The movies ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ and the TED talk by Jeff Hopkins reminded me of the animation of  Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on ‘Changing Education Paradigms’.

 

I was shown this video while taking part in an International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Year Program (MYP) conference. IB is a program that aims to institutionalize  concept based teaching with a focus on student inquiry and interdisciplinary approaches to learning. The program also discourages standardized tests and conventional class set ups in favor of project based assessments. It’s not a perfect program, but it provided me with my first look at concept based teaching and this has been a big influence in the formation of my personal pedagogy.

Re-structuring the entire education system will not happen over night. Teachers. parents and students are all used to standardized classes and testing. We are used to going to class and being spoon-fed information. Change is uncomfortable, especially when that change must have a cascading effect. For instance, if we change how K-12 students learn and are assessed, universities will also have to restructure their admission procedures and potentially their own teaching set ups.

Scaling it down a bit though, the application of conceptual based teaching can be easily accomplished in today’s classrooms, especially with the new version of the BC curriculum which includes ‘Big Ideas’ and the skill sets categorized as ‘Core Competencies’.

Here is a video I found that gives a good idea of how conceptual based teaching and learning can be applied in the classroom.