Core overview
Developing core needs
The Career-related Programme core makes the programme unique. It is a substantial course designed to focus on the individual students' needs and personal and professional development. It is also a place where students can reflect on and connect their individual DP and CRS courses and make a truly concurrent, student centred learning experience. Whilst the IB provides the framework and regulations must be adhered to, it is up to the school to create courses that bespoke for the needs, interests and background of their students.
How does it work?
The core is comprised of four components that add up to 240 hours over the two years of the course: personal and professional skills (90 hours), service learning (50 hours), language development (50 hours) and the reflective project (50 hours). These courses have their own identity and emphasise particular aspects of learning but ultimately connect together in the skills students use to complete them. They are all united in how they reflect the IB philosophy of What is an IB Education? Students are required to maintain and complete a portfolio for Personal and Professional Skills, Service Learning and Language Development courses with the school determining their own assessment. The reflective project is submitted by the end of the course and internally marked with external moderation.
Striking the balance
You do not need to look far for the inspiration, necessity and relevance of the core programme.
A report in January 2020 by Michaela Horvathova at the Center for Curriculum Redesign on key competencies and employability skills developed in the DP and CP, concluded that '21st Century competencies and a deep understanding of content knowledge are needed' by students in the future. Furthermore, at the The Global Innovation Session, Education Korea 2020, IB Asia Pacific stated 'knowledge is important but it's actually the skills and aptitude that we're developing within learning that are really crucial' as well as asserted that 'IB programmes prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet'.
From here, the first thought is the learner profile that pervades all IB programmes. Certainly the CP core draws completely on the attributes of the learner profile, to develop:
• Considerate and involved citizens
• Autonomous lifelong learners
• Able communicators
• Complex and flexible thinkers
• Globally empathetic
• Sensitive the others' views and needs
• Embracing of intercultural education
However, what makes the CP core unique? Funnily enough, understanding the CP core is to look up from a bullet-pointed list of attributes and look out across each element of the core, how they connect together and with the wider world.
Each element of the core provides the opportunity to explore and develop all these characteristics but it is the way such development works concurrently (or simultaneously) across all aspects of the core. The core is also the place where the implicit becomes explicit; the skills quietly being developed across the career-related study and DP subjects that might go unnoticed without the right attention. When students clearly realise which skills are being developed and how they connect between subjects and their real world relevance, their confidence and self-awareness increase greatly.
Core audit - Do you need a core programme review?
Irrespective of whether you are new to the CP or approaching your 5 year evaluation, it is a good idea to reflect on your current core provision regularly and especially if there is movement of staff.
How does your current provision develop:
... independent learning
... personal development
... flexible strategies
... risk-taking
... intellectual and practical skills
... confidence to make changes
... cycles of planning, acting and reflecting
... individual/local/national/international knowledge and understanding
... the relevance of an ethical education
... authentic experiences for personal and professional development
... the willingness to fail and try again
... the ability to set achievable and meaningful goals
For further development, check out
Designing the core delivery
The CP core is what makes this programme stand out, made up of unique elements. The Personal and Professional Skills course, to use a favourite analogy, is the mothership of the programme. Schools all...
Some thoughts to guide discussion
It is really important to set the tone of discussion to establish a positive discussion. Try and use language such as empowers, challenges, provides, involves, gives and develops. After all, this is not an exercise to decide what is lacking in your school; it is an exercise to approach positively as it is almost certain that your school provides fantastic opportunities for the students already. Consider these questions:
1. How do you make these opportunities and skills explicit to the students?
2. How could you make these opportunities and skills explicit to the students?
3. How do you build an understanding of concurrency of learning for the students and staff?
4. How could you build an understanding of concurrency of learning for the students and staff?
5. Taking your individual context into account, what could you do more of?
6. What could make this understanding easier for all stakeholders?
To develop discussion of the explicit development of skills, teachers might take part in the ATL self-assessment tool to see where their strengths lie in the delivery of the 6 approaches to teaching and the 5 identified areas of approaches to learning.
Teaching:
- based on inquiry
- focused on conceptual understanding
- developed in local and global contexts
- focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
- differentiated to meet the needs of all learners
- informed by assessment (formative and summative).
Learning that develops:
1. Communication Skills
2. Social Skills
3. Research Skills
4. Self-management skills
5. Thinking skills
Making the reflective project manageable
As you plan for the core, it's good to consider the approach you will take with a 50 hour independent project as an educator. Every school does this differently in the way they staff the supervision and coordination. Before you get in to exploring the criteria and what the reflective project is really about, see it as going hand in hand with PPS where a lot of the skills are prepared and developed. Consider the characteristics of a long-term project and what students find difficult.
The word 'independent' can be distracting as it might suggest there is less you can do to support the process. However, talk to any CP educator - experienced or going through with their first cohort - and there are common threads of where the pitfalls lie when managing the reflective project (or any extended project for that matter). How students overcome that fatigue they can feel after the initial enthusiasm invariably wanes, and push through to a state of new learning and growth, really defines the success of their learning journey in the reflective project. A good lifeskill perhaps to know that this is what can happen with any work or long term project and the highs and lows that can ensue). Two key areas help you right from the start:
Anticipate and think ahead
When you come to know the criteria, you will notice in criterion E in particular that you get rewarded for reflecting on setbacks as well as successes throughout the process. The key to students coping when their project hits brick walls or stumbling blocks, is that they understand the process, they have anticipated this can happen and they really understand the resources they have at their disposal; this can be a bank of questions, thinking routine tools and supervisory support they can draw upon to help them move on. This approach encourages a growth mindset and a problem-solving spirit.
Scaffold, scaffold, scaffold
We are not talking about structuring the students' paragraphs for them and holding their hand every step of the way. However, rather than a 9-12 month project stretching out dauntingly before them, consider not just essential mini-deadlines and reflection due dates but perhaps a thematic approach to the project to make it manageable. For example, say you are a school, who has a process that runs over three terms from January to October/November, consider breaking it down into tranches to:
Term 1, Research, questioning and building knowledge
Term 2, Creating a draft reflective project
Term 3 (after a good long break) Understanding impact and finding solutions; the final draft.
This way, students are building through the stages of the reflective project process, they can know where they are heading but only concentrate on the stage that they are at right now. The final stage needs fresh energy as this is the area where the real meaning of the reflective project lies and, let's be honest, the most marks for critical thinking; can students assess the 'so what?' and the 'what next?' of their ethical dilemma?
Consider and discuss in relation to your own context the following TED Talk as just one example of many on the subject of preparing students for the future. Her perspective is that we need less tech and more messy human skills in the form of imagination, humility and bravery, to solve problems in business, government and life in an unpredictable age.
Anyone who tries to tell you that they know the future is just trying to own it, a spurious kind of manifest destiny. The harder, deeper truth is that the future is uncharted, that we can't map it till we get there. Margaret Heffernan