The Global Search for Education
“The iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.” — Tony Wagner
Education Technology
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
EdTechTeacher will host the first national iPads in education summit, bringing together educators, researchers, tech directors, principals, school leaders and industry partners to identify best practices for integrating iPads into education. The conference will be held from November 6th to 8th at The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Schools and districts nationwide continue to invest in mobile technologies. The EdTechTeacher iPad Summit hopes to provide educators in this country and overseas with a forum to discuss how to leverage these devices in order to further empower teachers and students as creators of their own learning. “While there are some technical sessions,” explains the EdTechTeacher team, “the focus is on creating effective pedagogy, enriching curriculum, and leveraging the device in order to support students and teachers as innovators.”
“Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized.”— Tony Wagner
The keynote speaker at the conference is Tony Wagner, Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Wagner, an advocate for the need to better prepare students for 21st-century careers and citizenship, collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create the 60 minute documentary, The Finnish Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System. Tony’s latest book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World (Simon & Schuster), provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. What role can the iPad play in their education? What additional professional development for teachers is needed? What examples of best technology practices can we learn from around the world? Tony agreed to discuss these subjects with me.
“Students will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes.” — Tony Wagner
How has the iPad made learning in education more innovative, and how can educators use the iPad to achieve significant innovation in teaching and learning?
First, the iPad has made using most computer-based learning applications far more accessible and intuitive. You no longer need to take students to a special room full of computers for that occasional experience; you don’t need to pull a laptop cart around the school. And students don’t need hours of training to learn how to use the device or its applications. Assuming a decent broadband connection, most computer related work - researching, writing, sharing - can happen at any time and for every student, with little or no advance preparation. Secondly, the comparative ease of creating and distributing an iPad app, versus writing a program for a computer, has given rise to a dramatic increase in the number of education-related applications being created and disseminated. In short, the iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.
“We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills.” — Tony Wagner
Is the missing link in education technology trained teachers?
Having teachers who are comfortable with the technology and who know how to apply it in the classroom is critical, but that problem will be mostly solved by time. As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.
But the real question is: what will this technology will be used for? I toured a school district recently that had, with corporate help, put web-connected white boards and student clickers into every classroom at huge expense. But, in classroom after classroom, what I saw was all of this technology being used for drilling and test prep. Instead of having work sheets on their desks, students had clickers that enabled them to “vote” for the right answer on the practice test. More and better teacher preparation won’t solve this problem. We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills - to encourage more powerful teaching and learning, both with and without the new technologies.
“As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.” — Tony Wagner
Can you share a couple of examples of good teaching/technology practice that you’ve seen in top education systems around the world, for instance, in Finland?
In Finland, what I saw was much less teacher-centric uses of technologies - I don’t recall seeing a single white board, for example - and much more student-centric technology applications. I saw students using Moodle (the e-learning platform) to share and discuss work. In a marketing class, I saw students discussing how various social networking applications were being used to market products and services. Here in the US, I’ve seen some schools like High Tech High require all students to have digital portfolios that show evidence of progressive mastery of the skills that matter most. I’ve seen virtual dissections in biology classes that teach far more than having to actually cut up a frog. And I’m excited about new software being developed that will enable students to better understand disruptions of complex ecosystems through simulation. Finally, the US Army has developed a wide variety of gaming applications to teach strategy.
“Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.” — Tony Wagner
Online education continues to be an ever larger force in how students learn - how far can it go to changing education as we know it?
Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized. You no longer need to be in a classroom to acquire the knowledge you want or need. But in my view, knowledge is only one of the three pillars needed for life-long learning, work, and citizenship in the 21st century. In addition to knowledge, students also need so-called 21c skills, such as those I’ve described in The Global Achievement Gap. Finally, students need the motivations and dispositions that will enable them to innovate - to solve problems creatively - in whatever they do, which I’ve written about most recently in Creating Innovators. They will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes. They will need to be intrinsically motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout their lives. Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.
For more information:
Creating Innovators
EdTechTeacher iPad Summit
Tony Wagner and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of EdTechTeacher and Tony Wagner.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Nurturing innovation is an important priority for us in our school system” — Tapio Kosunen
More From Finland
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Nations around the world continue to re-think and reform education policies to better prepare children for life and work in a rapidly changing world which places a high value on innovation. What vocational skills will future teachers require to do this? What professional development is needed to prepare them for the 21st century classroom? What are the different roles and responsibilities of 21st century school leaders? How do countries succeed in developing these leaders? What lessons can we learn from successful education systems?
Finland’s schools became famous around the world because of the PISA study. This survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, very close to other high achievers such as South Korea and Singapore.
I had the pleasure of meeting State Secretary Tapio Kosunen during his recent visit to New York to discuss some of Finland’s educational priorities going forward.
“Our teachers in Finland are quite autonomous already. They are allowed to choose their methods and they are allowed to be creative.” — Tapio Kosunen
Where does creating future innovators stand in Finland’s educational priorities?
Nurturing innovation is an important priority for us in our school system. What it means to innovate is important when we think about a high quality education. We want more economic growth and nurturing innovation is an important way to do that. We have good examples of work being done in this area in Finland, for example, the research that has been done at Aalto University.
How do you believe your education system nurtures the theme of innovation - what are the building blocks or the key drivers?
You have to think about education incorporating both critical and creative thinking, and these things can and should be nurtured in children starting as young as possible. You then have to find solutions to combine things in a creative way, that is, to include all the important factors affecting a problem together. I also think our view of learning is that you learn all your life and you learn from many different sources, and the individual is the one who has to combine this knowledge and to find solutions. Nurturing innovation is a question of orientation, which is written into our core curriculum because everything comes back to education.
Finnish teachers have become the gold standard for many educators around the world. Can you talk about the training and preparation you believe have been instrumental in achieving this goal?
First of all, I believe our teacher training programs are of high quality because our teachers are required to do a masters degree. This degree is research based but it also requires our teachers in training to work in schools. And so their training combines theory and practical training periods. All our teachers receive help from a mentor teacher at the teacher training school who is giving feedback all the time on their teaching. I like to think they also acquire a sense of creativeness in terms of planning their lessons and thinking of the whole teaching area they are being prepared for. Our teachers are encouraged to think creatively.
“One thing we are interested in learning more about is how to use technology and social media in education more effectively.” — Tapio Kosunen
Looking forward, what vocational skills will teachers of the future require?
I believe in the future the most important vocational skills required of teachers will fall into four categories. These are:
1. Knowledge of the subject area they are teaching.
The teacher of the future must be a professional of knowledge and have a wholistic, in-depth knowledge of his subject areas, teaching, education, and the related expert information networks.
2. Expertise in learning and teaching.
As the concept of learning becomes broader and more essential over people’s lifetimes, the teacher of the future must be able to apply this expertise flexibly across the boundaries of age, municipalities and educational institutions, in many different forms, including on-line environments.
3. Social and ethical competence.
The teacher of the future’s work must include passing on social and ethical values such as democracy, human dignity, civic participation and the well-being of people, and being able to engage in multi-professional cooperation and coordination with the home.
4. Versatile skills in practical work in schools.
The teacher of the future must have practical skills needed in the daily life of schools, including running of the school, rights and duties of the teacher and pupil, and financial and administrative issues, in order to continue our practice of incorporating decision making by teachers at the school level in our education system.
What do you believe are the characteristics of a strong school leader?
A strong school leader has to understand how the school operates as part of the overall society. I think the most important thing is that he or she is a pedagogical leader. He has to be a child-centered thinker. He must understand how to enhance learning and how to support teachers in their work. Then comes the administration, taking care of budget, and doing timetables. But pedagogical leadership must come first and he or she must be able to share it. What I mean by that is he or she sets the vision and must ensure that the goals of the core curriculum are being met along with learning outcomes, but he has to appreciate his teachers and remember they are professionals. They have a professional way of thinking about their work. He has to be able to trust and rely on them. Our teachers in Finland are quite autonomous already. They are allowed to choose their methods and they are allowed to be creative.
What do you most look forward to learning from OECD world conferences?
I am interested in learning more about leadership and teacher training from countries around the world because it is important to understand how to continue to motivate teachers and inspire them to stay in their professions long term. Teacher education in Finland has been a popular choice by international comparisons. Young people in Finland are interested in education and surveys indicate that jobs in the educational sector are among five of the most popular professions. I am interested in learning more about the Asian countries and the USA and Australia. Each of the cultures is different to Finland and that is a good thing because it makes the comparisons very interesting indeed. One thing, for example, that we are interested in learning more about is how to use technology and social media in education more effectively. The OECD conference is all about what we can learn from the rest of the world, and I think we can learn a lot.
Tapio Kosunen and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, archive, Institute of Design 2011.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
The Global Search for Education
“There is no competitive advantage today to knowing more than the person sitting next to you.” — Tony Wagner
Is Your Child an Innovator
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
“The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.” — President Barack Obama, January 25, 2011
Welcome to the Innovation Age. Today’s world will reward the most innovative young people. World leaders, business executives, educators, and policy makers have joined in the global debate on how we create the next generation of innovators. Even parents are asking themselves the question: “Is my child an Innovator?”
How do you train an innovator? Which schools are doing it better than others? Are teachers equipped with the new skills required to educate students in this decade? Are curricula incorporating the essential content that will help young people become more innovative? Are parents playing their part so as to ensure their children can face tomorrow’s challenges and ultimately lead richer, fuller lives?
In his must read new book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World (Scribner, April 17, 2012), Dr. Tony Wagner, Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, Harvard University, addresses these issues. I had the pleasure of chatting with him about the most talked about subject in education today.
There seems to be a wide range of what constitutes innovation, and innovation can also be a matter of degree. How do you define an innovator?
There are different kinds of innovation — incremental and disruptive — and so there are different degrees of the capacity to innovate. Not everyone can create brilliant “disruptive” products — products that transform a market as Steve Jobs and Apple have done. But many young people, given the right encouragement, can bring something extra to whatever they do — that spark of imagination and curiosity, which can lead to the creation of better products, services, and ideas. At its simplest, an innovator is someone who is a creative problem solver.
“The competitive advantage for someone going out into the world is what they can do with what they know.” — Tony Wagner
How do you train an Innovator?
We are born curious. We are born with imagination. The first challenge is to ensure that these very human qualities are not schooled out of us, as Sir Ken Robinson says. Beyond that, in my research, I identified five essential education and parenting practices that develop young people’s capacities to innovate:
1. Learning to work collaboratively (innovation is a team sport!).
2. Learning to understand problems from a multi-disciplinary perspective.
3. Learning to take risks and learn from mistakes.
4. Focusing on creating versus consuming.
5. Reinforcing the intrinsic motivations of play, passion, and purpose versus the extrinsic carrots and sticks.
Information may be free but knowledge also includes understanding, problem solving, communication, and collaboration, none of which is free. Many schools “teach” these aspects of human endeavor to some degree. How much of this is relevant to your model for creating innovators?
Knowledge has become a commodity and is free, like air or water. Knowledge is also changing and growing exponentially. Based on the old premise of knowledge scarcity, the assumption is that it is the job of the teacher to transmit knowledge to students. When only a few people had the knowledge, that model made some sense, but because knowledge has become a commodity, the world no longer cares what you know. That is, there is no competitive advantage today to knowing more than the person sitting next to you. The competitive advantage for someone going out into the world is what they can do with what they know. And this kind of learning needs to take place at all levels. Right now it is more common in some elementary schools where students do projects. The problem arises as students move up through school. While there is a lot of professed interest in teaching the so-called 21st century skills you mentioned, which I wrote about extensively in The Global Achievement Gap, in fact most teachers feel compelled to teach to the tests for accountability purposes—and increasingly so as their jobs may depend on students getting good test scores.
Some examples you’ve seen in better schools to nurture this kind of learning?
In Creating Innovators, I profile schools and colleges that are doing an outstanding job of educating young people to become innovators. In the better schools I visited (both high schools and colleges), in every single course, students have to produce real products for a real audience as a significant part of their academic experience. In one high school I visited, every student is required to do a team-based service learning project: to go out into the community, research a problem and then figure out a way to solve it. One student I interviewed was a part of a team that discovered there was a local food pantry that had a problem storing all of the food donated to it. And so the team went back to school and used a computer assisted design program to design a new storage system for the pantry. Then they returned and actually built it. What students need is practice in applying their learning to new situations, not just in the classroom, but in the community. Another example at the college level is the Olin College of Engineering, which requires students to spend an entire year working in teams to solve a problem in a corporate setting. It is what they call their Senior Capstone Project in Engineering. These approaches demand a radically different approach to teaching. Teaching students to apply what they have learned requires relinquishing a degree of teacher control, relying far less on textbooks, and encouraging students to take initiative and be responsible for their own learning. Teachers are no longer the experts; they must become coaches. Many teachers find these transitions very hard to make.
“What students need is practice in applying their learning to new situations, not just in the classroom, but in the community.” — Tony Wagner
Teachers follow the accepted process required to get kids into good colleges — the colleges their parents and the kids think they should go to. Thoughts?
Things are changing more quickly than most people realize. Three points:
1. The Advanced Placement curriculum is already radically transforming all AP tests, beginning with AP Biology this year and then AP US History next year. They are moving towards students having to demonstrate that they can apply knowledge learned and not merely regurgitate it. So AP tests, which are themselves considered a gold standard, are redefining what is “rigor” and students will need a different kind of teaching to do well on these new tests.
2. There are now 750 colleges and universities that do not require any kind of test scores for admission. Last year, Tufts University became the first in the country to encourage students to submit YouTube videos with their applications, and they were stunned at the quality of work that was produced and how much more they learned about their applicants.
3. If you look at the CEO’s of most major companies, the majority did not go to an Ivy League school for undergraduate. What matters much more are what graduate school you go to and having had work-based internships where you have had to apply what you have learned. Being preoccupied with getting kids into top colleges, I think, is misplaced. Admission into “name brand” schools is more and more a matter of luck and no longer offers the competitive advantages it did 20 years ago. The push to get all A’s distorts the purpose of school and distracts from acquiring the skills that will give kids a real competitive edge.
For my new book I interviewed Joel Podolny, Vice President of Human Resources at Apple, who has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, and he told me that to get into these kinds of schools you learn to play a game. A game of getting perfect scores, building a resume, etc. The problem is, if you have not learned how to collaborate, to take risks and learn from your mistakes, to create as opposed to consume — all the qualities that matter in the world of innovation — then companies like Apple will have no use for you.
“Instead of preaching that all students should be ‘college-ready,’ we should instead establish the goal of all students being ‘innovation-ready’.” — Tony Wagner
To what extent is innovation capability a function of family and external influences?
These days, young people become innovators in spite of their schooling, rather than because of it. In my research, I found both parenting and teaching practices that strengthen the capacity to innovate — emphasizing discovery-based play, limiting screen time, encouraging young people to find and pursue their passion, take risks and learn from mistakes, and instilling a sense of the importance of “giving back” — these were all things that parents and teachers of young innovators encouraged.
What overall rating do you give the US Public School system for training innovators
A grade of F. But it is not the teacher’s fault. They are not encouraged to innovate, and there is no funding for educational R&D. We must prepare teachers differently and develop lab schools for 21st century learning and teaching. Mostly importantly, we need to begin using much better assessments, like the College and Work Readiness Assessment and the Collegiate Learning Assessment. Assessment drives instruction, and having the wrong metric is worse than having none at all. Multiple choice, computer-scored test results tell us nothing about the quality of teaching or students’ college, career, and citizenship readiness. Every student should have a digital portfolio as a cumulative record of the development of his or her innovation skills. Finally, instead of preaching that all students should be “college-ready,” we should instead establish the goal of all students being “innovation-ready.” Young people don’t necessarily have to go to college to learn to innovate. Nearly half of Finland’s high school students choose a career and technical education track, rather than an academic track, and Finland has a higher innovation standing than the US.
Dr. Tony Wagner and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of The Dwight School and Dr. Tony Wagner
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Every child around the world should have the opportunity to have a high quality global education.” - Jeffrey Beard
An International Education
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
The International Baccalaureate (the IB) continues to play an important role in changing the lives of students worldwide. Apart from PISA, it is the only test that measures the performance of students against their global peers.
Dr. Tony Wagner, Innovation Education fellow at Harvard University and author of the new book,Creating Innovators (due out April 17), explains, “I do agree that the IB is a significantly better framework for intellectual rigor than the advanced placement (AP) curriculum for several reasons: the requirement that all students complete a 4500 word research paper, the service learning requirement, and the interdisciplinary theory of knowledge requirement, all of which take learning beyond the confines of the conventional curriculum.”
Jeffrey R. Beard joined the International Baccalaureate in September, 2005. He became Director General in January, 2006. I had the opportunity to discuss with Jeffrey the ways in which the IB program continues to offer students a unique international education.
What kind of educational system will permit a country to have the human skills needed to compete globally?
It’s our belief at the International Baccalaureate that every child around the world should have the opportunity to have a high quality global education. One of the things I am proud of is that we cross national boundaries. Approximately one million students in 141 countries and in a wide variety of schools (private, state, public) have experienced the IB. Many of these countries recognize the need for students to have 21st century skills. These skills include critical thinking, communication and language acquisition; and as highlighted by the National Center for Education in its 2006 report, creativity, innovation, use of ideas, abstraction, self-discipline, and the ability to function as part of a team. These capabilities are embedded in our programs in an international context. They give students the perspectives of other cultures, societies and countries, and teach them how they can engage with their peers. We are now seeing stronger uptake from countries around the world who want to bring the IB education into the forefront.
“Our programs give students the perspectives of other cultures, societies andcountries.” - Jeffrey Beard
What are your views on standardized testing? How does the IB assessment compare?
I believe standardized testing has a place. It should be one piece of the student portfolio versus the whole assessment. Some universities put all their emphasis on the standardized test. I think it’s fine to include those scores in a portfolio of work, but it should only be part of the assessment universities use to make their admissions decisions. The SAT and ACT tests are used to rank students for limited places in an admissions process. The tests are imperfect and imprecise. They express knowledge in limited dimensions using multiple choice questions.
The difference with the IB assessment is that we rely on an international approach that measures students using the same criteria worldwide. At the end of their senior year, IB students sit for about three weeks to take their final exams for their diploma. The exams are then sent to be marked by international examiners which are both IB educators in schools and university professors. Our system is criteria-based rather than norm-based. Seven is our highest score. When our students see their results, they know that those results have been measured against their international peers around the world. I am not aware of any other assessment program available to US students in K through 12 apart from PISA that measures the performance of students against their global peers. We also approach assessment from a whole child point of view. We incorporate community service, leadership and character as part of that assessment through the mandatory completion of CAS (Community, Action, and Service).
What is the importance of teachers in the IB process?
Teachers are the key to the whole program. All the international studies of top educational systems (Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong) have shown us that the teacher is what makes the difference. The successful countries take their approach to teaching very seriously. They elevate the importance of teachers. They screen candidates for suitability before they go to university in contrast to the US system and many other countries. The top countries accept fewer teachers and they are put more resources behind each teacher along the way. They treat teaching as a highly respected profession. Once teacher pre-service training is complete, ongoing professional development of the teacher is also very important. You see more mentoring in the classroom. You see more feedback in the classroom. That doesn’t happen in many other countries, where teachers come out of school and that may be the last formal training they have.
The IB approach to professional development is a pedagogy that’s based on a constructivist understanding of how students learn. It’s a theory of cognition, widely used and accepted, which asserts that knowledge is not passively learned but actively built. It recognizes the importance of engaging and challenging learners in order to improve their understanding and comprehension. To become an IB school, all teachers must complete our category one training, which is built around these principles. Later on, the experienced IB teacher may attend a category two workshop, which provides more in-depth training in areas like internal assessment and research. Finally, the master IB teacher may go on to attend one of over 100 category three workshops which are aimed at refining a teacher’s skill in his chosen field. I am not aware of any other program that offers a continuum of professional development that allows teachers to develop skills and then enhance those skills over a period of years. Our online curriculum center also allows these same IB teachers to network globally, where they can share with other teachers what they are doing and find out what is working and what is not. So it’s all very synergistic and you can see the effectiveness in terms of student performance.
“I am not aware of any other program that offers a continuum of professional development that allows teachers to develop skills and then enhance those skills over a period ofyears.” - Jeffrey Beard
How does the IB teach international mindedness? Isn’t international mindedness something you need to experience first hand?
How we do that is one of our challenges, but one we have been able to overcome. In the US, we are in about 1300 schools. So, a school in the Midwest may have a more homogeneous student population and therefore it’s a bit more challenging to introduce the concept of international mindedness. We do it in a number of different ways. Through technology, we ensure that students are exposed to what is happening around the world and can network with IB students in different countries. We require students to take a second language. Teachers are required through their curriculum planning to bring in the dimensions of other cultures into their teachings. We offer courses like world religions, global politics, and the world studies extended essay. We also ensure that students themselves take on projects that are broader than their local community. IB schools are connected globally and so students are always able to interact with IB students in other cultures through our IB virtual community. In sum, international mindedness is deeply embedded in the curriculum, the online program, and the community service component of our programs. So while it is not the same as first-hand experience, there is so much built into the curriculum that even in a homogeneous location, we are able to embed these concepts.
Have you found that more schools have embraced the IB because students can be assessed on an international level?
Initially, a lot of US schools implement the IB as a way of school reform. Struggling schools have seen teachers get better and students get better with the IB. As students get more into the program and do the assessments, there is a growing awareness that their grades can be compared to other students around the world. It’s an opportunity to grow beyond themselves. Students are already networked around the world through the internet. They’re seeing a melting pot of different nationalities, languages and cultures around the world, so the IB fits quite well into their paradigm.
What is the new diploma program from the IB, the IB Career-Related Certificate (the IBCC)?
The IBCC incorporates the educational principles of the IB into a unique offering that addresses the needs of students who wish to engage in career-related education. The IBCC encourages these students to benefit from elements of an IB education, through a selection of two or more Diploma Program courses in addition to a unique IBCC core, comprised of an approaches-to-learning (ATL) course, a reflective project, language development, and community and service. This new qualification is designed to provide a “value added” educational offering to schools that already offer the IB Diploma Program and are also delivering career-related courses to their students.
We are quite excited by the IBCC, which will be launched this year in September (2012). It is our foray into vocational and career-related work experience programs. It is for students who do not necessarily intend to go on to a four year university. They may instead desire technical training for a professional role and go directly into the workforce.
I attended an IB presentation with some of the graduating students from one of our pilot schools recently. It was attended by some local businessmen who told me: “We will hire anybody coming out of that school. We will give you funding. These kids are great!” We think the IBCC is going to be successful because it combines the skills that are offered in an IB program such as critical thinking, community service and international mindedness, along with a career-related education.
Jeffrey Beard and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of the International Baccalaureate Organization
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
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C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?”. She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
