Abstract
Reviewed by: Kenneth Corn, UWC Atlantic College, Wales, UK
This recently minted text arrives at an auspicious moment. The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the International Baccalaureate (IB), and specifically the IB Diploma Programme (IB DP). In 1968, the IB was launched, as something of a leap of faith, by forward-looking and visionary educators and institutions including the United Nations International School (New York), the International School of Geneva and Atlantic College, amongst others. Recognising the limitations of national curricula in an increasingly globalised world, and an increasing internationally minded community of learners who needed to be nurtured, there was an obvious requirement for an educational approach which could transcend the inevitable barriers of learning within a singular nation’s educational system. In 1968, this was both a far-reaching idea and a profoundly radical ideal. Pre-figuring the (mis)quote popularised by the 1989 film Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come’, the bold educators and innovators of that time fomented an educational paradigm shift towards a pedagogic system expressly and unashamedly internationalist and globalist (if still pre-dominantly ‘western’) in outlook.
And come they did. 50 years on, the International Baccalaureate is a highly regarded and broadly disseminated educational model that has continued to evolve. The IB has developed a continuum of programmes including the Primary Years Programme and the Middle Years Programme, which have augmented and complemented the Diploma Programme (DP). The most recent IB innovation and addition to its suite of programmes is the IB Career-related Programme (IB CP), formally launched in 2012. This 2017 text marks the IB CP’s five-year birthday and looks forward to where this young, but not entirely new, educational pathway might lead. If not quite the same magnitude of a leap-of-faith as the original founding of the IB Diploma might have been, it is no less an exciting, risk-taking, and potentially extraordinary new educational experiment and direction. As with any five-year old, there’s plenty more to discover, process, change, cultivate, develop and re-imagine. In many ways, the 50-year-old (middle-aged?) parent institution will look on with pride and awe as this youngster finds its role and place within the educational firmament.
That finding of role and place will certainly be expedited by Taking the IB CP Forward. This text operates on many levels to increase the reader’s insight and understanding of the IB CP, including those of introduction, overview, practical primer and guide, along with reportage of the lived experience of offering the IB CP in both national and international educational contexts. Taking the IB CP Forward offers a multiplicity of voices and perspectives from the educationalists and theorists at the International Baccalaureate and their aligned collaborators, along with stories from the schools, colleges and other educational institutions that have pioneered the delivery of this new, and at the time untested, IB programme. Those schools’ experiences in particular will be invaluable to any institution looking to take on the IB CP and adapt it to their own specific contextual and educational needs. They have done some heavy lifting for us all. Amidst their narratives are cautionary tales and humorous anecdotes; the highlighting of hurdles to be met and overcome, as well as inspirational stories of the genuine educational successes the adoption of the IB CP has facilitated for students and communities.
Perhaps what comes across mostly clearly in this relatively short text (under 200 pages) is the notion of the flexibility, adaptability and potential for innovation that the IB CP affords those institutions that adopt this programme as part of their educational offering. If, as hinted, the IB Diploma Programme has acquired some of those middle-aged qualities of becoming set in its ways, and perhaps not as limber and open to change as it once might have been, the IB CP maintains the lithe and limber attributes of the young. Although certainly a quality of youth, this is also one of conscious design. It is clear from the text, and from those writing from within the IB itself – including Dominic Robeau, the IB’s Senior Curriculum Manager responsible for the CP, whose initial chapter ‘An introduction to the Career-related Programme’ gives an insightful overview of the thinking behind the origins of the IB CP – that flexibility and adaptability were always going to make up a large element of the IB CP’s DNA.
There is also a profound recognition throughout many of the chapters, and coming from many of the different authors contributing to this book, that much of what we have come to expect and accept from education is no longer entirely fit for purpose in the 21st century. A guiding inspiration, and one that is cited more than a couple of times in this book, is Ken Robinson, whose seminal 2006 TED Talk and various writings have called for a radical reimagining of our educational systems, and asked the plaintive question ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ (Spoiler Alert: According to Sir Ken, they do). It is evident, as expressed in chapters written by Stewart Redden and others, that the IB CP should be seen as ‘a driver of change’ and ‘the catalyst for the necessary (21st Century educational) paradigm shift’ (pages 178 and 179, respectively). This sense of re-invigorated educational purpose and idealism is echoed throughout the text.
Of course, alongside that idealism comes some sharp doses of reality to be found in the writings of those who, through the exigencies of trial and error, have had to negotiate the initial hurdles and challenges of bringing this new programme into being in the real world. Certainly, issues of recognition, accreditation and credibility – along with the perceptions of parents, students, universities and employers – are all areas that, as with any educational innovation, those championing and instituting the IB CP continually need to nimbly navigate their way around. Again, the chapters written by teachers and administrators in the schools, at the chalk-face and on the ground throughout the world, are instructive.
As a navigational guide for anyone interested in the IB CP, or indeed in the shape of educational innovation in the 21st century, Taking the IB CP Forward is a very valuable text. It is clearly structured in three parts, giving an overview and context, along with clear descriptions of the key components of the CP, in the opening chapters. This is followed by narratives of how the CP has been implemented in state-funded schools, before the focus turns towards the adoption and experience of the CP within an international schools context. The final chapters of the text, as the title indicates, look forward; acknowledging yet embracing the challenges of this new educational model and programme.
Clearly, new models of education are needed as we all meet the challenges of our world at this point in history, and look towards a complex and uncertain future. That future can be a whole lot brighter if genuine transformational education is a part of the mix. The IB CP clearly has the potential to offer such pathways for our learners and for our institutions; not to mention exciting re-invigoration for those of us who are educators! Fifty years on from the founding of the International Baccalaureate, educational innovations are urgently required. The qualities that characterise the IB CP thus far, and which are elucidated in this text (including flexibility, adaptability, an openness to collaboration and an openness of mind-set to what can be achieved) offer real hope for all who care about such things – which should, of course, be all of us. Taking the IB CP Forward is both an excellent five-year marker and a dynamic directional sign towards that future.