MYP: Mind The Gap [MA Assignment]

Stephen Taylor (@iBiologyStephen) Understanding Learners and Learning

MYP: Mind the Gap

Tensions in transitions between the International

Baccalaureate’s Middle Years (MYP) and Diploma (DP)

programmes:

A pragmatic approach to finding a balance between the

approaches to inquiry of John Dewey and L.S. Vygotsky.

Stephen Taylor

MA International Education

University of Bath

Assignment brief:

“A critical analysis of an issue related to learners and learning.”

This is an assignment for the University of Bath MA in International Education, Understanding Learners & Learning unit, uploaded with permission from my tutor and posted here as part of my professional learning portfolio.

It builds on some of my blog posts (ibiologystephen.wordpress.com) and adds some theoretical background to my MYP Mind the Gap: Tensions in Transitions breakout session at the IB Asia Pacific regional conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2013.

Given a greater scope for the assignment, I would build on the final section connecting current research to the discussion more clearly, though I have done this in some blog posts already (and it didn’t really fit). I’ve jazzed up the presentation of this paper a wee bit for the purpose of posting to the blog. Any oddities are on SlideShare.

https://twitter.com/iBiologyStephen

http://ibiologystephen.wordpress.com/?s=mind+the+gap

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Stephen Taylor (@iBiologyStephen) Understanding Learners & Learning

Introduction

“All social movements involve conflicts, which are reflected

intellectually in controversies. It would not be a sign of health is

such an important social interest as education were not also a

source of struggles, practical and theoretical.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.5)

The transition from the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Middle

Years Programme (MYP), an international curriculum and assessment

framework for students aged 11-16, to the higher-stakes Diploma

Programme (DP), serving students aged 16-18 and acting largely as a

globally-recognized university-entry pathway, is a microcosm of dialogue

on educational principles and practices that represents debates about the

nature of education that have been raging for centuries and show little

sign of abating. I currently teach sciences in the MYP and the DP, as well

as acting as MYP Coordinator in an international school in Japan after

being a DP Coordinator in a school in Indonesia. Over the last ten years I

have seen changes throughout the IB continuum of programmes, and

through my own professional and academic learning have encountered

multiple facets of tension across the transition between programmes.

The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) has been

working hard to ease these tensions with significant current overhauls of

the MYP (the Next Chapter) and a shift to a more concept-based DP. Yet in

my anecdotal experience there is skepticism across the MYP-DP ‘gap,’ as

MYP-purist teachers decry the dogmatic approach of their DP counterparts

and some content-oriented DP teachers criticize the MYP for ‘not

preparing students well enough’ for high-stakes assessment. In this

assignment, I aim to explore these tensions in the transition from MYP to

DP from the perspective of the cognitive/rationalist and

behaviourist/empiricist views of learning and to further explore the

contentious issue of inquiry through the similarities and differences

iBiologyStephen.wordpress.com 2




between the beliefs of educational philosophers John Dewey and L.S.

Vygotsky.

I propose that some of the fundamental disagreements between

practitioners across the MYP-DP ‘Gap’ are the result of a false dichotomy

and central to this analysis is a careful (re)definition of the term inquiry to

mean critical and reflective thought (Elkjaer, 2009), and that through

application of recent findings in educational research with regard to what

makes effective teaching and learning (Hattie, 2012) teachers can act as

mediators of inquiry (in Vygotsky’s sense) in order to work to the borders

of a student’s Zone of Proximal Development.

I opened with John Dewey’s quote on controversy as a sign of health

in education, from his 1938 text Experience and Education, as a

provocation for the discussion to come but also as part of the reflection of

a lifelong educator. It is an influential book for me as a learner and a

leader as he writes from the perspective of years of his own experience,

the polemic views of his youth somewhat tempered by the pragmatism

that comes with age and the testing of one’s theories over time through

debate and practical reality, and quotes from this text serve an inspiration

for various sections of this paper. I can appreciate this journey, mirroring

my own transition over the last ten years from idealistic fledgling IB

educator to a more pragmatic and critical proponent of both

internationalism and ‘effective’ teaching and learning. I see his early ideas

on education and its role in society as being in line with my own strong

values with regard to internationalism, and the mission of the IBO to

“develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people,” who are

encouraged to become “active, compassionate and lifelong learners,”

(IBO, 2012), yet, in more recent years (and in line with updates to the IB’s

MYP, I have taken an increasingly evidence-based approach to pedagogy.

As a result I feel personal dissonance with the debate of either-or in terms

of inquiry versus direct instruction or between student-generated learning

versus high-impact practices; as Dewey put it, I would rather “think in

terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some ‘ism about

education, even such an ‘ism as progressivism.” (Dewey, 1938, p.6). I





hope with this paper to be able to outline a position that focuses not on

‘picking sides’ but on finding a common ground for success across the

MYP-DP gap.





Defining Learning

“The history of educational theory is marked by opposition

between the idea that education is development from within

and that it is formation from without; that it is based natural

endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural

inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under

external pressure.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.17, emphasis mine)

As far back as ancient Greece, with the emergence of the trivium

(grammar, dialectic and rhetoric), ideas about how we learn and should

therefore teach have been in competition (Robinson, 2013), with the

grammar and dialectic approaches of most relevance to this paper. The

grammar, defined as early as Dionysius Thrax’s (170-90 BCE) writings,

highlights the study, discipline and tradition of language, and of the

knowledge passed from teacher to student. However Socrates’ (and

subsequently Plato’s) dialectic (or logic) - the modern - emphasizes the

nature of questioning knowledge and challenging the status quo

(Robinson, 2013). Almost a century ago the same debate was, in essence,

still taking place between Vygotsky (most closely aligned with the

grammar) and Dewey (the dialectic).

As the field of educational research has grown this debate can be

encompassed by three broader views of learning: the cognitive/rationalist

view (with which the inquiry-focused MYP teacher might more strongly

identify), the behaviourist/empiricist view (to which a typical exam-

focused DP teacher might belong) (Greeno et al., 1996). This tension

continues to the modern day, with competing ideologies vying for control

over education and assessment; there is perceived disconnect between

the ideals of inquiry-based (constructivist) learning - Dewey’s ‘formation

from within’ - and practices of ‘direct instruction’ (formation from without)

that are seen to help prepare students for high-stakes testing and

university entry. Parallel to this is the pragmatic/sociohistoric view, to





which Dewey and Vygotsky are classified and within which we see varying

perspectives on the nature of inquiry and its relation to the community

(Greeno et al., 1996).

In we are to effectively ease the tension and further the discussion,

we need a working definition of learning. According to Knud Illeris (2009,

p.7) “Learning can broadly be defined as any process that in living

organisms leads to permanent capacity change and which is not solely

due to biological maturation or ageing.” In simpler terms, Greeno et al.

(1996), define learning as simply “the process by which knowledge is

increased or modified,” and transfer as “the process of applying

knowledge in new situations.” In each case, learning is defined as a

process, the implication being that education is the catalyst for that

process, the system within which permanent capacity change is

facilitated, leading to an increase in or modification of knowledge. To

characterize the nature of the process is to engage with opposing views of

education. The practical conceptualizations of learning – curriculum,

pedagogy and assessment - can look very different depending on which

view one takes and I will outline the three major perspectives here, each

in terms of epistemology, learning and transfer.

With a focus on the open-ended, transferable and conceptual, the

inquiry-driven MYP class has a strong sense of the cognitive/rationalist

view of learning, suiting the dialectician as a teacher. The C/R perspective

“emphasizes understanding of concepts and theories in different subject

matter domains and general cognitive abilities, such as reasoning,

planning, solving problems comprehending language” (Greeno et al.,

1996). Learning is understood as “a constructive process of conceptual

growth,” and through this constructivist approach transfer is based on the

assertion that “concepts and principles of a domain are designed to

provide generality [...] assumed to depend on an abstract mental

representation in the form of a schema that designates relations that

compose a structure that is invariant across situations“ (Greeno et al.,

1996). In terms of practical conceptualization, the C/R classroom would be

one of interactive environments, problem-solving (or problem-based





learning) and group-work, in which a process of modeling and transfer of

conceptual learning to new situations would be used to develop reasoning

and higher-order thinking skills, as characterized through Blooms’

taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956). Students may (or may not) have input in

the design of the curriculum. However, these methodologies take time –

more time than required to cover the same content under didactic

methods - and so if there is a criticism of the MYP it tends to come, in my

experience, from teachers who are more concerned with the coverage of

content and backwash-effect of high-stakes testing.

In contrast these test-oriented practitioners better fit the

behaviorist/empiricist (B/E) view of learning, which sees knowledge as

an “organized accumulation of associations and components of skills,”

where learning is the “formation, strengthening and adjustment” of

associations between stimulus and response (Greeno et al., 1996).

Transfer is dependent on a gradient of similarity between the known and

the unknown, or “how many and which kinds of associations needed in

the new situation have already been acquired in the previous situation.”

(Greeno et al., 1996) This, perhaps reductionist, view of learning and the

implications for practical conceptualization favour a learning environment

in which the subject-area expertise of the teacher and the transmission of

information are key, through which knowledge and skills are trained and

tested and students are given explicit, content-oriented feedback for

improvement. This approach is highly operable by the exam-oriented

teacher or the grammarian: a clear set of goals can be defined, with

limited parameters and a finite amount of time and resources in which to

demonstrate competence. Where assessment might be more narrow-

focused it might also be more reliable, generating large quantities of data

that could be used for investigation into the impacts of pedagogical

practices. I will return to this idea of measuring effect size of learning

interventions later.

As the organizational beliefs on education may remain stable

through a continuum of education with a common misson, the nature of

educational experience across the MYP-DP can show its own transition





from the C/R view to the B/E view on learning and pedagogy. We need to

then build on Illeris and Greeno et al.’s definitions of learning with one

that recognizes the role of this experience in the process of change. I

propose the use of David Kolb’s definition of learning as “the process

whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of

experience” (Kolb, 1984, p.38) (emphasis mine) in (Elkjaer, 2009, p.84),

in which experience can be interchanged, dependent on context, with

such terms as culture or practice (Elkjaer, 2009, p.75; Glassman, 2001).

Experience “is the concept Dewey used to denote the relation

between ‘subject’ (individual) and worlds, as well as between action and

thinking, between human existence and becoming knowledgeable about

selves and worlds of which they are a part.” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.78) In this

sense, Dewey’s concept of experience “is characterized by reaching

forward towards the unknown” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.80), and as a result

“experience occurs when habitual action and thinking are disturbed and

calls for inquiry.” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.86). (emphasis mine) Building on

these definitions (and in the context of schooling), we can see learning as

a permanent change in capacity of the individual that arises as the result

of the purposeful application of education; a process through which the

relationship between knowledge, self and worlds is moulded by the

experience of the learner, which is itself given meaning and future

application (transferability) by the process of inquiry. And it is this term -

inquiry - that acts as the battleground for debate between the modern C/R

teachers of the MYP and the B/E teachers of the exam-oriented DP

courses.

A pragmatic approach to inquiry

“Basing education upon personal experience may mean more

multiplied and more contacts between the mature and the

immature than ever existed in the traditional school, and

consequently more, rather than less, guidance by others. The





problem, then, is: how these contacts can be established without

violating the principle of learning through personal experience.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.21)

At the crux of the perceived disconnect between the MYP and the

DP is term inquiry and what might be a skewed perception of its meaning;

in its loosest educational sense, inquiry refers to a student-driven

educational experience, one in which all learning outcomes are directed

by the child. However, even the IB’s Primary Years Programme, seen as

the most open-ended of the continuum, defines inquiry as being

“structured and purposeful” but in which the students are engaged

“actively in their own learning.” (IBO, 2009, p.29) This interpretation is

highly important as it articulates the need for the teacher (and the

curriculum) to provide the purpose (objectives) and the structure

(instruction, learning engagements) under which the students may best

learn.

The IBO builds further on their description of inquiry, as a process in

which the student is “invited to investigate significant issues by

formulating their own questions,” where the goal is “active construction of

meaning.” (IBO, 2009, p.29) The practical conceptualization of this is a

curriculum in which units of inquiry are carefully planned by expert

teachers and modified to include the genuine (and significant) interests of

the students. As a result, the nature of inquiry is developed as “critical

and reflective thinking,” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.75), and it is this definition of

inquiry that I propose we use across the continuum.

This can be modified further to include the pragmatic approach, in

Dewey’s sense: “pragmatism is a method to think and act in a creative

(imaginative) and future-oriented (i.e. consequential) manner. (Elkjaer,

2009, p.77). This pragmatic approach to inquiry can be applied to learning

across the IB continuum with ease and clarity, for even the most

structured of the IB’s DP exams and assessments require students to go

beyond the simple recollection of facts into the application, synthesis and

evaluation of ideals; students are required to be able to select and modify





their learning to solve problems in unknown situations. The accomplished

learner must act as a pragmatist, who recognizes that “the situation

determines which concepts and theories are useful for analysis of a given

problem” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.77), and who can use these as tools “to

transform a difficult situation to one that is manageable and comfortable

for the subject” (Elkjaer, 2009, p.77).

We must ourselves be pragmatists and think, as Dewey noted,

about how the contacts between the mature and immature (the expert

and the novice) can “ can be established without violating the principle of

learning through personal experience.” (Dewey, 1938, p.21) In order to do

this, we can consider the ideas of L.S. Vygostky and then the findings of

more recent educational research on how we learn and inquire.

Greeno et al. present Dewey and Vygotsky as figureheads of the

situitive/pragmatist-sociohistoric (S/P) view of learning, in which

knowledge is “distributed among people and their environment” and

learning is interactive, taking place “by a group or individual (and)

involves becoming attuned to constraints and affordances of material and

social systems with which they interact” (Greeno et al., 1996). In the

situitive sense, success is determined more by successful participation in

the community, rather than through subsets of skills or tasks, and “the

practices of a community provide facilitating and inhibiting patterns that

organize the group’s activities and the participation of individuals who are

attuned to those regularities” (Greeno et al., 1996). Although there are

similarities between the views of Dewey and Vygotsky, their differences

lie in their pragmatist (Dewey) and sociohistoric (Vygotsky) approaches to

inquiry and the relationships between learning and the community

(Greeno et al., 1996; Glassman, 2001).

Both Dewey and Vygotsky recognized a strong interplay between

the self and the social history (or ‘culture’), yet the directions of these

interactions were somewhat opposite: in Dewey’s view, the child was a

‘free agent’ whose personal experience informs her thinking, which in turn

contributes to the intellectual social tools of the culture (Glassman, 2001).

On other hand, Vygotsky placed emphasis on the role of the social history





of the culture as determining the ‘tools’ of education: as the child

develops through her learning, she is better equipped to be part of the

culture, and so her learning serves a social purpose over the personal

intellectual (Glassman, 2001).

Inquiry as Pedagogy

“It is through the mediation of others, through the mediation of the

adult that the child undertakes activities. Absolutely everything in

the behaviour of the child is merged and rooted in social relations. “

Vygotsky, 1932, in (Daniels, 2001,

p.18)

The concept of mediation by the learned adult highlights both the

similarities and the differences between Dewey and Vygotsky’s ideas

about inquiry and pedagogy. From the constructivist perspective, both

recognized the role of social interaction in the process of learning.

However Dewey was rather less the developmentalist than Vygotsky and

was concerned more with the child as a ‘free-thinker’ whose learning was

a result of facilitation by the adult (Glassman, 2001). Dewey’s adult (the

facilitator) was responsible for the creation of opportunities for inquiry – or

authentic ‘long-term projects’ - through which the child would develop

the pragmatic use of concepts and ideas (Glassman, 2001). Although he

promoted free inquiry, Dewey was careful to determine the importance of

the adult facilitator as an expert learner:

“A primary responsibility of educators is that they […] recognize in

the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having

experiences that led to growth. Above all, they should know how to

utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract

from them all they have to contribute to building up experiences that are

worth while.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.40, emphasis mine)





In comparison, Vygotsky’s approach to inquiry and the role of the

teacher is more directive and purpose-driven; where Dewey’s inquiry

works from the inside-out, Vygotsky’s is from the outside-in (Glassman,

2001), whereby the culture determines the curriculum (Lawton, 1975) and

through which learning is driven by a process of adult mediation (Daniels,

2001, p.18). This draws parallels with the transition from MYP to DP, as

the framework of the MYP curriculum model and the later prescription of

the written and assessed curriculum of the DP appear to sit in greater

alignment with Vygotsky’s approach to guided inquiry (Glassman, 2001)

than to Dewey’s more open-ended philosophy. Vygotsky’s adult is an

interlocutor, possessor of the knowledge of the culture and guide to the

‘neophyte’ (child’s) learning (Glassman, 2001), who makes expert use of

the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) to steer the child’s path of

learning towards the goal of becoming an active participant in the culture

(Glassman, 2001; Daniels, 2001, p.58).

The zone of proximal development is an enduring concept in

pedagogy that allows for multiple interpretations and applications, though

it is important to note, as did Vygotsky, that instruction (the actions of the

adult interlocutor) and development (the learning of the neophyte) do not

coincide (Daniels, 2001, p.58). This is to say that the experience of

learning created by the instructor must create a dissonance in the

learner, or a gap between what they know and where they need to be in

order to progress. It is the role of the adult to create that gap and to

expertly guide the learner across it, not through presentation of pure fact

but through challenge. However:

“Vygotsky never specified the forms of social assistance to learners

that constitute a ZPD…. He wrote about collaboration and direction,

and about assisting children ‘through demonstration, leading

questions, and by introducing the initial elements of the task’s

solution’…but did not specify beyond these general prescriptions”.

(Moll, 1990, p. 11, in Daniels, 2001, p.59)

Moll further suggests that





“The focus of change within the ZPD should be on the creation,

development and communication of meaning through the

collaborative use of mediational means rather than on the transfer

of skills from the more to less capable partner.”

(Daniels, 2001, p.60 emphasis mine)

This returns us to the nature of inquiry as critical reflective thought,

in a pragmatic sense, and the emphasis on collaboration and meaning

continue to align with the IB’s guidance on inquiry mentioned earlier. I

assert that by combining these ideals and practices into a pedagogy of

pragmatic inquiry, centred around Vygostky’s ZPD, that we can overcome

perceived tensions in the transition between the MYP and the DP.





The Gap: A modern approach to the Zone of Proximal

Development

“It does not follow that all authority is rejected, but rather that there

is need to search for a more effective source of authority.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.21)

The ZPD is further enhanced by the description of two further zones

by Valsiner (1997): the Zone of Free Movement (ZFM), which describes

the constraints (and possibilities) of the learner’s access to the

environment, and the Zone of Promoted Action (ZPA), which describes the

encouraged actions (engagements) that might take the learner through

and beyond the ZFM (Valsiner, 1997), summarized in (Daniels, 2001,

pp.61-64). If we consider these zones in combination with our pragmatic

approach to inquiry, we can see the outline of a framework of pedagogical

practices that could promote learning, yet is in need of an evidential

foundation.

In our search for a more effective source of authority.” (Dewey,

1938, p.21), we may look to more recent educational research for

inspiration on the choice of practices that will promote effective action

and facilitate the learner’s growth. With Visible Learning for Teachers

(2012) and Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (2013), John

Hattie builds on his wide-ranging 2008 meta-analyses to provide teachers

with a toolbox of strategies to use in the classroom in order to achieve

‘effective’ learning. Using decades of educational research data, he

provides us with ‘effect sizes’ for various learning interventions

(strategies), noting that almost all actions we take as teachers cause

learning (d>0), but an impact score of d=0.4 represents the mean

average achievement of a student in a normal class, in a normal year; the

student who advances by one academic grade level. He defines high-

impact practices (d>0.6) and urges teachers to use these data to inform

their educational decision-making. It is important to note, though, that

although these data are from incredibly large meta-analyses and so are

statistically reliable, the underlying practices are potentially highly-





variable. Furthermore, these data are backward-looking, not predictive, so

a teacher’s own implementation may experience a different level of

success. Finally, as is the nature of assessment, these data tend to come

from the results of standardized tests and it is not always our intention to

educate students with these in mind – though with the MYP-DP gap under

discussion in this paper, this is an important consideration.

These data do provide signposts for teachers as we design

educational experiences for students, and Hattie is able to use them to

exemplify the difference between teachers as facilitators of learning and

as activators of learning (Hattie & Yates, 2013, p.73). He asserts that as a

result of employing successful high-impact strategies, we can close ‘the

Gap’ between where the learner is and where he needs to be.

Teacher as Facilitator d Teacher as Activator d

Inductive teaching 0.33Teaching students self-

verbalisation0.76

Simulation and gaming 0.32 Teacher clarity 0.75

Inquiry-based* teaching 0.31 Reciprocal teaching 0.74

Smaller classes 0.21 Feedback 0.74

Individualized instruction 0.22 Metacognitive strategies 0.67

Web-based learning 0.18 Direct instruction 0.59

Problem-based learning 0.15 Mastery learning 0.57

‘Discovery’ mathematics 0.11 Providing worked examples 0.57

Whole language instruction 0.06 Providing goals 0.50

Student control over learning 0.04 Frequent testing (testing effect) 0.46

Behavioural organisers 0.41

Average Facilitator 0.19 Average Activator 0.61

*this refers to more open-ended inquiry, rather than our working definition of

pragmatic inquiry as critical, reflective thought.

There appears to be a clear division in the effectiveness of methods

favoured by the practical conceptualizations of the cognitive/rationalist

view (facilitator) and the behaviorist/empirical view (activator) of learning

and anecdotally this is used as justification for resistance to inquiry as a

method of lerning in MYP as we prepare students for DP. Similarly, we can





identify some of the practices favoured by Dewey (facilitator: inquiry-

based, problem-based, student-control over learning), and Vygotsky

(activator: self-verbalisation, feedback, reciprocal teaching). These meta-

analyses support the connection between the actions of the teacher and

the learning of the student and that if we have to meet goals of high-

stakes assessment, then we ought to adopt higher-impact practices. This

is not to suggest, though, that we remove inquiry from the curriculum. On

the contrary, Hattie’s meta-analyses are but one set of learning impacts;

in others, inquiry-based learning scores much higher, with an increasing

impact on reasoning and critical thinking (Mayer & Alexander, 2010,

p.372). Instead we should use these ideas in combination to outline a

pedagogy for effective inquiry: we engage students in critical reflective

thought in order to form meaning and we employ practices that will afford

them robust raw materials (foundational knowledge) upon which they can

build deeper learning.

The power of prior (mis)learning

“The belief that genuine education comes about through experience

does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally

educative.[…] Any experience is miseducative that has the effect of

arresting or distorting the growth of further experience.”

(Dewey, 1938, p.25)

It seems Dewey recognized early on the power of misconception in

arresting the development of later learning and the importance of the

learning experience in creating or removing that ill-conceived concept.

Hattie recognizes that prior learning effects are very powerful (d=1.04),

and quotes David Ausubel as saying “the most important single factor

that influences learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this

and teach him accordingly” (Hattie & Yates, 2013, p.114). Implicit in this

statement are a number of factors. First, the nature of the knowledge gap

and the diversity of learners that enter our classrooms, for each possess





his own zone of proximal development and a different stage of readiness

to learn the objectives of our course or lesson.

Through employing high-impact strategies such as self-assessment

(now ‘student expectations’ d=1.44), formative assessment (d=0.73) and

through giving effective feedback (d=0.74), we can acknowledge the zone

of free movement and promote actions that will move learning forward for

that student. The second implication is that we “teach him accordingly,”

rather than perhaps “teach the content clearly.” It places the emphasis on

the teacher as a guide to learning, in Vygotsky’s sense; the curriculum

content may indeed be a product of the culture, but access to that

knowledge is activated by the instructor, who must employ high-impact

methods that will work for that learner. The third implication is the

importance of what the student already knows, for no student enters our

classroom a blank slate. If a student has a strong prior knowledge of a

concept or field of learning, this will have a high positive impact on his

learning; it is “easier to build on coherently organized existing knowledge

than it is to learn new materials de novo” (Hattie & Yates, 2013, p.114).

Conversely, misconception “will create an obstacle, an effect called

interference.”

Inquiry needs raw materials and we cannot create a critical

reflective thinker without the content upon which a conceptual foundation

can be built. We have seen that a ‘pure’ inquiry approach in the vein of

Dewey is not likely to be effective alone, and so we must decide upon

which factual foundations concepts and critical thinking can be built

(Willingham, 2007).

I propose here that we take the opportunity in MYP to ensure that:

1. Understandings are made explicit to students and that high-

impact practices are employed in order to help students achieve

them.

2. Content is substantive and strategies are taught in order to help

students commit this to memory, but content is not so

exhaustive so that it results in ego-depletion (expanded below).





3. Meta-cognitive strategies (d=0.67), analogous to the IBO’s

Approaches to Learning, are carefully planned and taught in

order to develop students’ thinking skills and to lead to a

perhaps transformative learning experience form the novice to

the expert learner (Kegan, 2009; Hattie, 2012).

4. Vertical connection of concepts, knowledge and skills allow for

continuity of experience in line with Dewey’s ideas that “the

future has to be taken into account at every stage of the

educational process.” (Dewey, 1938, p.47), for this future-

oriented thinking is at the heart of a pragmatic approach to

inquiry.

5. All teachings are planned carefully in order to avoid the effect of

interference, or misconception. If we are to reduce the content

of the MYP in order to better meet the goals of inquiry, it is our

responsibility to ensure as best we can that the knowledge

students do learn is conceptually accurate and it takes

significant efforts to reverse misconceptions once formed (Abdi,

2006).

Proposal two might seem to run counter to IB’s (and certainly to

Dewey’s) philosophy of inquiry. If we focus on inquiry as critical reflective

thought, however, then we must accept the need for significant raw

materials for that inquiry: the over-learning of basic skills and content are

encouraged in order to commit foundational knowledge to System I

memory (thinking fast), so that when needed, the student has the

cognitive surplus to be able to make effective use of System II memory

(thinking slow) (Kahnemann, 2011), summarized in (Hattie & Yates,

2013). This line of thinking follows Kahnemann’s (2011) dual-system

theory on learning for automaticity and ego-depletion: where the practice

of what is often derided as ‘rote’ learning is used to commit content and

operations to permanent memory (System I), activation of System II can

lead to ego-depletion or mental exhaustion, yet it is needed for the

higher-order pursuit of inquiry as critical, reflective thought.





Consequently, if we aim to teach students to be critical thinkers without

helping them to commit meaningful (and useful) content to memory, we

may actually be hindering their progress (Willingham, 2007). Although I

propose above that we should be actively teaching substantive content

for memory, I do not favour the pre-teaching of the DP syllabus in the MYP

courses, and this comes from largely from the perspective of motivation.

We must invite students to inquire through experiences that “arouse

curiosity (and) strengthen initiative,” (Dewey, 1938, p.38), ensuring that

the experiences we create for learners are indeed moving forces for their

future development (Dewey, 1938, p.38),.

From Principles into Practice

As long as secondary school education is characterized by high-

stakes terminal assessment and university entry there will inevitably be a

degree of backwash through the curriculum that will cause tension and

debate about the pedagogies that are used to cause learning. I hope that

I have succeeded in characterizing a pragmatic approach to inquiry –

critical reflective thought – as being one which encompasses not only the

intellectual ideals of Dewey but the developmental practicalities of

Vygotsky, and in connecting these to more discussion of effect sizes have

made some worthwhile recommendations for teaching students across

the MYP-DP transition.

“What we want and need is education pure and simple, and

we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves

to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be

satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or

a slogan.”

(Dewey, 1938,

p.91)





Thanks

Thank-you to Dr. Rita Chawla-Duggan for her support as tutor during this

unit.




Stephen Taylor (@iBiologyStephen) Understanding Learners and Learning

References

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Daniels, H., 2001. Vygotsky and Pedagogy. London: Routledge/Falmer.

Dewey, J., 1938. Experience and Education. Indianapolis: Kappa Delta Pi.

Dewey, J., 1964. The need for a philosophy of education. In R.D. Archambault, ed. John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chigao Press. pp.3-14.

Elkjaer, B., 2009. Pragmatism: A Learning Theory for the Future. In K. Illeris, ed. Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists. In Their Own Words. London: Routledge. pp.74-89.

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IBO, 2009. Making the PYP Happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education. Revised ed. Cardiff, UK: International Baccalaureate Organisation.

IBO, 2012. Mission and strategy. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.ibo.org/mission/" http://www.ibo.org/mission/ [Accessed 16 Feb 2014].

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Kahnemann, D., 2011. Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux.

Kegan, R., 2009. What "form" transforms? A constructive-developmental approach to transformative learning. In K. Illeris, ed. Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists. In Their Own Words. London: Routledge. pp.35-52.

Kolb, D.A., 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Clffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Lawton, D., 1975. Class, Culture and the Curriculum. London. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

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Mezirow, J., 2009. An overview of transformative learning. In K. Illeris, ed. Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists. In Their Own Words. London: Routledge. pp.90-105.

Moll, L., 1990. Vygotsky and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morais, D. & Ogden, A., 2011. Initial Development and Validation of the Global Citizenship Scale. Journal of Studies in International Education, 15(5), pp.445-66.

Robinson, M., 2013. Trivium 21C: Preparing young people for the future with lessons from the past.. Kindle Edition ed. London: Independent Thinking Press an imprint of Crown House Publishing.

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Willingham, D., 2007. Critical Thinking: Why is it so hard to teach?. American Educator, Summer.




MYP: Mind The Gap [MA Assignment]

Education

Transcript of MYP: Mind The Gap [MA Assignment]