Philosophically Rooted Educational Authenticity as a Normative Ideal for Education: Is the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme an example of an authentic curriculum?

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 509-524
Author(s):  
Florian Lüddecke
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sayigh

Colonialism deprives colonised peoples of the self-determined histories needed for continued struggle. Scattered since 1948 across diverse educational systems, Palestinians have been unable to control their education or construct an authentic curriculum. This paper covers varied schooling in the Palestinian diaspora. I set this state of ‘splitting through education’ as contradictory to international declarations of the right of colonised peoples to culturally relevant education. Such education would include histories that explain their situation, and depict past resistances. I argue for the production of histories of Palestine for Palestinian children, especially those in refugee camps as well as in Israel and Jerusalem, where curricula are controlled by the settler-coloniser. Black and Native Americans have dealt with exclusion from history in ways that offer models for Palestinians.


Chapter 5 presents a case study that reports on the assessment of self-directed learning (SDL) in three schools categorized with the local curriculum framework, and three nearby schools with the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme. Results of the investigation indicate that there is a link between curriculum and students' knowledge of, as well as their response to, instruction about SDL. The chapter ends with a discussion of the implications of curriculum emphasis on inquiry for students' SDL, and the opportunities that exist for using the assessment of SDL with local curriculum documents that aim to promote effective learning in primary schools.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-133
Author(s):  
Verónica Steffen ◽  
Ángeles Bueno-Villaverde

The purpose of this article is to contribute to discussion as to whether the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB) meets the needs of early childhood (3-5 years old) learners. The research underpinning the article adopted a mixed method approach comprising both a qualitative and a quantitative framework located in six private Spanish schools across three autonomous communities. The research compared perceived difficulties of Early Years teachers and Primary teachers regarding PYP implementation. Aspects of the PYP involved in the research aligned to the IB Standards and Practices. This document, revised periodically, regulates the implementation of IB programmes around the world. The basis of the structure of the research has a direct alignment with those Standards (philosophy, organization, curriculum and assessment). These core themes take the discussion beyond the PYP when considering best practice. A questionnaire was delivered to all full-time PYP teachers, and qualitative analysis was undertaken of the main school documents such as IB preliminary visit reports, school action plans, studies of parent satisfaction surveys, professional development plans, Programme of Inquiry, Units of Inquiry, assessment tools and IB authorization reports. While the document analysis highlighted some areas of difficulty, it was the quantitative comparison that emphasized significant differences in perceived difficulty of PYP implementation between these Early Years and Primary teachers. Although results of the research, in general, are favourable regarding perceived ease in the implementation of PYP philosophies as well as fundamental aspects, there were perceived differences between these two groups regarding specific items. Early Years teachers in and among the schools found 32 items significantly more difficult than did Primary teachers, including the use of transdisciplinary theme descriptors, key concepts, and the Learner Profile. Regarding assessment, Early Years teachers expressed having more difficulties than did Primary teachers in making their students work with their portfolios and using student-led conferences. However, the role of constructivism was one of seven items perceived as easier for Early Years teachers.


Author(s):  
Ingrid Skirrow

The International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) described in the framework document “Making the PYP happen” (2007) promotes learning through guided inquiry. It is an educational programme spanning the years from ages 3 to 12. This paper will introduce the audience to a very brief overview of the five essential elements of the PYP and demonstrate how Information Literacy skills, arguably one of the main charges for school librarians, are embedded within the programme. Mention is made of constructivism to place inquiry and information literacy within this context. Understanding the programme will help the school librarian in developing a programme of authentic learning in the library for the students through collaborative planning with the class teacher or grade level teams.


Author(s):  
Lauren Bialystok

Authenticity is a concept with an impressive history in Western philosophy and a significant hold on the modern imagination. Inseparable from conceptions of truth and individual fulfillment, authenticity remains a powerful ideal, even as it eludes precise definition. Recently it has also become an organizing principle for many educational initiatives. Education, like authenticity, is opposed to dissimulation, ignorance, manipulation, and related states of misalignment between truth and experience. There is widespread enthusiasm for the promotion of authenticity across different types of education and in the personal identity of educators and students. Most of the scholarly literature pertaining to authenticity in education falls outside the scope of philosophical inquiry. But in all cases, the pursuit of authenticity in education rests on various philosophical assumptions about the nature of truth, reality, ethics, and, ultimately, the aims of education. With the influence of Dewey and 20th-century progressive movements in education, authenticity entered the vernacular of educational theory and practice. Attention to the relationship between learning environments and the “real” world has generated pervasive commitments to authentic learning, authentic pedagogies, authentic curriculum, and authentic assessment practices. Here, “authenticity” is used to track the verisimilitude of an educational practice with respect to some external reality. It constitutes an ontological claim about levels of “reality,” as well as an epistemological attitude toward learning as the construction of knowledge. In this respect, authenticity intersects debates about constructivism and relativism in education. Likewise, teachers are exhorted to be authentic qua teachers, elevating their true selves above institutional anonymity as a key part of effective teaching. This phenomenon trades on the values of truthfulness and autonomy that are prized in Western modernity but also problematized in the personal identity and ethics literature. The authenticity of students has also been championed as an educational aim, even as the methods for eliciting authenticity in others have been criticized as self-defeating or culturally limiting. Personal authenticity stands in a contested relationship to autonomy, which has been promoted as the key aim of liberal education. The project of creating authentic people through education remains an intense site of research and debate, with important implications for educational ethics and liberal values.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-273
Author(s):  
Niranjan Casinader ◽  
Lucas Walsh

It is now generally accepted that the teaching of cultural understanding is central to international education, exemplified in globally directed curricula such as those of the International Baccalaureate. However, research in this area has tended to focus on student outcomes of cultural education, even though globalisation and the nature of modern society has heightened the need for teachers who have the expertise to teach cultural education in ways that are more contemporarily relevant. Studies of teacher capacity to meet the specific demands of cultural learnings have been under-researched, tending to be situated within discourses that do not reflect the complex cultural reality of 21st century society. Using the context of a research study of Primary Years Programme teachers in International Baccalaureate schools, this paper argues that cultural education could be improved if teacher expertise is developed under the more inclusive paradigm of transculturalism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indah Partami

A multicultural classroom has significant student’s diversity, especially in terms of language. The similar teaching strategy cannot be generated to cover all students’ needs. Due to that problem, this study aimed at describing how differentiated instruction is planned, implemented, and assessed in multicultural classroom of Primary Years Programme in GMIS Bali, finding out challenges encountered by the PYP’s homeroom teachers in practicing differentiated instruction in multicultural classroom, and analyzing teachers’ perceptions toward differentiated instruction in multicultural classroom. The study employed mixed method. The data were collected through observation, interview, administering the questionnaire, and document study. The finding of this study are; first, teachers were practicing differentiated tasks through content, remedial task, product based on student’s interest and reading buddy program through formative and summative assessment that was conducted in a unit. Second, the main challenge encountered by teachers of GMIS Bali was covering the standards to everyone meanwhile each student has different English proficiency and teachers have limited time for preparing DI. And third, teachers of GMIS Bali were showing positive perception toward DI by their awareness about the concept, implementation, and implication. Thus, this study has an important contribution to teacher’s pedagogical and professional competence and there is a need for further research about how to anticipate the challenges that cannot be filled by the teachers.


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