Category: International Baccalaureate

PYP curricular areas	CfE curricular areas
Language	Language and Literacy
Mathematics	Mathematics and Numeracy
Science	Sciences
Social Studies	Social Studies
Arts	Expressive Arts
Personal, Social and Physical education	Health and Wellbeing
	Technologies
	Religious and Moral Education

 

The Primary Years Practice (PYP) and the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) are similar in a number of ways. Both PYP and CfE strive to make their students more involved in their learning and give them a choice of what they want to learn. This helps the students to become more engaged and enthusiastic about learning and motivates them to enjoy it more.

The PYP approach is transdisciplinary and aims to focus on various areas of their curriculum as they are learning to give them a broader understanding. The CfE can also be taught in a cross-curricular way, teaching more than one subject at a time to give the pupils more breadth and can also help them to understand the relevance at times if they can see the different areas which their knowledge can be applied in the real world.

The PYP strives to make connections with their learning, helping them to start understanding the world that they live in. This helps their students to develop a sense of compassion and culture and understand and appreciate their own culture and others around the world. While this is a main focus of PYP (and IB in general), the CfE use the curricular area, Religious and Moral Education to teach their pupils about the different cultures and religions around the world. In this way, this aspect of learning seems more of an importance and focus in PYP than it is in CfE.

In the CfE, teaching technologies is an area of the curriculum that can be taught by itself or can be taught cross-curricular, alongside other areas of the curriculum. In PYP, the technologies are not an area of their curriculum as they are expected to be taught them across the areas of their curriculum. So rather than subjects like ICT being individual lessons, the PYP tries to tie it into various lessons throughout their areas of curriculum.

Both PYP and CfE prepare their students for the future, teaching them how to apply their skills and helping them to become life-long learners who are motivated to have ambitions and take opportunities. They both strive to help their students to value themselves and others and build confidence; this is clear from looking at IB’s Learner Profile attributes and CfE’s Four Capacities.

 

 

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.

The IB learner profile consists of 10 attributes that the programme strives for their students to develop throughout their school experience. All IB learners should work towards being;

• Inquirers – being curious and developing their research skills while being enthusiastic about learning.
• Knowledgeable – exploring both locally and globally significant ideas.
• Thinkers – becoming critical, creative and ethical decision makers.
• Communicators – being good listeners and confident in more than one language.
• Principled – being honest, fair and responsible.
• Open-minded – developing a critical appreciation for own cultures and cultures of others.
• Caring – showing empathy, compassion and respecting ourselves and others while also being committed to serving the community.
• Risk-takers – being courageous, resourceful and resilient.
• Balanced – balancing intellectual, physical and emotional wellbeing of ourselves and others.
• Reflective – able to identify our strengths and weaknesses while being thoughtful, realistic and hopeful for the future.

The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has four capacities which are a guide to what all young people can become through development of various attributes and skills;

• Successful learners – enthusiastic and motivated about learning and determined to get high standards of achievement while being able to use literacy, communication and numeracy skills and think creatively and independently.
• Confident individuals – having self-respect and ambition while being able to develop and communicate their own beliefs and view of the world.
• Responsible citizens – having respect for others and being able to understand and accept different beliefs and cultures.
• Effective contributors – having an enterprising attitude and able to chip in with group discussions while being able to communicate appropriately in different situations and take initiative.

Although the two systems vary, there are many similarities in what they are aiming to develop in each student. Each of CfE’s capacities are similar to at least one IB’s learner profile attributes and is some cases, more than one.

While IB strives for their pupils to be inquirers, CfE aims to develop successful learners and while these have different titles, the concept is the same. Both are teaching their pupils to be enthusiastic while learning and developing various skills. Similarly, both IB and CfE want their students to be respectful of ourselves and others which is clear in ‘caring’ and ‘responsible citizens’. The attributes ‘Principled’ and ‘Open-minded’ also link closely to the capacity ‘Responsible citizen’ as they aim to help students understand how they should act around others and how to understand and appreciate other cultures and beliefs around the world. IB’s strive for the attribute ‘Communicators’ aligns with CfE’s capacity ‘Effective contributor’ as both intend for their students to be able to communicate within group discussions and are not only able to share their own ideas, but also listen to others ideas too. It is clear that the two systems are closely related in the ways that they want to develop their students.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is an organisation who strive to overcome boundaries separating languages, countries and cultures through education. According to the aims of IB, it is important that students are developing various attributes to help them to become able and enthusiastic to contribute towards creating a better world. These attributes are known as the ‘Learner Profile’. There appears to be a large focus on developing each individual as someone who can build healthy relationships and work alongside others and use their imagination and ethical reasoning to aid them through everyday life rather on how they perform academically.

Although the IB curriculum differs to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), there are similarities in their general goals and aims.

The IB curriculum aims to “create inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people”. In this, we can see similarities in CfE’s aim of “helping children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21^stcentury, including skills for learning, life and work.” Although Scotland’s curriculum specifies that these skills are relevant for living and working in the 21^stcentury, both aims have the same intentions.

While IB aims to ensure that their programmes are challenging and effectively assessed, the CfE has a similar aim to ensure that every child and young person is given the opportunity to progress to the best of their ability in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing.

Various aims of the IB curriculum also has similarities to each of the four capacities of CfE.

• IB’s aim regarding developing the understanding to create a better and more peaceful world and encourage respect conveys the same ideas as creating responsible citizens.
• IB encourages their pupils to work alongside schools, governments and international organisations and CfE carry this aim through by creating effective contributors.
• IB works towards encouraging all of their students to become more active, compassionate and lifelong learners and in the same way, CfE strives to create successful learners.
• The IB curriculum centres on all of its learners and strives to help their students to understand that difference is not a negative trait and should be accepted. This is similar to CfE’s efforts to help each of its pupils to become a confident individual.

During my placement, my class were focusing on the novel ‘Wonder’ as their topic. We did various lessons on accepting and valuing other people, even if they were not the same as you or had different opinions. The pupils were developing their understanding that not everyone is the same, whether it is how they think, look or act and that it is important that everyone is made to feel included, even if they differ from you. This is similar to the IB aim to make sure that their pupils understand that “other people, with differences, can also be right”.