The International Baccalaureate (IB) Regional Office recently hosted a meeting for Heads of School and Coordinators of IB schools in Perth. The focus of the meeting was to share updates and to allow schools to meet face to face with IB personnel. One of the discussion points was the continuum: What are the commonalities you can identify between the Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the Diploma Programme (DP)? The following are some of the key connections between the PYP, MYP and DP at Scotch College:
Philosophy/mission statement
- Leadership and structure
- Collaboration
- Curriculum/written (structural continuum subjects)
- Assessment - rigorous formative and summative assessments (exhibition, personal projects, Theory of Knowledge)
- Internationally minded (embodied in the IB learner profile)
- Action/Community and Service/Creativity, Action and Service (action is also asking questions)
- Academic honesty
- Structural continuum (transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, disciplines)
- Approaches to teaching (inquiry based, concept driven)
- Approaches to learning (transdisciplinary skills/approaches to learning; research skills, thinking skills, social skills, communication skills and self management skills)
- Individual needs
- Global contexts (transdisciplinary themes will be renamed global contexts in PYP to align with the terminology of the MYP and eventually DP)
- Additional language(s)
"At the centre of international education in the IB are the students with their own learning styles, strengths and limitations. Students of all ages come to school with combinations of unique and shared patterns of values, knowledge and experience of the world and their place in it.
Promoting open communication based on understanding and respect, the IB encourages students to become active, compassionate, lifelong learners. An IB education is holistic in nature - it is concerned with the whole person. Along with cognitive development, IB programmes address students' social, emotional and physical well-being. They value and offer opportunities for students to become active and caring members of local, national and global communities; they focus attention on the values and outcomes of internationally minded learning described in the IB learner profile."
Excerpts from: 'What is an IB Education?' International Baccalaureate Publication 2012
Kathy Derrick
PYP Coordinator
