How Do We Know That a Curriculum Is a "Thinking" Curriculum? The International Baccalaureate Challenge

• In Event: Sourcing Ideas for Innovation in Education: Research-Based Curriculum Review at the International Baccalaureate

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of the project is to develop a research-informed framework to evaluate the extent to which any curriculum is justified in claiming to be a ‘thinking’ curriculum. The IB programmes for primary, middle, and high school students have a long history of including broader learning goals and objectives in their programmes, such as the learner profile, the trans-disciplinary skills frameworks, and a focus on critical thinking and theory of knowledge. This research seeks to elucidate the extent to which these broader learning objectives, and the associated IB enquiry-based pedagogies and assessment, are sufficiently specific and customized to educate skilful thinkers.
Perspectives: The theoretical perspective relates to questions of curriculum alignment between objectives, pedagogical approaches and assessments, specifically in relation to explicitly teaching students to be more skilful thinkers.
Methods: The methods consisted of a literature review, the creation of an evaluation framework and audit tools, and the use of those tools to evaluate the IB programmes.
Data sources and participants: This phase of the project was confined to desk-based research and what could be discerned from IB curriculum specifications and guidance materials.
Conclusions: The literature review identifies a consistent set of core thinking constructs that should be included as objectives for any thinking curriculum. These included (1) forms of higher-order thinking such as analysis, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making - and the ability to engage in these forms of thinking collaboratively as well as individually; (2) metacognitive thinking – the ability to think about the thinking with the focus on improving future thinking; (3) thinking dispositions – as well as learning how to think, students need to develop the habit of thinking well and be sensitized to where and when skilful thinking is needed. However, these types of thinking need to be framed and described in ways that make them more teachable and, consequently, more assessable. To teach students to think more skillfully, these objectives need to be followed through with teaching strategies that explicitly prompt students to do so, through using thinking organizers, developing a thinking vocabulary, creating classroom dialogue that prompts extended exchanges about thinking, collaborative thinking, prompting metacognitive thinking as well as teaching to transfer the strategies across curriculum areas. Finally, assessment needs to provide specific feedback on expectations related to progress in thinking. Thus, progress in thinking needs to be specified separately in marking rubrics beyond, for example, the acquisition of subject-specific content knowledge, or fluency in written communication. Drawing on both the research literature and the authors’ considerable experience of classroom practice, an evaluative framework was created and applied to the three IB programmes. The general recommendation was to frame forms of higher-order thinking in ways that make them more teachable, more learnable, and more assessable.
Scholarly significance: Designed in the context of IB programmes, the project created a research-informed and practice-led framework for evaluating the extent to which any curriculum can be called a ‘thinking’ curriculum, and associated audit tools. These have the potential for use in any curriculum context.

Authors

• Carol McGuinness, Queen's University, Belfast, School of Educaiton

• Robert Swartz, Center for Teaching Thinking