How do IB’s educational trends align with CfE?

Educational trends are constantly changing and progressing. While it used to be very teacher-centred and focussed on academic intelligence, it has now become more important that the students have a choice and are taught a range of different skills and abilities. They are now not only being taught that they must have the same opinion as everyone else, but that they can form an opinion of their own.

Various progressive trends link closely to how the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) aims to teach their students. The CfE is child-centred and this can be clearly seen by their aim and purpose. They strive to develop each child and young person to become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors (the four capacities) and this helps to convey that they are entirely focussed on each individual child and also that they are looking to develop a variety of aspects and skills.

It is definitely more of an importance to teach pupils how to not only understand something, but to also be able to analyse it. The CfE deems this important across the curriculum, in the majority of its subjects. Nowadays, children are taught to analyse; texts in English, paintings in Art, conclusions in science etc.

Another similarity in progressive educational trends and CfE is that students should be taught with a criterion to refer to. In CfE’s case, this would be the success criteria, which goes alongside a learning intention. The success criteria help the pupils to understand how they should be completing the task and what is expected of their work.

A trend which is seen in a lot of schools nowadays is open-plan classrooms. Although many schools still use closed classrooms (usually because they are in old buildings), it is preferred to use an open-plan classroom. This may help to create a better, less constricted learning environment to help to pupils feel more comfortable.