3.4 Prof. Reflection & Commitment – Emily Tinkler's ePortfolio of Education Training

The International Bachelorette (IB) has 10 main priniciples, while the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) uses 4. Both are very similar in their practice but operate in different ways.

For example, IB focuses on developing children to be:

Inquirers: ensuring that children have curiosity and are enthusiastic about their education and the world around them
Knowledgeable: focuses on children being able to explore and apply new ideas.
Thinkers: being critical, creative whilst being able to make informed ethical decisions shows that the children have understood and are practical.
Communicators: good listening and being able to speak multiple languages is important for the business world as well as developing interpersonal skills.
Principled: ensuring that children are honest, fair and responsible helps with the integration of children into working in groups.
Openminded: ensures that children have a critical appreciation of the world so that they can use reason to think through situations.
Caring: through encouraging children to be committed to service within their community, it means that they will be more considerate of their surroundings.
Risk Takers: through ensuring that children are courageous, resourceful and resilient, encourages children to try new experiences.
Balanced: focuses on the wellbeing of the child to ensure that they know how to survive both physically, emotionally and mentally.
Reflective: promises to help children be thoughtful, realistic and have hope.

The IB curriculum aims to focus on the development of their learners. IB specialises in developing healthy relationships, imagination, reasoning and building confidence, whilst encouraging children to thrive and make links between experiences and understanding these experiences. Through building upon understanding the IB curriculum helps with how to change multiple world issues such as; the environment, developing rights, cooperating with different people and creating an engaging, broad and balanced curriculum.

IB prides itself on being unique through having alumni educations, supporters from family members and previous children who have followed this path as well as large global communities with the aim to improve the world.

CfE follows a similar set of principles:

Successful Learners: having a high standard for their work as well as always wanting to achieve the best thinking whilst being enthusiastic and confident in what they are learning is important to becoming a successful learner.
Responsible Citizens: This capacity is to include children being involved in their surroundings and areas which will effect their lives including social, political and cultural life.
Effective Contributors: being resilient and reliable is important for learners to ensure they are trustworthy and proving that they are valuable to society.
Confident Individuals: having a sense of purpose, respect and understanding how to be balanced and enthusiastic.

There are many overlaps in the IB curriculum to CfE. The curriculum for excellence is broader in its interpretation where as the IB curriculum is more direct in the aims.

All of the principles and values stated above are incorporated into the Scottish curriculum in many ways; whether it be communication where children are given integrated projects to work on or having children in the class which maybe struggle with communication and the other children over time have adapted to help these children. As well as encouraging children to ask questions to inquire and build upon their knowledge to become a more successful learner.

The IB and CfE both have the best intentions for the children’s learning and are creating better citizens locally, nationally and internationally.

This week I attended a Values lecture where we learnt about how different forms of bias are present all around us; from news channels to how people unwittingly make judgments based on first impressions.

I found this lecture very interesting. We watched a video of Panti, an Irish drag queen who faced legal proceedings because she named people as homophobic for being against same-sex marriage. The treatment of bias against Panti and many other people in similar positions showed how divided the modern world is.

Later on, there was a workshop where our lecturer demonstrated bias in our class by providing some groups with more materials than others and providing the same 2 groups with more help and support than others. It was interesting to see that the groups that had all of the resources, materials and help were oblivious to the lack of support to the others. However, the groups that had less help and support were very aware of the lack of resources and support. On reflection, the learning outcome from this workshop is to ensure as a teacher, you do not apply unconscious bias to your teaching practice and that each child is given the same amount of support and encouragement.

Because I have always considered myself to be a balanced and open minded person I initially questioned myself and the purpose of these lectures. I have now changed my perspective on the magnitude of the issue.