper after 30 minutes. That is much more productive because this level of discussion can only be achieved by working in pairs or groups of three. Shame.

The keynote speaker for the Friday morning was Aleph Molinari who was the founder of the Fundación Proacceso, "a nonprofit organization that uses the educational benefits of technology to drive the social and economic development of people living in marginalized communities" (from the excellent IB Heads Conference App - great to see paperless programming).
Relating his information to Mexico, Molinari spoke of the digital divide and the low numbers of students who finish school, all with low technical knowledge. His foundation provides sustainably built meeting areas with computers, teaching English and other subjects, in a well defined programme, following each student with a digital card allowing excellent measurement of success and completion. He advocates a top-down implementation process, from legislation down.
This was a very interesting process since I think it is easily transferable and copyable to other Latin American countries. In a way it by-passes all the problems of state schooling in these countries and engages the interest of children (and adults) in learning. Excellent.

I expected good things from Alan November - and I was not disappointed. In his usual style "this is only my opinion" way, he left nuggets to think about. And it is not about the technology. His was the Saturday keynote.
He re-framed the problem. "The real issue is not training teachers to use it (technology) - the most difficult thing is shifting the control to the student, for learning".
This is the fundamental November point, and not grasped by all. He put the task of leaders as being to recalibrate the control of the organisation to manage learning for the students, and for students to increasingly take control and design for managing their own learning.
So, not a technology problem, a control problem.
And I get it. His example of the preparation of a powerpoint presentation by the teacher for the forthcoming lesson: that act of forming, aligning, and presenting her knowledge is what the STUDENT should be doing, NOT the teacher. We are depriving the students of constructing their own knowledge.
So, November re-frames the situation into three parts:

1. Control shift needed.
2. Information is ubiquitous - teachers should not be the sole providers of this and information is so available that it enables questions (assignments?) to be written to raise the levels of response to much richer learning and expressive levels.
3. Global relationships/communications - broaden the audience for student work to the world and have learning relationships with the world. First hand.

So, November would say that the real work is redesigning assignments to be

• more creative
• more demanding
• more rigorous
• and thus, even more motivating.

As usual, he left the nuggets for us to follow up, so here is a topic list:

• WolframAlpha - investigate this as a superb instrument to free us from the drudgery to examine the real concepts, not the mechanics.
• Google search - get to grips with the 16 operators so that you can find the genuine articles and enrich the questions that you ask your students; do not give assignments like those you gave in the world of paper, enrich the possibilities of deeper thought and synthesis.
• Teachers need to give more structure, guidance and capacity to our students for research, using 
• Knowledge Engines such as WolframAlpha
• Search Engines such as Google search
• Social Media Engines such as Twitter.

• Eric Mazur and clickers (and Facebook!) - just researched this and found GoSoapBox - excellent tool for feedback in class, or before the next lesson after homework. Click on the link and use the access code to answer the question "who does most of the work in your lessons?". Access code: 793-936-932
• And finally, the Curse of Knowledge. How many times have we seen this in action. "The more we know about a subject, the less prepared we are to understand a learner's misconceptions, confusion and questions". But it is exactly that which makes us teachers, and not just spouters of our knowledge. Let us provide avenues, technological or otherwise, to get this feedback.

Communication - telling the story (and listening to the reply)

No organisation can succeed without a clear communications strategy. And ensuring that it is carried out.
This is not just about selling or marketing, it is about telling your story - because if you do not, others will.
Each person's reality is in fact a conglomeration of bits of many stories, often heard and passed into memory without any error checking mechanism. With social media (if not just e-mail), stories can take a life of their own and become the reality for many. The inaccurate and distorted story will then be the reality for your client/parent/community member.
It is necessary to listen too. Not just because you might have to act to ensure the correct version is communicated, but you can also learn and then be able to improve what you do.
This particularly applies to schools, but it also applies to large international organisations too. I am pleased that the International Baccalaureate is improving their communications and congratulate Drew Deutsch, Director for IB Americas, for producing a personal message on Vimeo.This is more like it IBO!
I have been in the audience for many an excellent presentation from IB personnel - but have had to be there in person. Could we hope for other video presentations about the IB programme changes, for example? This is an excellent medium for getting the IB story out to those who implement the programme.
And using blogs, video and social media are great opportunities to listen, too.

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.

IB Communications - finally!

"We heard you" writes Siva Kumari in the first issue of IB News Update, the new quarterly e-publication that focuses on news of special interest to IB Heads of school.
Siva is the Chief Operating Officer, Schools Division, of the International Baccalaureate Office.
There is a suspicion of side-lining of Heads by the IBO - I have to say it is easy to come to this conclusion - so this is a welcome (closed) publication. Thank you!
But we Heads do have opinions and it would be nice to harness social media (a private Google + community?) so as to try these out and to find solutions to our common problems. The IBO should not fear these types of initiatives - we live in times of active and rapid two-way communications and collegiate approaches to solving problems.
It has taken some time for the IBO to get their communications act together and they now have two (generally available) e-publications: IB Global News and IB in Practice (the latter is in its inaugural issue too).
I do wish that the IBO would reconsider their commercial pricing of their new IB Journal of Teaching Practice. This should be the vehicle for reporting research on the all important Approaches to Teaching and Approaches to Learning, and thus be readily to hand for all IB teachers, not just those who fork out the required dollars.

Previous post on this

IB Journal of Teaching Practice - great, but why charge?

The International Baccalaureate Organisation have announced, in their inaugural issue of "IB Global News", the debut of the IB's Journal of Teaching Practice. Published twice a year, in February and August, it will have action research reports, studies in practice and review of resources.
"The journal is based on the premise that teacher research is a powerful form of professional development that can have a positive impact on student learning," says co-editor in chief Robert Harrison. "The journal complements the wide variety of IB teacher workshops as well as the IB educator certificates."
This is excellent news. The IB is planning far reaching pedagogy changes to the way the IB programmes are delivered, being much more specific on the "Approaches to Teaching and Learning". Given this, it is excellent that they are fostering a grass roots interest in action research and the discussion on what works in learning for the IB programmes.
But, why charge? The trend is for open access to learned journals. The opportunity for open access, for discussion, for getting reaction  and opinion, is severely limited by placing it all behind a wall.
Who will be paid? The peer reviewers. They will be paid a $50 honorarium for each review they complete. 
The rank and file, in a journal which is tagged "Written by teachers, reviewed by teachers, published for teachers", will have to pay to access it. 

 Come on, IBO, you can do better than this.

MYP - new learning and assessment design

The International Baccalaureate Organisation has been working on changing their 11-16 years Middle Years Programme (MYP). This is being done to ensure a better continuity for the three programmes - Primary Years (PYP), MYP and the Diploma Programme (DP - and also their Career Related Certificate, I assume).
The MYP has always involved a holistic learning approach and certainly has been criticized as a poor preparation for the DP.
Malcolm Nicolson, the IB's Head of MYP Development, describes the new MYP in the latest issue of International School Magazine (IS - ECIS magazine, Vol 15 Issue 2, published by John Catt Education). This is an interesting account since a key feature of current IB thinking is "conceptual understanding", and this is described in operation in one of the IB programmes.
"The result is an innovative, concept-based and appropriately assessed programme for 11-16 year olds" (p26). Students will be able to choose six of eight subject groups in the final two years and so can allow for some specialism.
Nicolson describes the new MYP assessment: how students "use their knowledge to address challenging questions in unfamiliar situations using conceptual understanding ...  The assessment design ... draws from the central importance of concept based learning."
The MYP will provide a number of set disciplinary and interdisciplinary prescribed concepts, the "understanding of which can be demonstrated and assessed".
Another interesting feature is the use of technology - on screen and not on books. A very definite rich media environment is sought and will be used for both stimulus material and for e-assessments - "paper versions are neither possible nor provided".
Nicolson describes this attempt also as diminishing the negative "backwash" effects of assessment on learning and that the e-assessments "set challenging questions on unfamiliar source material".
The Personal Project will be moderated in the fifth year of the programme (with some differences from those who use this programme in a true middle school).
This "new chapter" for the MYP is very welcome and I am really interested in the learning design aspects that this generates. Not just from the emphasis on conceptual understanding but also the way that technology is blended (more than blended - totally imposed) on the programme.

See also: IB Diploma changes

Rounding the hexagon - new International Bachalaureate Diploma model

The International Baccalaureate Organization has announced new models in today's publication: "Launch of new programme models - November 2012".
It was just a year ago when I heard about the new direction that the IB Diploma programme would be taking. The then new curriculum director of the IB, Andy Atkinson, presented these ideas at the IB Heads Conference in Singapore. The "Approaches to Teaching and Learning" would signify a prescribed pedagogy, making the subject areas much more about conceptual understanding than content.
I linked these ideas up with my subject area (mathematics) and with Conrad Wolfram's TED ideas in a post shortly after the conference. Here are my notes about the direction that the IB is going, written at that time.
Gone is the old familiar hexagon - the new model is now circular, part of what the IB calls the "IB Continuum" (not sure about this concept - the career related certificate, the fourth IB programme, is hardly consecutive, more concurrent, hardly continuum).

This is the IBO's explanation about the new models:

These have been created to illustrate the coherence across the four IB programmes and highlight each programme’s unique elements. The design is no longer hexagonal but circular, illustrating the alignment of structure and terminology across all four programmes and a seamless, holistic and integrated continuum of education for children aged 3-19 years old.

The new models continue to be built around the learner profile, with an underpinning theme of international-mindedness. Approaches to teaching and learning are now embedded within all four programmes, which are further aligned by each one culminating in a learning experience.

The new IB Diploma Programme Model:


© International Baccalaureate Organization 2002, 2007, 2011

The Middle Years (MYP), Primary Years (PYP) and Diploma Programmes (DP) now aline in concepts and the "Approaches to Learning and Approaches to Teaching", written in the innermost circle, makes clear the directed pedagogy aspect. Experimental Sciences is now just Sciences.
The IB Learner Profile and "International-mindedness" feature prominently in the diagram, as does the watermark of the world - "indicating that much learning for the DP takes place in the global context".
There are challenges ahead. I hope that this now circular peg will fit as neatly into its hexagonal hole - and that the currency of the IB diploma is enhanced and not reduced.
 

IB Changes - notes from the IB Heads World Conference

Communications is not one of the International Baccalaureate Organisation's (IBO) strong points. Surprising this, given its status in the world.**
So, in response to requests for information about where the IBO is going, I publish the notes that I made for staff at school.
It is worth reading the IBO's philosophy at the outset since this is the driving force for the changes afoot. There has been a change here, a change that has been working its way in for some time. At one time the IBO could have been regarded as a service organisation, providing an internationally recognised diploma (DP) for universal university entrance. Indeed, early pioneers of the IB diploma would describe this exactly in this way - including my father, one of the first IB diploma teachers. Over the years, and particularly since the influences of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the Middle Years Programme (MYP), a much more crusading approach has been taken. I recall previous IB World Heads Conferences where hugely expansionist ideas were rehearsed by the IBO and resolutely rejected by the Heads present.
So it is significant that I heard, for the first time, definite statements about the PYP and MYP influencing the DP. Some people might say "about time" but I would urge a much more cautious approach - do not affect the value of the IB diploma nor the investment that schools have in it.
The IBO have split off assessment and curriculum into two departments, and it is clear that these are early days in this split. You will notice a couple of slides on a continuum of validity and reliability and the quote from Alec Peterson which was used by Carolyn Adams to introduce the idea. She used this in answer to complaints about the reliability of internal assessment moderation and marking. I do believe that there are other ways of looking at this, but that will have to wait for another post.
Carolyn Adams explained the ideas behind e-marking, the IBO's answer to improving quality and answering the critics of expansion. This seems an excellent approach although I still worry about the quality of examiners that the IBO find.
The changes as I noted them (please beware - I might have got some things wrong!) are listed on the final slides - and the presentation finishes with me imploring my teachers to get involved. It is a sad state of affairs that such a small proportion of IB teachers around the world take part in the curriculum reviews.

IB Changes October2011

View more presentations from George Hobson.

**The IBO's HeadNet, supposedly the online area for Heads, contains ancient information - minutes from 2010 and very little else. A new IB communications person has been employed - let us hope s/he can drag this organisation into this century.