Kristen Weeks Neal, Ph.D.
With contributions from the MNPS IB Advisory Council, Sharon Chaney (Chair)
The International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) has at the heart of its mission to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. (See www.ibo.org for further information.)
The IB curriculum is based on the research from the cognitive sciences, from which we derive our understanding of human learning processes and the development of competence in students. Central to this research is the concept of transfer, or how students translate ideas from one context to another. If students are successful in applying what they have learned to other contexts, then learning has taken place.
How does this happen? Students need opportunities to mold, shape, wrestle with, and apply what they are learning. Students need to work with authentic problems, and their learning must be assessed in meaningful ways that allow students to demonstrate what they know. These deeper and more complex connections imprint the learning into long-term memory. The IB curriculum frameworks are designed so that students must apply what they are learning and demonstrate their understanding of given concepts. For example, woven throughout the Middle Years Programme curriculum are five Areas of Interaction which encourage students to take responsibility for themselves and their surroundings: Health and Social Education, Community and Service, Approaches to Learning, Environments, and Human Ingenuity.