It's all about the concepts

In preparation for the Twitter based #pypchat today (Thursday 24th May 2012) I decided to do some background reading. My first port of call was the first chapter of Taking the PYP Forward, entitled ‘Inquiry as a stance on curriculum‘. If you haven’t read it and you work in a PYP or inquiry-based programme, I would highly recommend it. The article made me think more deeply about concepts and inquiry in general. It also made me reflect on what I do in my own classroom.

What does it mean to truly inquire? So much of the planning on a PYP planner seems to be structured and already there laid out for the students. So how can what we are doing be true inquiry if we are basically telling the students what they should inquire about? Kathy Short identifies three types of inquiry:

1. Guided inquiry – the teacher poses problems for the students to solve. My feeling is that this is the type of inquiry that the PYP planner lends itself to and what happens mostly in classrooms (certainly in mine right now).

2. Collaborative inquiry – students and teachers collaborate and negotiate the curriculum together. This is definitely an area for me to improve on next year. While I have been trying to involve the students as much as possible, encouraging them to ask questions and verbalise ‘wonderings’, if I am being brutally honest it hasn’t been all that successful. Then I read the article and I realise why. How can I possibly expect the students to pose questions about something they know nothing about? They need some knowledge background first, before questions can be raised. On a different note, the most successful collaboration I had with students this year was when I had them define the success criteria at the beginning of a unit for a self assessment they would complete at the end. I will definitely do more of this next year. Above all, I need to continue to strive to make learning meaningful and relevant for students. I need to engage them in the process.

3. Personal inquiry – the inquiry evolves through the interests of the learner. The focus may or may not be related to anything that is happening at school. I am not sure how I could implement this next year, due mainly to the large amount of students I teach, but I will certainly give it some thought.

I would argue that a comprehensive learning journey should include all three approaches.

This immediately creates tension for me (which I see as a good thing). As a performing arts specialist teacher I am often torn. What is more important? That I focus on the central idea? That I focus on the concepts? That I focus on the attributes of the Learner Profile? That I focus on pure music, dance and drama skills (as these can sometimes get lost along the way)? How can I possibly enable the students to truly ‘inquire’ when I see more than three hundred and fifty students every week? The official IB documents give very little guidance for single subject teachers and it seems that every PYP ‘expert’ (coordinators, workshop leaders, teachers, administrators) has different ideas about how learning should look in a single subject area.

Kathy Short writes that inquiry is a conceptually-based approach to curriculum:

“Conceptually based curriculum puts the major emphasis on the big ideas that lie behind topics, leading to deep essential understandings that transfer across concepts.”

The IB Primary Years Programme identifies eight key concepts and related questions:

1. Form – what is it like?

2. Function – how does it work?

3. Causation – why it is like it is?

4. Change – how is it changing?

5. Connection – how is it connected to other things?

6. Perspective – what are the points of view?

7. Responsibility – what is our responsibility?

8. Reflection – how do we know?

I was recently advised to focus PURELY on the concepts. So that is my plan for next academic year (we only have three school weeks left of the current one). This will mean quite a substantial change to the way I have been operating. This year I have been integrating with as many units as possible, linking wherever possible to the central idea. If that link is not authentic enough, my next stop has been the concepts. Things just haven’t ‘gelled’ for me and while I have covered a smorgasbord of music, dance and drama skills, it has all been surface-level and we have not explored anything in depth. I also feel that in a couple of the units I did way too much front loading and not enough hands-on, which goes completely against everything I believe in.

So, what happens, then, if I am linking conceptually with a grade’s unit of inquiry? Should I go on their unit planner, as I do when I am using the same central idea? Or should I be writing a stand alone unit? It seems to make sense that I write a stand alone planner with a separate central idea.

My main goals for my classroom teaching next year:

1. Focus on the concepts.

2. Only make transdisciplinary links when there are extremely strong and authentic ones. I will not try to force links that are really not there.

3. Involve students in the conversation about what we inquire into and how/what should be assessed.

Now, I wonder if the #pypchat tonight will make me think any differently about what I have just written?! Completely possible.

References

Davidson, S. & Carber, S. (2009) Taking The PYP Forward. John Catt Educational Ltd

IBO (2007) Making the PYP Happen. International Baccalaureate Organisation

#Concepts #Inquiry #PYP