Implementing Continuity: Context is Everything
Abstract (EE)
Mission statement, learner profile and inter-disciplinary curriculum design provide the intellectual integrity of the IB programmes. The IB is explicit in recognising that “Schools should be aware that there is no one formula fits all approach to developing the IB Diploma Programme. Each school is unique and needs to consider its own context and the community it serves before deciding on the best way forward”.
(IB Diploma Programme, the Diploma programme: from principles into practice, IB, 2009)
This chapter explores what this can and does mean for IB world schools and argues that in order to implement continuity with coherence and consistency in IB world schools which offer the IB Diploma Programme, understanding of context is crucial.
I identify three essential and interdependent elements in context:
Local values, traditions and environment
The philosophy of the International Baccalaureate
The curriculum and the integrative role of the IB Diploma core
The chapter first establishes and reflects on the original vision of the International Baccalaureate and the IB Diploma, a programme with moral purpose at its heart, and proposes that the original vision and educational philosophy of the IB, born in 1968, is increasingly valid as we look ahead. Second, the chapter attempts to articulate some of the challenges of 21st century education, suggesting that we cannot carry on doing what we have been doing. Third, it considers the contextualised application of the essential elements identified above to three continental case studies, taken from my professional experience.
The first case study, in the Middle East, reflects on the moral purpose of a school meeting the needs its population in a situation of conflict.
The second case study, set in South-East Asia, considers an IB Diploma Programme which found itself in no-man’s land, caught between a western educational framework (British), and an international imperative.
The third case study is set in the heart of Europe and reflects on how becoming an IB world school can drive whole school improvement when the values and traditions of a school can be successfully fused with the practices and beliefs of the IB.
The chapter concludes that as the IB grows, it continues to learn from its experiences and is actively addressing concerns related to quality assurance and consistency across the world. Two steps in particular, the new authorisation process and the global programme of continuous professional development, reflect a renewed commitment to the original vision of the IB and the importance of understanding context in implementing continuity.
Introduction
My professional experience has afforded me the humbling privilege of working with and visiting a large number of schools all over the world. Whilst there might be notable similarities between them, I try to be sensitive to and develop understanding of the context of every one of them. By context, I mean the sum of the parts; the unique composition comprising a history, traditions, socio-economic setting, its geography, its population, its demographic, its languages, its board, principal, teachers, students and parents; in short, everything that sustains the organisation. No amount of pre-reading and research can fully prepare me for the nuances, the character of the school and its community. Contexts need to be read and experienced. Whilst patterns may emerge between schools, especially those in similar contexts, there is always a surprise somewhere, which is one reason why school consultation and verification visits are such an important part of the new IB authorisation and evaluation processes. Assumptions about context, like stereotypes about people, are best avoided. Educational ethnocentrism is a dangerous as any other kind (which is not, by the way, an argument for relativism). You need to give the school a chance to tell their own story.
Nonetheless, one pattern that has emerged which surprises me is that schools sometimes seem reluctant to spend time reflecting on their own context and potential. In different countries, I have witnessed the phenomenon of boards and school Principals in particular, misreading their own context, imposing their views on the people at the sharp end, the teachers and students.
Often it seems these ideas come from a romantic or nostalgic view of their own education experience – in the board’s case sometimes dating back thirty years or more – and an apparent desire to replicate their rose-tinted memories on unsuspecting school communities. The third case study, for example, takes a school in the heart of Europe, which whilst international by any other name, was so determinedly British that instead of remaining at the school for their IB Diploma years, high achieving students would be sent off to well-established British boarding schools by parents who yearned for the “real thing”. They perceived the local experience as a pale imitation of their memory of what a school should look and feel like, but the comparison was at best fallacious. Misreading your own context is a bit like trying to run a marathon (which is hard enough) with shoes on the wrong feet, making continuity at best painful, at worst impossible. It is a tough and brave decision to say half way through, “Ah, our shoes are on the wrong feet, let’s put them on the right feet and try again”. But as Julia Middleton (2007) observed;
“Too often, leaders have not understood the world they were moving into and tried to introduce an order that is familiar to them. Or they have taken too long to understand the world they have walked into – and missed the boat as a result.” (Middleton, 2007)
If it seems unkind to refer to “misreading context” perhaps it is more of a case of “underestimating the potential of opportunities”. And it is by no means always to do with Boards and Principals, although it does have something to do with leadership.
A special kind of triangulation
Consider the proliferation of British private schools abroad over the past twenty or so years (Davidson, 2009) which initially, rather than assimilate, seemed to desire to create a transplanted cloned satellite of their British mother ship. Reminiscent, perhaps, of American Robert McCulloch, who bought and rebuilt London Bridge in Arizona where, originally, it spanned a chasm of dune rather than a river, yet like British branded schools abroad, it remains “Forever England” (ibid). We should at any rate, be wary of the kind of “hegemonic benevolence” to which Thomas refers (in Hayden & Thompson, 1998) disparaging as he is about the last hundred or so years of educational history which are in his view, “strewn with the relics of well-intentioned programmes”.
Davidson (2009) puts the proliferation down to English being the lingua franca of banking and business, and an associated market driven demand for British schools. More recently in this brave new world, largely through a process of sometimes painful trial and error (symptoms include regular and irregular changes of leadership and the mother ship withdrawing its satellite franchise), many “branded” schools now seem to understand a great deal more about the need to develop a special kind of triangulation which in order to best meet their aspirations, blends local values, traditions and environment with the philosophy and the curriculum of the International Baccalaureate. The latter is particularly important because IB provides programmes with international mindedness at their heart, ready to be moulded so that form can reflect function (Jacobs, 2010). Reading context to find the balance between these interdependent elements is crucial to implementing continuity.
And where does the IB Diploma programme stand in these market-driven, product branding times?
The original vision of the International Baccalaureate and the IB Diploma, a programme with moral purpose at its heart
The International Baccalaureate can be said to have been born out of a fusion of pragmatism and ideology; the former to provide for increasingly mobile and transient communities and the latter, to create an education for peace and a sustainable world. Whilst the educational context has changed dramatically in the last 60 years, the IB vision is just as relevant to the 21st century than it was in the latter part of the 20th. Far from being just educational products, the IB Diploma Programme (and subsequently the Primary and Middle Years Programmes) arose out of a philosophy of life. They are value rich and driven. Understanding what this can and does mean is critical to realising the potential of being an IB world school in general and the Diploma Programme in particular as a means to implementing continuity.
It seems to me that the journey through life is tough enough, so if it is possible to make it easier to navigate life as a result of the experience of education, then it is worth trying. It is most especially worth trying if, as G.K.Chesterton (1924) proposed, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another”. There exist great utopian dreams of what education can and does mean to the world, articulated by great visionaries such as Kurt Hahn, who wanted to create “an intellectual international force for peace” (in Walker, 2012) underpinned by service learning. His dreaming led to the formation of the United World College (UWC) movement, a force for positive change if ever there was one. Delors unequivocally declares education as “The Necessary Utopia” (1998) and Tsolidis (2002) “imagines the best” as they argue for idealism over pragmatism as a starting point for education. Walker (2012) tempers the vision with the “huge challenge of designing an education that prepares for an uncertain future” and the implications for twin arts of teaching and learning. The IB organisation, over which he presided with such distinction, remains ideally placed to meet such a challenge. After all, the IB, as Walker himself reflects,
“Translated all those high-flown aims into a realistic international curriculum that commanded the respect of universities and the support of governments?” (Walker, 2011 p3)
The IB Diploma Programme is, as Walker (2011 p5) observes, “A rare example of educational stability and continuity” perhaps for two reasons. First, because it was the product of intelligent, considered compromise as visionary teachers sought to unite the best of both worlds from which it was drawn – the French Baccalauréat and English 'A' levels. The second is the apolitical nature of the IB which allows the curriculum to undergo a remarkably inclusive and creative process of cyclical review and modification, remaining “free of national assumptions and prejudices” McRae (2010).
Nevertheless, as Walker (2011 p5) goes on to point out, “it has not proved easy for the DP to accommodate both the pragmatic and the visionary aspects of the IB”. One reason for this might be that discomfort can be found when an “unapologetically idealist” (IB, 2002) international programme is launched in an environment not used to “foreign” or at the very least, unfamiliar ideas.
In 2006 a local school board in Upper St Clair, Pennsylvania, “banned” the IB for being “un-American, Marxist and anti-Christian” (Younge, 2006). A teacher was suspended for caricaturing a President Bush speech and drawing parallels between Bush and Hitler, whilst the Republican party referred to the IB in their 2004 election campaign as though it were part of an “international conspiracy,” alluding to the fact that the IB had been “developed in a foreign country… and we have to be careful about what values our children are taught” (ibid).
The IB ideology is explicit and unapologetic in seeking to change the world “for the better”, which could be interpreted as to a condition consistent with a collective, corporate understanding of what that means. I just happen to agree with it. But it has been argued (McRae, 2010, Bocchi, 2009) that its curricula represent collective conversion to a western neo-liberal paradigm. McRae (2010 p243) writes of students finding the “ethos of liberal tolerance than runs through the way the curriculum is taught” being “irksome”. Just as British Schools abroad can be seen as a form of hegemonic benevolence, can the IB mission statement be seen as an instrument of indoctrination and if so, how is it any different from any other extremist ideology? If values are the expression of culture, then as Hofstede (1997, p8) points out, “they are feelings with an arrow to it; they have a plus and minus side” or as the Japanese proverb has it; “the reverse side also has a reverse side”.
The counter argument can point to a Diploma programme curriculum design which empowers ethical decision making with a global perspective. The IB does not promote tolerance of intolerance; rather it encourages judgements which reflect a sense of searching for ethical absolutism, as opposed to cultural relativism. This subtle but vital distinction is one which many both in education and observing IB from the outside, seem to miss. Theory of Knowledge (ToK) for instance, is all about substantiating and justifying a position; using the tools of ToK, it just so happens that most extreme arguments are impossible to substantiate if they are explored in sufficient depth. This is important because with a sense of moral purpose comes responsibility towards standing up for things like social justice and trying to behave ethically. As the new IB ToK syllabus reflects:
“Much of the disagreement and controversy encountered in daily life can be traced back to a knowledge question. An understanding of the nature of knowledge questions can allow a deeper understanding of these controversies.” (IB, ToK draft guide 2012)
Continuity within the IB over the last 45 years has meant evolution rather than revolution, but as it has grown in size and strength, so it has its boldness. Increasingly it now echoes Bronowski (1973) in calling for action beyond contemplation. In writing of the rights and responsibilities of global citizenship, George Walker (2011) speaks of a “duty” to act. For McRae the IB represents:
“A set of ideas about how young people should be educated to become effective, successful and honourable global citizens. If, in this ever more global world, the most important form of capital is human capital, the IB is the most important common force shaping the ideas of the next generation who will help run the world” McRae (2010 p233)
It is important to note in passing, that with the IB’s significant growth over the last ten years in particular, come two issues in particular, first the issue of quality control; second, there is the question of to what extent the IB is in actuality, ready and prepared and able to “meet its mission”. Can it remain true to its original ideology? The IB claims that it:
“Proactively engages like-minded donors, schools, universities, non-governmental organizations, and ministries to develop specialized educational programmes that promote concept-based, student centred, and internationally-minded education” (IB Access and Advancement, 2012 http://www.ibo.org/accessandadvancement/retrieved from World Wide Web 30/12/12).
However, whether due to a lack of project finance, initiative or vision, there are examples of countries in need of IB’s help, notably Bosnia in Herzegovina for example, where the IB has turned down opportunities to make a significant and meaningful impact. This apparent reluctance does not sit easily with a “duty to act”.
For a school embarking on its IB journey, there is an explicit expectation that they will be buying into the philosophy of the IB (IB standards & practice 2011) and into a culture, a shared way of doing things. A potentially uncomfortable challenge appears with the real or imagined prospect of old certainties being shaken. “The call to action” can sound uncomfortable indeed. How does such a thing fit into a school’s context? Understanding the philosophy of the IB is the key to unlocking potential in the IB Diploma Programme and it is fundamental to the successful implementation of it. And it has broader implications for the success and the continuity of the whole school, even if a school has only one of the IB programmes.
Some of the challenges facing 21st century education: we can’t carry on doing what we’ve been doing.
i) The past isn’t necessarily the best foundation for the future
ii) What we really need for our life’s journey; an holistic approach that allows us to take in the view
iii) What kind of future are we imagining?
i) The past isn’t necessarily the best foundation for the future
A common starting point of the workshops I lead is a proposal that on our journey through life we should develop a sense of healthy scepticism towards education as we know it. The past is not necessarily the best foundation for the future, to revisit G.K. Chesterton, you need to have nurtured a soul to pass on. In the recent history of humanity, the results of organised education have by no means yielded results in which we can rejoice; gas chambers built by learned engineers; educated Eichmanns. We should be suspicious of the role that ‘education’ has played in creating an increasingly complex environment in which our children are sentenced to twenty years or more in schooling, just so that they can learn how to survive in it (). The human incubation period is getting longer, not shorter. In school, it appears that we first ask students “to master the accepted way of doing things before they are permitted to deviate” (Menand, 2011) Where then, is the thrill of the chase and what price the risk-taker? Where is the IB learner profile in the education equation? Does continuity equate with conservatism? Does continuity require conformity, maintaining the status quo? I say no; by all means deviate, just make sure you take your moral compass with you. If we keep our children bound in cotton wool, how then will their experience of education best prepare them for life after the longest incubation of any animal?
How does the curriculum and a student’s experience of school prepare them for the rest of their life? Do teachers teach “from the real world”? (IB World May 2010); are we teaching for the real world? What does that mean anyway? Perhaps it means developing and refining focus on the key issues facing humanity in the 21st century? And what are these if not sustainability (in the broadest sense of the word) and conflict resolution, as recognised by the United World College movement? Where, as the global population explodes, is awareness of the horrors of modern slavery and human trafficking in schools? To what extent does any curriculum allow, encourage and facilitate focus on such utterly vital issues? These are not remote; they are vital. What kind of world are schools imagining? How far ahead do they think? Is it just to the next contrived “stage” society has formed for them, jumping through the next invisible hoop or sitting the next artificial examination? And how do you measure success? In the IB Africa Europe and the Middle East (IBAEM) region where I live and work, where the disparity between rich and poor countries and within countries is unfathomable (some more than others) “success” can, in some circumstances, be measured in very simple and literal terms. Getting all the students to school at all, for example, or at the end of the day’s shift, getting back home alive. In some places, technology is not a mobile phone, it is a water pump. The urgent concern generated by understanding the reality of the condition of people’s lives around the world, is not something that we can allow to be peripheral to school experience; and it must also lead to action.
ii) What we really need for our life’s journey; an holistic approach that allows us to take in the view
Perhaps I should have mentioned my bias earlier; I am a painter. When people ask me “what kind?” I have learned to respond that I am a “romantic colourist”. I think this means that I try to see and capture the beauty and aesthetic in all things. Usually this involves a great deal of meditation and learning to see and understand colours, often where and when they are least obvious.
How does this colour my philosophy of the IB Diploma Programme? It means two things to me in particular. First, I support non-selective access to the programme. Second, whilst I am extremely competitive and aspirational in so far as I want schools to give all their students the best possible chance of the highest possible academic grades, I also recognise that, as Dr Aurelia Curtis in McRae (2010) p240: “The prize is not the Diploma, it is the shaping of the person”. But in a world where success for schools is measured largely by the grades students achieve in examinations, who can be surprised when other measurements, such as commitment to Service, a capacity for creativity, compassion and ethical behaviour appear to be less important. Especially when teachers’ careers depend just as much on a narrow interpretation of “success”. Thus another batch of young people are consigned to the mindless rush for a future few can envisage, the subject of popular satire from The Beatles to Blur; “Running everywhere at such as speed, until they find, there’s no need” (Lennon & McCartney, 1966).
If we find that young people emerging from secondary education are having to run just to stay still, perhaps we should take the time to stop and smell the roses; to learn to slow down and walk again, remember how to see and listen; and in so doing we might explore the places we visit for with fresh senses, so that even at the end of our exploring, we might yet “know the places for the first time” (T.S. Eliot, 1922). In forgetting to hurry we can take in a little bit of the view along the way, so that by some chance, we find that we enjoy where we are and what we are doing. In our school designs we might even come to prioritise the creation of reflective space in architecture and timetable, to reflect the centrality of a Creativity Action and Service (CAS) programme to whole school well-being. Get CAS right, get the IB Diploma Core right, and achievement, academic scores and all, should improve. Moreover, through reflection and meditation, we might better know ourselves and through conversation, those around us, so that we can nurture the hope that our journey will be one of excitement and camaraderie and that our preferred futures might be based on ideas of shared humanity more than anything else. Perhaps then we might be able to recognise a sense of shared humanity more readily than feelings of conflict, so that such feelings become a learned response; surely Kurt Hahn would have approved. We might come to realise that there is no hurry after all. And of our teachers who travel with us?
“If they are indeed wise, they do not bid you enter the house of their wisdom, but rather “lead you to the threshold of your own mind”. (Gibran, 1923)
The IB recognises that for a school going through authorisation, it is by no means certain that there will be a shared understanding of what the values espoused by IB philosophy can and do mean; part of the journey involves developing just such a thing, with an open caring heart and a principled mind; “Hard on issues, soft on people” as one Principal put it. We need to be ready to work, without prejudice, with the parent who rips anti-Berlusconi propaganda from the “ToK wall” because he only wants to recognise one side of the story (he leaves that side intact) and to listen without prejudice to the students who are concerned that the IB programmes are a “totalitarian educational system”(Bocchi, 2009). This is perhaps a time when the true value of IB philosophy and the Diploma programme can be realised. By returning to the IB learner profile and the caring, ethical and aspirational values at the heart of the IB mission statement, we are able to engage in Socratic dialogue with people who are different with a sense not of cultural relativism, but of ethical absolutism. Such dialogue is an essential element in developing opportunities for the delivery of continuity. Confidence and faith in a new way of doing things is built on trust through conversations, not through dogma and confrontation. After all, in the best tradition of ToK, we need also to recognise that we “might be wrong” (Hazell, 2005).
It seems to me that new schools in particular have a remarkable opportunity to be inventive and creative in thinking about how their chosen curriculum informs their architecture and environment. For instance, for an inter-disciplinary programme like the IB Diploma, why not explore in quite literal and physical terms, how Mathematics can lead into Visual Arts? In defining and redefining use of space, the question that is equally applicable to existing and new schools is “where and how can teaching happen?”In Understanding by Design (2005) Wiggins and McTighe (in Jacobs 2010) suggest much the same, reflecting that first we need to know, “what it is we want students to know and be able to do before we start short-sighted activity wiring for the classroom”. Therefore, it seems to me to be absolutely essential that for the sake of establishing a sense of continuity, consideration is given to how the physical environment can best reflect the nature, purpose and potential (and indeed the history) of the place; this is as much a question of ideology as it is of pragmatics. Once again, whilst one should inform the other, the trick, as ever, is finding the balance between the two. Imaginative solutions I have seen include an amphitheatre just inside the 18th century entrance to the school, providing a multipurpose space ideal for Theory of Knowledge (ToK) where Socratic dialogue feels very much at home; interactive hubs in and around the campus, so that teaching and learning can happen in a variety of situations; a Visual Arts studio surrounding an atrium which is just about the first thing you see when you come into the main building. These are inspiring experiences; in and around this place, the fruits of creativity are visible in a celebration of human ingenuity, invention, innovation and inquiry whilst a sense of wonder and respect for the environment is pervasive. Recently I was fortunate to be involved with the design and development of a group of schools whose purpose was defined by creativity and of all things, happiness. And why not? The following is one part of what we sought to create:
In these places, the buzz of industry, empowered by technologies, is audible whilst collaboration and team work happen intuitively. In this place happiness is an epiphenomenon for the disciplined, synthesizing mind and the compassionate, generous heart. In these places you can see the art, hear the music and feel inspired. These are places where young people never cease striving to turn their dreams into reality.
Attempting to measure “well being in education” in its multifarious forms is If teaching and learning, the core business of any school, measures success primarily by examination results and equates this with well being, then how can we expect an educational experience to result in significant feeling of happiness? Well being (the ongoing subject of considerable research, Michalos, 2007, OECD, 2010 and Hicks, Newton Haynes & Evans, 2011) needs to drive the curriculum, not the other way around. And that brings us back to IB and the Diploma Programme.
iii) What kind of future are we imagining?
We are entering a new age where we will live and work in a world it is hard for us to envisage. Generations starting school now will inherit enormous challenges from ours. Therefore our task is to prepare them for a future we can scarcely begin to imagine. We must develop young people with intelligence, courage and leadership, who are able to manage their own learning and their own lives, and to contribute positively to civil society. Schools must be actively involved at the heart of the local community and their work should be able to resonate regionally and globally in partnership with like minded organisations.
If schools are to achieve their potential, then through a process of reflection, they must discover what is distinctive about their context; for this will inform their vision. If schools are to move forward on their journey with confidence, then the vision must be an inclusive one, in which the community is able to deal with the idea that “Learning environments, like life itself, are complex, non-linear and open-ended.” (Codrington, 2004)
Implementing continuity necessitates building flexibility into structures, so that the institution and those whose lives depend on it, can Identify, pursue and achieve their preferred futures. In order to give students the best possible.
Today an increasing number of new schools open as IB Diploma schools, yet the degree to which the inter-disciplinary Diploma informs systems thinking and is encouraged to perfuse infrastructure design, operations and marketing, suggests that the potential in becoming an IB world school is not always particularly well understood. So why might a school aspire to deliver the Diploma Programme? Is it, primarily, to be used as a barometer, a safeguard, protecting the intellectual integrity of the learning in the institution? Or is it simply seen as a “kite-mark” for quality? Or is there really a transformational educational magic within which is irresistible and irrepressible?
Case Studies: understanding context – the essential elements of continuity in action
Case Study 1 – reflecting on the moral purpose of a school meeting the needs its population in a situation of conflict
It is my privilege to serve on the College Board of the United World College in Mostar (UWCiM), Bosnia in Herzegovina. The UWCiM mandate extends to providing teacher training and curriculum development across the cantons of the country; it is a real force for positive change. When I see a College like Mostar in action, I am profoundly moved by the capacity of education to heal wounds and just as importantly, to create hope for a better more peaceful and sustainable world. The following personal narrative is not from Mostar, but is an example of how education in general and the IB Diploma in particular can be an antidote for conflict in the manner envisaged by Kurt Hahn and others.
The school was in the Middle East, the context was, shall we say, “complicated”. Here was an ostensibly faith based school, situated adjacent to a local population of another religion, neighbours who actively demonstrated their resentment at the school’s presence and were not shy of making their feelings known (and felt). This was a time of political maelstrom. Outside the school walls, bombs blared and violence raged. But inside, peace and reconciliation reigned.
From an educational perspective it seemed there was only one logical way to move forwards; to recognise and celebrate what Sacks (2002) calls, ‘The Dignity of Difference’ which had always been an inherent part of the city’s magic and appeal and in so doing, to make a stand against the purveyors of hatred and division, who saw difference as something to be reviled. Both the geographical location and demographic of the school population demanded a pluralistic and inclusive vision, whilst the school’s interpretation of its own faith reflected the same. The school comprised 80 nationalities among only 350 students K-12 and 40 staff, many of whom were living the phenomenon of the “Third Culture Kid” (Pollock and Van Reken, 1999), drawn as it was from the international population of the city; journalists, diplomats, the United Nations and any number of international aid organisations. Becoming an IB world school seemed to be an obvious little notion.
When I arrived, this newly authorised IB world school had begun to use the IB Diploma as a means to drive whole school improvement and reshape its hybrid UK/American curriculum. Hitherto, the Primary school followed the national curriculum of England and Wales, and then moved gradually across the Atlantic towards the Advanced Placement (AP) programme and a U.S. High School Diploma. Continuity was compromised because a) there was neither logical progression in the curriculum nor vertical articulation of it and b) the curriculum did not reflect the international context. I observed that, perhaps inevitably, much of the good work of teachers and students seemed to happen in isolated and disconnected ways, which contributed to a general lack of shared understanding of what students might expect from their educational experience. This operational disconnect was reflected in the lack of attention to continuity inside and outside the classrooms. It is noteworthy, in this place where “the world went to school” that the History textbook for the AP programme at the time was entitled, “Triumph of the West”. Academically the school could not be regarded as outstanding in so far as teaching and learning did not always give students the best chance of achieving their potential. However, what was truly remarkable about the school was the tangible sense of companionship between linguistically and culturally fluent and emotionally mature young people, who hugged each other “hello” in the morning and “goodbye” in the evening – with good reason – there was a much less certain world waiting for them outside the school gates. The attributes of the IB learner profile were already implicit. What the school required was a better way of reflecting this extraordinary sense of companionship in teaching and learning. Further, the school needed to find ways to better reflect the inherently international nature of its stakeholders and the city , simultaneously creating a sense of natural progression in both experience and curriculum for the students, teachers and parents and crucially, generating a sense of aspiration and challenge. In short, the school needed to better understand its context and create a new vision to reflect it. But what price, what possibility, continuity in this context, where conflict raged outside and disconnection reigned in the classroom? In order to realise its potential, what the school also required was a visionary to lead it. For, as Collins (2001) points out, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant”. By fortune as much as by design (and how many of us have had cause to say the same?) the school got both, just at the right time.
The leader created a ‘moving culture’ (Law & Glover, 2000) that was learning enriched, where goals were collaborative and approaches shared. This resulted in positive mental attitudes among teachers which rendered apparently previously insurmountable organisational obstacles, such as collaborative planning, at the very least, negotiable. Collaboration extended to burgeoning relationships with other schools and sharing best practice nationally and internationally. The school developed a holistic focus and began looking out and beyond as well as within, ‘acting locally, thinking globally’ (Allen, 2000, in Hayden & Thompson, 2000). The cumulative effect of the impact of the new leader was that structurally, symbolically and culturally the school had begun to operate as an organic whole. The catalyst, quite strategically, was the IB Diploma programme and the authorisation process which led to it, whilst the IB standards and practice created a framework for whole school improvement.
The school community was challenged to consider whether “other people with their differences can also be right?” (IB mission statement, 2002) The students were encouraged not only to imagine a better world through intercultural understanding and respect but were able to explore and define their preferred futures through the curriculum. Education came to be seen as the bridge between contemplation and action; Theory of Knowledge a means by which students and teachers could better understand the history, the perceptions and emotions behind their own and each other’s reality; the Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) programme presented opportunities through reflection to better know oneself and others whom one had hitherto only known as “the other”; Extended Essays, a chance to examine real world evidence and plan and pursue a research project with intellectual initiative and insight from in around their real lives; such as water use and misuse in the Middle East. Whether they liked it or not, students were at the centre of an issue of global importance and they were encouraged to respond by dealing with humanitarian issues related to human rights; yet they were not overtly political, rather they were objective and academic, so that Theory of Knowledge presentations would regularly examine ideas through the eyes of a traditional “enemy”, so that they might better understand their perceptions, reason and emotion, the role language was playing in reinforcing existing prejudice.
In Visual Arts, some of the images were disturbing. Students travelling to and from areas where violence sometimes seemed to be spiralling out of control were encouraged to record and document their personal narratives and reflect upon them with their peers. One student brought to school photographs of the city taken through a shell hole in his bedroom. I remember picking up a Senior member of the IB Visual Arts examining team from the airport, slightly anxious that there were some very challenging political pieces of work in the Visual Arts exhibition “I’d be very disappointed of there weren’t” she reassured me.
The leader successfully bridged the gap between cultural relativism and ethical universalist principles. (Shaw and Welton 1996) His consistency was in demonstrating sensitivity with a global perspective and flexibility with a broad range of transferable, interpersonal skills requiring multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993) in particular “Emotional Intelligence”. But the vehicle to drive this transformation was IB philosophy; fortunately for the school, the right person happened to behind the wheel and he knew where he wanted to go with it.
Case Study 2 – Adapt to your environment – don’t attempt to adapt the environment to suit you
The case study raises questions related to transplanted British education systems around the world school, wider ideas such as international education as a form of western hegemonic benevolence and the dangers of misreading context. It also points to a situation which the new IB authorisation and evaluation processes seeks to address before a school begins teaching the Diploma Programme.
Out of the frying pan into the wok of South East Asia, the antithesis of the Middle East and a school just five years young, determinedly, even mono-culturally insistently British, but equally unsure what this might mean. Except that it became apparent that the majority of staff understood “British” to mean “not foreign”. An example of a transplanted British system school, mired in cross cultural confusion (Shaw and Welton 1996) which actively resists what people like Hill (1994, in Hayden & Thompson, 2000, p51) regard as an essential part of International schools, namely “where the ethos is one of Internationalism as distinct from nationalism”.
But metaphorically and perhaps literally, the school was just out of nappies and teething problems remained. This young school was not particularly selective; their priority was getting enough students in the school to break even financially – a common phenomenon with many new international schools but one which brings with it its own set of educational, ethical and financial challenges. With a non-selective intake, many of whom had little or no English (the language of instruction) when they arrived, the school needed to be able to demonstrate that it was capable of significant success, but was struggling to do so when it measured success by academic results alone. It was an IB Diploma school too, from the outset, with tiny numbers the symbol of a “loss-leading”, financially sapping programme. The Board were remote and were not “educationalists”. Geographically, it was set in an idyllic rural community on the coast, and was blessed with extensive recreational facilities. Nonetheless, the extent to which anybody had ever considered what was particular or distinctive about the school remained unclear; such an essential element of understanding context, promoting continuity and unleashing the potential of the school had been hidden away, not least from the idea of a logical progression in the curriculum. Among the majority of staff, the IB Diploma programme was promoted by senior leadership as a problem confined largely to the last two years of school and consequently unsurprisingly, was widely perceived as such among the school community; question marks remained about its academic and financial viability, contributing to an unstable and anomic environment. Recruiting students and staff was becoming difficult; no member of staff had been IB trained for three years. The school leadership had misread a fundamental tenet of IB philosophy, that “The IB is not just for IB students; it is for the whole school” (Dr Aurelia Curtis in McRae, 2010 p241) reflected in IB’s Standard A4 (Philosophy): “The school develops and promotes international-mindedness and all attributes of the IB learner profile across the school community.”
Cynics unkindly suggested that it was a case of the blind leading the deaf. A sense of “can’t do” culture was pervasive. However, reflecting on its geographical context finally allowed the sunshine in. Ostensibly, this school delivered the National Curriculum of England and Wales until Year 11 and the IB Diploma in years 12 and 13. But crucially, instead of exploring ways of adapting to its environment, it attempted to adapt its environment to suit its narrow, parochial outlook. The cure for its wilful myopia lay in the Diploma core and the key to continuity in this context was right in front of their eyes, but the leadership team were not blessed with vision of the leader in the first case study. The answer lay in “CAS”, the Creativity Action Service programme, the “heartbeat” of the IB Diploma and in recognising that:
“Education does not begin or end in the classroom or examination hall and the most essential elements of education may exist outside of both”. (IB CAS Guide Feb 1996)
Led by the Diploma Coordinator (who had to overcome significant resistance) the school leadership team reluctantly agreed to place CAS at the centre of how teaching and learning happened throughout the school. Suddenly, students and teachers worked together from Primary school upwards to think about what Creativity, Action and Service could mean for them. Creative ideas and possibilities proliferated and were unleashed on a rejuvenated school community; soon a different and cohesive dimension unified the formal curriculum by a focus on what happened outside the classroom as well as inside. I suppose an artist would call it “drawing the negative space”. Hitherto unseen links between Primary and Secondary School were revealed, explored and evinced and “vertical” articulation of the written curriculum soon followed. Every student in the Secondary School, not just IB Diploma students, kept a CAS diary and reflective learning became a natural part of the school day. In this beautiful setting it seemed perfectly natural and appropriate to context to embrace the environment and its possibilities. CAS provided the showcase to advertise its success to the local and regional communities: At the same time, it set the standard for aspiration in the classroom.
When I listen to the current education debate in the UK, I hear many comments related to a perceived lack of values (as well as “skills for the 21st century) in young people leaving secondary school and I wonder why the CAS programme is rarely, if ever mentioned. Whilst the vocabulary of IB has begun to permeate mainstream education in the UK (still the IB’s second biggest market) the idea that CAS is extra-curricular and therefore less important than “traditional academic subjects” is still pervasive; left to a Wednesday afternoon, for instance, a modern version of “games”. Even McRae (2010) only arrives at CAS at the end of his chapter on the IB Diploma in What Works, Success in Stressful Times. It should have come first! And whilst I might agree with him that as part of their education we should seek to embed the notion in young people that “the concept of service is central to the survival of human beings” (McRae, 2010) I would suggest that altruism is not a natural inclination and that it needs to be learned, just like “traditional academic subjects” and the best way to learn it is by embedding experiential service learning at the heart of a school’s operations. The curriculum design of the IB Diploma is perfectly deliberate – CAS (and the other central components ToK and the Extended Essay) are intended to enthuse, inform and inspire what happens on a daily basis inside and outside the classroom. Returning to the heart of Europe, we shall see how the core of the Diploma did just that in the third and final case study.
Case Study 3 Fusing the values and traditions of the school with the philosophy of the IB
The third case study is in the heart of Europe and reflects on how becoming an IB world school can drive whole school improvement if the values and traditions of the school can be successfully fused with the philosophy of the IB. It considers how the IB Diploma core can reshape attitudes and aspirations towards whole school teaching and learning.
To the heart of Europe. Another school which identified itself as British, without having ever reflected in any significant depth on what this might mean, until that is, the school embarked on its IB journey and parents came up with some interesting responses when asked to consider the “Britishness” of the place. Was it the uniform? The sense of discipline in the place? Or perhaps the fact those students knew their place to the extent that they moved with military precision on the proper side of the staircase? There were certainly very strong historical and commercial reasons for maintaining a British identity; it was what the parents wanted, whatever it was. Moreover, the city already had plenty of IB Diploma options for prospective parents, including a transplanted American school and a well established IB Continuum International School, so they had to be careful to retain and develop an already distinctive brand. A visionary Principal had realised that the school was in danger of “coasting” and needed to reinvent itself. The IB authorisation process provided the perfect opportunity to revisit the mission, identity and purpose of the school and provide, through professional development, opportunities for staff to contribute directly to the vision and direction. The Principal’s vision was very clear; he wanted to move from “Good to Great” (Collins 2001). In such circumstances, inevitably, there are inherent tensions to be massaged.
He did a great job of convincing the parent-only Board that becoming an IB world school was the best way to generate a process of continuous whole school improvement, looking beyond authorisation to the regular process of five year programme evaluations. He did this through inclusive and reflective self study and in so doing he reinvigorated the teaching staff, some of whom had drifted into the arena of complacency.
Observe once more the transformational power of the IB Diploma programme! With a little bit of imagination and creativity, but most of all an acute appreciation of context, the seed of continuity was sewn. The new school mission statement sought to blend the best of “British educational tradition with the values, practices and beliefs of the IB”. Revising the philosophy was an important first step in generating understanding and momentum. There was a balance to be struck between moving forwards and looking back in conceiving what continuity might mean, the trick being that, like learning to ride a bicycle, after a while you hope that the team is focusing so hard on pedalling themselves forwards that they forget to look around at who is holding the saddle. So that by the end of the process, those who have travelled the journey might say of their leaders, “we did it ourselves” (Lao Tse).
One of the ways the Diploma programme drove whole school transformation was through the school’s Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) programme, a pastoral component of the National Curriculum of England and Wales which, as it was prescribed and without contextualisation, had questionable relevance in a setting in the heart of Europe. Hitherto, PSHE had not offered teachers enough choice to make the course locally relevant and grounded in a way consistent with IB principles (IB, 2009) and it was in danger of becoming moribund. Yet it took up two periods of forty minutes every week for every year group in the school. Here was an opportunity. Enter the Diploma Foundation programme (DFP), a school based whole-school programme designed by the Diploma Coordinator, affirmed in his role as pedagogical and philosophical leader. Mirroring the revised school mission, the DFP sought to unite the best of pastoral British education system with a modified IB Diploma core by examining areas of PSHE such as Drugs and Alcohol and Cultural Differences through the critical thinking inherent to ToK, characterised by ‘student-centred learning’ and Internationalism, the rigours of research based essay writing in the Extended Essay (EE) and local, regional and global responsibility through the CAS programme (as with the school in South East Asia). All students in Years 7-13 kept a CAS Diary, a place where all reflective PSHE work could be stored, developed and celebrated. The DFP also did something else; by encouraging vertical articulation it became a unifying force between Primary and Secondary, two sections of the school which had seemed intent on going their separate ways. It did this by underpinning the whole school PSHE programme with the values of the Lower School aligned with the attributes of the IB learner profile, for here, there appeared a natural synergy between the two. Suddenly, Primary school teachers were interested in being Extended Essay supervisors. The DFP breathed new life into the PSHE programme and simultaneously raised the profile of the IB Diploma and awareness of the possibilities of becoming an IB world school, which the school embraced the IB Diploma with clarity.
Conclusion
We have seen three continental case studies of IB Philosophy – the Mission – in action, brought alive through the IB Diploma Programme. The Diploma Core, through the IB learner profile, CAS, ToK and the Extended Essay is a means of driving transformation. To some extent all three case studies can be seen through the prism of leadership; in each of these situations to varying degrees, transformational leadership was necessary for the Diploma Programme to flourish. There are two things to be said about this. First, over dependence on a single figure is a dangerous thing for continuity, potentially leaving a vacuum following an inevitable departure. So facilitating and planning leadership throughout the school is an important component for implementing continuity; although whilst I might agree in essence with Morrison’s (1998) suggestion that leaders need not be heroes or geniuses, sometimes and certainly in the case study in a conflict situation, it seems to help. Second, the nature, purpose and potential of the IB Diploma Programme seems to me to invite transformational leadership and actors who are driven by a great shared passion for teaching and learning and making the world a more peaceful, more sustainable place. The Diploma Programme is a potentially transformational educational experience which can and should inspire a school community. This is asking a lot, especially if a prevailing culture inside and outside the organisation is not used to what can appear to be quite radical ideas; there are plenty of examples of cultures around the world for whom “questioning authority” for example, is a problematic concept.
The IB understands the dilemmas it faces and has taken significant steps in the past few years to address quality assurance and the concerns of the “IB world” which are inevitable companions to exponential growth, and its ungainly cousin, potential overstretch. Two of these steps in particular are relevant to implementing continuity and understanding context. The first of these is the IB’s global programme of professional development, designed to provide high quality (and mandatory) training for all IB teachers in all subject areas, including differentiation by experience, wherever in the world they might be. This extraordinary undertaking and provision includes new workshops for new courses following the continuous cycle of research and development that informs curriculum development. It also includes the possibility for regional associations to organise in school workshops for local IB world schools, thus alleviating, at least to some extent, one of the key pressures on schools; the cost of ongoing professional development. It also shows that the IB is listening and responding to the concerns of its constituents.
The other key development, which I alluded to earlier, is the new IB authorisation process (2011) and in particular, the mandatory appointment of an experienced and IB authorised consultant to a candidate school, which from the outset, helps aspiring IB world schools develop the relationship between local values, traditions and their environment, and the philosophy of the International Baccalaureate and to fully understand the potential of the curriculum and the integrative role of the IB Diploma core. In short, the IB understands that when it comes to implementing continuity, context really is everything.
If, as Wright (2008) suggests, “The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are able to pass to future generations reasons for living and hoping” then the IB seems ideally placed to meet this, the greatest challenge. I have been fortunate enough to have seen the magic at work. And if is to continue to work, then we must embrace the notion that teaching for the twenty first century, carries with it a serious responsibility, to remain inclusive and compassionate on the one hand, yet resolute, critical and firm on the other. Because education and those who work in it, as Professor Steward Sutherland so clearly articulated, “Have to make the choice whether they want to be the mirror of society or the change agents of society.” Or to paraphrase Dumbledore, education has to make a choice between “what is easy and what is right”. Nobody promised the journey would be easy. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.