About the course

In this section of the site I'm attempting to set out the thinking that underlies the organisation and design of these learning materials, and their organisation on the site. I guess this is my From Principles into Practice.

First, two caveats. 

Caveat 1

Here is a joke that I was once told by a French colleague when I worked in an international school in Paris…

A group of French engineers are invited to an aircraft manufacturer in the United States. The US Chief Engineer shows them around the plant, explaining the whole process from design to manufacture as they go. At the end of the visit they all sit down for coffee together and the US engineer asks his French visitors, 'So guys, what do you think of our operation?' The French chief engineer frowns in thought for a moment and then replies, 'Well, yes, we see how this all works in practice. But the question is, how does it work in theory?'

I like this joke because it plays (lightly) on a cultural difference. I am British, not American, but I recognise here a playful recognition of a cultural difference (as a generalisation, of course) between anglo- and European-continental styles of thinking which I have to recognise in myself. My training in Physics and in education was empirically-led. While I do start with a theoretical position, it might not be thought through in close detail at first. Instead, I will pitch into designing activities which explore the idea in practice. Over the years I have tried a lot of approaches. Some work a lot of the time, some work some of the time, and some just don't work in the context. So then I have to work out why such an approach did or didn't work, and I go away and read. I then return to the question with an improved theoretical framing, and so I refine the activities.

Caveat 2

I have taught, administered, examined and led MYP programmes since the late 1990s and seen it go through (let me count…) three iterations. We are about to enter a fourth. These learning resources have all been tried and developed in MYP classrooms, in one form or another. They have been submitted to various evaluation protocols, and I have published resources on other platforms. That said, everything here is just my approach - I think it aligns and honours the MYP framework well, but it shouldn't be treated as ‘MYP gospel’ nor taken dogmatically. Like science, it is all a work in progress - and your feedback as subscribers is part of the process!