Introducing the student section
How do I start?
Here we are going to use Personal and Professional Skills primarily as a place to get a sense of yourself and your personal and professional growth across the CP and all the different contexts you will navigate. You will also find these inquiries related directly to Community Engagement, Language and Cultural Studies, Reflective Project, as well as your career-related Studies and DP subjects.
How does assessment work in the CP?
Assessment in the CP is divided into three areas. Your career-related studies, which have their own assessment schedule and DP courses, are assessed by your school and the IB with both Internal and External assessment and then the core components. Regarding the core, the Reflective Project is assessed externally by the IB; you must pass this to get your CP certificate. For the other core components, you must complete the requirements set by the IB, including required hours, sustained engagement and a record of reflections on your learning experiences in your PPS portfolio and CE + LCS learning journals.
How is it designed?
If you have had a look above, you will notice that each page has individual and collaborative work and asks you to explore various elements of your CP course through an inquiry question. As long as an inquiry is cyclical with an inquiry question, action and reflection then it can be impactful but you might notice some variations.
- Each page is also built with an inquiry cycle in various ways as you would use in any subject as well as PPS and/or CE.
- PPS has a specific inquiry cycle of Focus, Explore, Act, Reflect and Share.
- For CE this is slightly different with ‘Explore and Prepare’, ‘Relate and Act’ and ‘Evaluate and Share’
- You'll also find PPS inquiries specifically labelled to develop the Reflective Project too.
- Have a look at the following, which will give you a taste of what to expect
This is where we fix the inquiry to one of the PPS concepts (or another core element concept) and how it could relate to an area of personal or professional growth. Establishing ‘the why’ of this inquiry and asking you to link the focus to your prior learning and understanding, can enable you to get the most out of the activity. You might see a sign like or another part of the course as a context as well as other contexts that might be relevant.
Remember your portfolio/learning journal should accompany you. It's good to get in the habit of having a ‘dumping folder’ for all your PPS contributions that you can review, refine and reflect upon as you curate your portfolio throughout the course.
These activities are where you might learn about the skills and concepts related to the focus. Here you can get engaged with the topic and identify your thoughts, biases, and preconceptions. It could involve a discussion with a sign like this.
These activities are designed to get you engaged with the topic and to identify your thoughts, biases, and preconceptions. You will find videos, text, activities and podcasts throughout the learning engagement with signs like this.
You will also see prompts for written reflections and audio files that you can export too to your learning journals.
Here we will want to apply new skills and understandings in a personal or professional context.In addition to the resources you will find, we can build transversal skills here around the topic. It always focus on you doing. You will find chances to practise transversal and ATL skills in every module. We zoom in on particular aspects at relevant times.
It's important to take a step back and ask ‘so what?’ Here we reflect on the implications of your learning for your personal and professional growth. This is an opportunity to go deeper into ideas and develop skills such as critical and creative thinking. It is always easier to access these skills if you build up your understanding first. You might be asked to reflect in different ways and create presentations as examples.
An IB student tends to leave school with more self-awareness than the average student (sweeping statement but true!) and that can be put down a course that allows you time to consider the processes you are going through!
To grow personally and professionally, we need to share our learning into new contexts. This is the part where you get to consider what you truly think about what you have explored.
A hugely important part of all learning is how you will transfer it into different parts of your life so here we prompt you to consider the wider significance and impact on your life. Here are just a few of the signs you might see.
Also transferring ideas to different contexts let us build up a conceptual understanding of the world and how everything is connected.
Why not explore more?
Inquiry 1: Who am I?
One of the transversal skills in the Intrapersonal skill domain is ‘self-awareness’. Here you are going to think about what makes you … you and how that knowledge can help us grow as learners in...
Inquiry 1.1 How can my mindset impact how I respond to change?
Being able to respond to change successfully is important to mental health and wellbeing. And as we explore here, change is actually very much welcomed by most people if approached in the right way. You...
Inquiry 2: Who am I with others?
What role does culture play in your life? How do you connect what is happening directly around you with what is happening globally? Here we start to explore the significance of our cultural identity and...