One of the most challenging questions any teacher faces in a week is, ‘why do I have to learn this?’ For high school teachers, the tempting response has always been ‘because its in the exam’, and then to walk the student through an unlikely concatenation of events which starts with getting an answer right, to an A, admission to the right university, the job you want and thence a wonderful life.
Making a Curriclum around Concepts
Nobody really believes that you should know something simpler because an examiner has decided that they may ask you about it. Or that exams themselves, great as they are, exclusively hold the key to a fulfilling adult life, let alone meaningful activity right now.
Students engage best when they make their own connection to what they are learning. It doesn’t have to be useful in any way they can immediately see, but it does have to mean something to them. It is one of the reasons why the IB put concepts right at the heart of lesson planning.
It sounds complicated and abstract, but really it is just a slight change of perspective. In a traditional lesson about the Jacobites the teacher might tell the students about Bonnie Prince Charlie. Some may like the lesson because the teacher is a good story teller. The teacher may tell the class, ‘it’s part of your heritage’. But what, if for half the class it isn’t or listening to stories isn’t an important skill for them to develop?
But what if you re-framed the same content in light of the MYP concept of ‘connections’, and students examined the relationship between a leader and their people. They might think of questions such as ‘what makes a successful leader?’ or ‘how important is a leader to the success of a group of people?’ The concept allows you to apply your thinking across contexts.
In this instance, students might consider successful leadership in their own lives - someone within their family like their mum, or the captain of the team they play in, or a national figure. They might think carefully about their qualities; these are ideas they could use to evaluate the Bonnie Prince. Or indeed any historical leader - perhaps one they feel is relevant to them - because it is part of their heritage or that of their host country. They might choose someone else because they are not being assessed on remembering particular facts, but how they use facts for an argument.
Grade 3 parents had the opportunity to see work done by their children around the concept of ‘form’. In gymnastics they explored body shapes, which they then expressed in Kandinsky inspired abstract art. Every student spoke with a passion and sophistication about their art work which came with just a slight shift in emphasis from knowledge and skills for their own sake to knowledge and skills for a purpose.
When students have choices, when they can relate lessons to their own lives, teachers avoid every school’s most difficult question.
IBDP Theory of Knowledge: the culmination of concept based learning.
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