I have been thinking a lot about Curriculum recently. I had a discussion with Jamie McKenzie when he was back in town last week about his thoughts about the training for the IB PYP Programme which is inquiry based. I think Jamie and I agreed that in the rush for schools to say that they are IB schools and are “internationally minded”, they sometimes fail to put the steps in places that really demonstrate where this inquiry orientation and open learning philosophy lives. I have been in quite a few IB schools in the last 12 months and it still strikes me, as an Australian educated and trained teacher, how “English Oriented” some of them are whilst others are very “US Oriented”.

Perhaps this is a good thing? Schools should have their own unique identity, in spite of the curriculum they offer. After all, school is about much more than curriculum isn’t it? If this is the case, I am astounded that so many schools have raced to embrace the IB curriculum.This is especially so, given that many of the schools were saying that they had a great, localised curriculum which prepared students for the 21st Century prior to the rush to abandon it and take up a curriculum that, at least in the Diploma years, is anything but a 21st Century curriculum.

I guess on the positive side, it means that teachers who want to work in international education have a clear curriculum that they must study if they want to be employable. It seems that the Antipodean teachers have taken this to heart as they are the group that seems to be able to buck the trend and appear in schools that are both UK and US aligned.

Photo: The Australia Shop http://www.flickr.com/photos/magdalena67/3226429381/