Reflective Activity 1

How would I summarise the main aims of IB education?

Creating a unique community of striving individuals using life-long skills, as shared through their clear 10 aims for what is expected from an IB education. It sets a child up perfectly for higher education settings as they are already aware of many different aspects of cultures, this is pivotal if travelling overseas for a University opportunity or for building expierence to make use of at a college course. To gift a pupil with the ability to become reflective and balanced this may help in a lot of different aspects of their adult life, down to how they behave, how they eat, how kind they are to their selves and how kind they are to others.

Have you experienced any aspect of the IB aims when working in school or your own education?

I would say I have experienced opportunities in the Scottish curriculum for learners to be communicators, as GIRFEC is implemented across the country, this gives the child the onus to be the first port of call for their own learning, they should have the right to communicate with adults in the school surrounding not only about any personal worries or queries but also be able to challenge their own learning route.

Reflective Activity 2

Similarities: Motivation being noted with the CfE successful learner capacity, I believe this would be recognised through the IB’s ambition of open-minded pupils, as Professor Sandal of Harvard University would argue that in order to be open-minded you must spend painstaking hours studying those things that are important to society but perhaps might not be necessary of importance to one’s self.

Differences: Of course, due to the context that the IB is carried out there is more of an onus on recognising different cultures and practices from a variety of groups  of people from around the globe. This may not be completely of a disadvantage to the CfE however, as if this was more specified to be enthused during learning, perhaps some parents would argue this is not pivotal the to learners future daily life if they are not travellers. The Scottish history and context may come of more use.

Have I experienced or observed the development of any of the IB learner profile attributes in your own education or expierence working with children?

Throughout my personal expierence at school I would say the IB attribute of ‘risk-taking’ was often put to myself. As a rather anxious child I would never exactly volunteer to speak in front of the class or be the group leader for whatever activity but one teacher, I’ll always remembered, would put me in this position (perhaps even against my will) until I realised it can be enjoyable going outside my comfort zone, this is a sensation I have related upon many a time through adult life, as one might imagine.

Reflective Activity 3

Reflect on which of ‘progressive’ trends align with your understanding of teaching and learning within CfE?

The first one that immediately stands out, of course, is the child-centred approach as this aligns perfectly with what GIRFEC stands for. Open plan classrooms, from personal expierence, seem to be up and coming in more modern school buildings and while the study and researches I have read about them deem them to be perfect in a primary school setting (I, too held this view before placement) I personally believe they would perhaps be suited for high school perhaps. The open plans can be ever so disruptive with noise levels and I believe it can affect the psychology of ‘entering the classroom’ a lot of teachers tried to implement behaviour strategies that involved the walking into a classroom being an indication for putting their ‘learning cap’ or whatever metaphor used to get motivated for learning, but the pupils struggled to do this symbolically because even physically they were not stepping in a classroom, per say.

Reflective Activity 4

The fact that PYP recognise that the pupils and teachers are on more level playing fields now and can be more expressive as learners their self. Conceptually understanding how the world works rather than little avenues of learning goes hand in hand with CfE trying to recognise the pupils context in their own societal area and comparing it to around the world. A difference perhaps is that teachers work more hand in hand with one and another where in CfE the teacher is usually an individual figure. Parental involvement seems important to the two different curriculum frameworks. The flexibility of PYP how it can differ from school to school is very similar to the broadness of the CfE e’s and o’s, yes there is specific areas needing to be learned but topics can be decided by the teacher that knows the children best.