We are in the 21st century, the century of the Gen z and the century of the alpha. While the children of this generation have demonstrated extraordinary skills and set the standard so high that Millennial educators like me have to continuously invent novel methods of delivery and engagement. Being a Teacher at one of the most popular international schools in south Mumbai, definitely keeps the educator on their toes to ensure that these effervescent thinking minds are continuously challenged cause that’s what is needed to stimulate them to think and develop skills that will help them survive in the Competitive space across the globe.
International baccalaureate, popularly known as IB board was started back in late 1960s. The Curricula have for sure emerged successfully which is clearly shown in the number of students being enrolled every year. According to Ibo.org in 1971, just 681 DP candidates were registered for the IB diploma and this number shot up to a whopping 161,104 in 2016. India as a country has understood the needs and demands of the present generations which again is reflected in the number of IB International schools offering the IB diploma programme. The number of IB schools in Mumbai saw a jump of 65% from 23 schools in 2011 to 38 schools in 2016. The news of introducing the IB curriculum in the BMC schools is also a testimony of the impact of this curriculum.
Out of a large number of reasons that one would list to be a part of an international school in Mumbai, developing 21st century skills for sure would top the list as everyone wants to prepare themselves for what the world will need a decade later. According to trilling and fadel (2009), the skills looked up by hiring companies in 21st century include Oral and written communication skills, Critical-thinking, Problem-solving skills, Professionalism, Work ethic, Teamwork, and collaboration skills. These to a large extent overlap with the Approaches to teaching and learning which is an integral part of the IB curriculum taught in the international schools of Mumbai.
Approaches to teaching and learning in IB are a set of tools techniques or strategies that pervade the teaching and learning environment in a school. The ATL supports the IB belief that to have a successful education in a child’s life it’s not only what you learn but often how you learn. ATL skills are very organically blended in the IB curriculum through the IB learner profiles. IB through its curriculum inculcates these learner profile attributes which are in line with the mission statement of IB which talks about creating lifelong learners. The ATL skills are broken down into sub-categories as shown in the figure below.
Without getting into the details of each of the above sub-points of the ATL (these can be easily red up from the official IB website) we can very easily establish how modelling and implementing the above skills in the curriculum is in line with the development of a skill set that the students would need in their colleges and life at large. Teachers across various international schools in Mumbai and across the globe engage themselves in sessions/workshops discussing and collaborating to share the best practices on a larger platform. One must also understand that promoting ATL is a joint responsibility of all the various stakeholders of an institute.
One would wonder why these ATLs are a part of the curriculum across international schools? The answer to that question is simply to make learning fun and engaging so that the student is able to effectively apply the learnings of the class to life outside the class. Successful learning is a 2-way process. So once the students have learned a particular skill through the lessons planned by their teacher in class, the students are given ample opportunities to demonstrate their learning right from simple classroom presentations and projects to the core components of IB such as CAS, TOK, and EE. While these core components are grilling and often considered as “difficult to manage and understand” by the students at the beginning of the course, it is accomplishing that over the course of 2 years of learning at IB how much they imbibe from their teachers and something that was considered to be difficult and unmanageable is now doable and doable with ease. It’s often very late by the time the student realizes the significance of these skills in their learning process. I am very sure that teachers across international schools receive phone calls and emails from their ex-students about how thankful they are for teaching them these skills and how their life at college and university was less stressful and manageable. Some of them also owe these ATL skills to where they are professionally in their life.
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