CURRICULUM MATTERS
Resources and articles specifically connected to PYP curriculum development.
AUTHENTIC CONNECTIONS TO THE UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
How do we integrate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals into our curriculum authentically without it being tokenistic? I think there is a danger of ‘doing the goals by title’. If you look at the SDG targets, we have statements such as:
No Poverty
Target 1.1 By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day
Good Health and Well-being
Target 3.5 Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol.
The list goes on and as much as this list is incredibly important, how much of it is really understood by primary age children? How much of this can really connect to their lives? How much of this is it really possible to take authentic action ‘beyond a bake-sale’ on?
My answer to this question is to look behind the goal. I asked myself : ‘In order to understand this goal, what are the foundational habits of mind and conceptual understandings underpinning it’. For example, in order to lay the foundation to prevent substance abuse, children need to make connections to the concepts of health, well-being, safety and responsibility. Without these concepts, the target falls flat on its face.
Something that has stayed with me since I took a PYP course on action is that in order for children to want to take action, they have to care. So for SDGs such as 12,13, 14 and 15, opportunities for children to ‘fall in love’ with nature are essential to our curriculum. You can preach about ecosystems, deforestation, marine pollution all you want, but unless a child has had opportunity to experience the wonder of nature, whether it be investigating the local bug life or a trip to the forest, a stream or the sea, their appreciation is going to be limited.
The article linked here is an analysis of our Programme of Inquiry. For each goal, we thought about what concepts underpin it, what habits of mind (learner profiles) are complementary to it and then, within which units in our POI can these foundations be developed . This is work in progress and something that I am continuing to investigate.
MUSIC/ MATHS INTEGRATION
Music specialists and classroom teachers collaborated to investigate how music can integrate into stand-alone mathematics planning to deepen conceptual understanding across disciplines in a challenging, engaging way. The PYP mathematics and arts scope and sequence documents were used to investigate connections and produce a scaffolding document. The scaffolding document and a brief description of some of our findings are outlined in the attached document.
TRANSDISCIPLINARY LEARNING: A LITERATURE REVIEW
This is an extract from my Master's project on transdisciplinary learning. It is very theoretical in nature, but leaves us with the following questions to ponder:
Does transdisciplinary learning respect disciplinary skills, knowledge and understanding; is it a step up or a trivialisation?
Is the role of specialist teachers and their disciplines subservient or coequal?
How can we use the essential elements of the programme to address human commonalities and develop “cosmodern consciousness” (Nicolescu, 2014a, 2014b)?