Upon initial research into the International Baccalaureate (IB), it seems very clear to me that the main mission of the programme is to help shape children and young people into caring, respectful, and knowledgeable individuals who will be able to work seamlessly with people from all over the world without barriers such as language or cultural differences. The IB appears to focus greatly on building up skills and attributes that will help students to build strong relationships and work with others – such as ethical reasoning, environmental awareness, and imagination – rather than a heavy focus on academic ability. These attributes come under the term of the ‘Learner Profile’.
The aim of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is “to help children and young people to gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for a life in the 21st century, including skills for learning, life, and work.” For students aged 3-18, CfE is centred around being a flexible and accommodating way of learning and teaching, with the individual needs and requirements of every child, both emotionally and academically, at the heart of it. CfE and the IB curriculum do differ slightly, however the general consensus of both curricula is to aid individual young people’s learning to allow them to have the highest possible opportunity for personal achievement, and to be able to have fruitful learning experiences.
Under the IB term of the ‘Learner Profile’, students are encouraged to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective. Some of these particular attributes encompass the four main capacities of CfE, for example, IB defines being reflective as thoughtfully considering the world and one’s own ideas and experiences. Working towards understanding our own strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development. This is similar to the capacity of ‘successful learners’ within CfE, as to be truly successful in your own learning, you have to be able to reflect on past work, failures and achievements in order to be able to get the most of your learning experience as your progress through it. Similarly, within IB, the terms of ‘inquirers’ and ‘communicators’ are centred around guiding children into being able to think and solve problems individually, and then to communicate these ideas to their peers, while also listening to the ideas of their peers and providing helpful and constructive feedback. These ideas are also a large part of being ‘confident individuals’ and ‘effective contributors’ within CfE. Furthermore, one of the IB’s main aims is to help make the world a better and more peaceful place, doing so by encouraging attributes such as respect and care, also encouraged within CfE’s ‘responsible citizen’ capacity.
When I first read the IB’s mission statement, which included “these programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate, and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right”, I was immediately transported back into my own primary 3 classroom. My teacher had been holding up a book to us, her class. The book had a shiny black hardback cover. She had looked at us, and said “this book is pink.” I still remember the chorus of excitement in the room of seven-year-olds as we all rushed to correct the teacher in her hilarious mistake. “No Miss! That’s black!” we’d said. Instead of correcting herself, the teacher looked at the book again, and confused, repeated “this book is pink”. This went on for several moments until eventually she turned the book around, showing us that although the back cover and the spine of the book was black, the front cover was indeed pink. From the angle she was holding the book, we could only see the black part and she could only see the pink. The teacher then put the book to the side and said to us “you were very quick to correct me, even although you couldn’t see the book from my point of view. While you weren’t wrong in saying that the book was black, neither was I in saying that it was pink. Just because you are right doesn’t mean that someone with a different opinion to you is not.” This was my first real taste of developing an understanding about differences of opinion and how people will often disagree with you but that doesn’t automatically make them wrong. It is incredibly important that children learn from a young age that not everyone is the same, be it how they look/think/act, where they come from, or the cultures they follow, and that no one is wrong just because they have a different opinion to you. Everyone should be able to feel welcomed and included. This is encompassed well in the IB mission statement.
