Latest / IB Unplugged / Beyond the Grade: Rethinking Assessment for Human Flourishing w/ Conrad Hughes

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Beyond the Grade: Rethinking Assessment for Human Flourishing w/ Conrad Hughes · IB Unplugged

0:00
Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IB educators,
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that tackles your submitted challenges and questions by connecting you with
0:08
experts and peers who share their ideas and stories from real classrooms.
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Whether you're a seasoned educator or new to the IB world, each bi weekly episode
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and guest aims to equip you with practical tips and positive inspiration,
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helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
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0:35
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of IB Unplugged.
0:39
Today's episode is super exciting actually for any educator.
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I think
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if you've gotten into the field
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of education,
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you got into this field because you wanted
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to have a positive impact on the lives of young people,
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and you want to see them flourish.
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You want to see them grow, to become more of themselves.
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And I think sometimes in education we can feel a bit constrained.
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Sometimes we get sort of caught up in here's
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the curriculum, here's the assessment model that I have to fit within.
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And in many cases, educators, I think we can feel kind of boxed in.
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And so we're excited about talking with Conrad Hughes today.
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Conrad is somebody who is really challenging this quite a bit.
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He's developed what's called the learner passport in his school,
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and created a consortium of schools that are essentially building this up
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together to effectively kind of punch up to universities
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and say, we want to shift the way that we're being measured right now.
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We want to shift the way that students are being assessed,
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what the curriculum looks like, and change these things moving forward.
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So, it's pretty exciting stuff.
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And so we've got a lot in it for you
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that's going to be quite good.
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I think.
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A little bit of background on Conrad.
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Conrad Hughes is the director general of the International School of Geneva,
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the oldest international school in the world.
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He is also professor in practice at the University of Durham's
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School of Education.
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He has been school principal, director of education, International Baccalaureate
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Diploma program coordinator
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and teacher in schools in Switzerland, France, India and the Netherlands.
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Conrad is also a senior fellow at UNESCO's International Bureau of Education,
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a member of the Advisory Board for the University of the people,
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and research
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assistant at the University of Geneva's Department of Psychology and Education,
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and teaches theory of knowledge. So we're talking about somebody
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who has a wide breadth of experience in different educational systems.
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And that's what made this, conversation so interesting, I think.
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Yeah, I agree, I really liked,
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so we started this conversation on reforming assessment.
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But then as we realized we moved on, we really started focusing on
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how are we looking at these competencies of students and how are we,
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yes, right now we do have to also do in the IB's case, these IB exams.
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But how else can we make sure that there is this,
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comprehensive picture of the student
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and what they are capable of and where they thrive,
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that isn't going to be shown in just the test scores.
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So I think the idea of the learner passport,
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which we're going to talk about in this episode, it's a great,
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one of many solutions that you can do to really be able to showcase a student's
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strengths and really be able to also really highlight
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these things about the student and really be able to focus on them
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in your own classroom, but also in the school as a whole.
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Yeah.
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So if you are an educator interested in breaking through the constraints
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that a curriculum and assessment can sometimes put on you, stay tuned.
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Because this episode has a lot of interesting things for you.
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We hope you enjoy.
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Hi Conrad, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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Thanks so much for joining us today.
3:44
Hi, Courtney.
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We want to start off with the same way that we asked each of our episode guests.
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And we want to get a little bit of background.
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So if you could kick us off
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with just explaining why you chose a career in education.
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Great question.
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So I was born in South Africa, in the early 1970s, and I hated school.
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I had terrible relationship with most of my teachers.
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I was naughty.
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I would bunk class.
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I got punished a lot.
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And then my life changed when I went to an international school.
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Which was also an anti-apartheid school called
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Waterford Kamhlaba.
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It's a great school.
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It exists today.
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It's the United World College of Southern Africa.
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Run by a great woman. Jackie.
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And you know, those days,
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I guess three things happened when I went to that school.
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The first was there were no uniforms.
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The second is it was co-educational.
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So the boys and girls
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and the third is there were children from all over the world, all over Africa.
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So it's a really huge mind opening experience.
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And I think unconsciously
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I was drawn to international education at that point.
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A few years later, I had this incredible French teacher.
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And he came along
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teaching French literature.
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I wasn't doing French literature because my French wasn't very good,
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but I wanted to be one of his disciples, one of his followers,
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because it was something of a cult following around.
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No. I'm serious.
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Was a bit like Dead Poets Society, you know, he'd
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toss the scarf over his shoulder and these piercing blue eyes,
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and he'd write these French poems
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about the sound of his teeth sinking into an apple.
5:27
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
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He used to take his students off to drink espresso
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over their literature classes.
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I mean, who wouldn't want to be part of that?
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And eventually I actually managed to get my IB diploma, a subject
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package change. I dropped, a subject I was doing really well in.
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At the high level.
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I picked up French and I was one like, you're probably going to fail.
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But I didn't listen to them and I went and did it.
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They don't understand this, this guy, I've got to follow him.
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Yeah, the French one
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that being the worst subject on my IB diploma in terms of the score.
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But what he did was
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he evoked some kind of passion in me
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yeah,
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for knowledge, for learning, for literature, for French.
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And that's never left me.
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So if I'm going to thank anyone
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for the path that I took to go into education would have to be him.
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My old French teacher is no longer
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with us, but, yeah, a terrific influence on me.
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I love hearing that.
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You know, great educators are also inspired by great educators.
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And that's a really powerful message that you've just shared.
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You know, and I think it's really affirming
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for any educator out there to recognize, like, we have influence.
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You know, we have the possibility to inspire young people,
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just as you, when you were younger, to recognize, like, there's
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something powerful here with an education that I can get involved in.
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So now the thinking about the role of education,
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our second warm up question we always like to ask our guest is,
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how do you see the role of the educator evolving in the coming years?
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I mean, to me, it's pretty simple, really.
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Luke Fairley,
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who was the minister of education
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in France, is a friend of mine, is a fantastic mind,
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and he comes from the whole lineage of
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who invented national education in France in the 1800s.
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He would always say, and I think he still says it,
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that there's a difference in French between
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which is, if you like, pedagogy
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or sort of instruction, that's what teachers do.
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is what families do.
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So an education which is moral, which is about,
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your value is about really,
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sort of big picture, decision making, elements of our life
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that comes from your home values, from your culture, from your family.
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Whereas in the classroom you're learning maths, you're learning science.
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It's very technical.
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That's the old view,
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and what we're seeing today and what we're going to see more and more,
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I believe, is that teachers have to educate
8:11
not just instruct.
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It's about, taking into consideration,
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mental health,
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values and identity and culture.
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It's about getting people to learn to live together.
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It's about considering everything that a student can do,
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not just their ability to perform
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well in a highly technical environment.
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So increasingly holistic
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and increasingly, human and,
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all encompassing and therefore, you know, increasingly complex.
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That's one thing.
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And the other
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is education used to be about the past.
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And now increasingly it's about the future.
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So it's all about knowing history.
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You know, transmission of knowledge, understanding the values of the past.
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So that young people could be inserted into society.
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Having caught up, if you like, with,
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the ambient knowledge and cultural
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understanding that was expected of. Now
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and in the future, I think we're going to be more and more challenged.
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And we already are, to think about preparing young people for known
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unknowns, for, increasingly rapid cycles of disruption.
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Which means that we're shifting
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from knowledge of content,
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which is storing your long term memory to the ability,
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the skillfulness with which,
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and the capability that young people
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must have in areas of complexity, volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity.
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Sounds like you're talking about areas of citizenship.
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You know how to be an active citizen and contribute positively to the societies
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that we might occupy and the dynamic nature of those societies as they shift.
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And being prepared for what that's bringing up.
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I think so, absolutely. You know,
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these political institutions are,
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to young people, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which is on its way,
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not what they were to, millennials
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and older generations because of a shift
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in the way that knowledge and information is distributed.
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And also,
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a feeling that,
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you know, getting out there and making a difference and doing something,
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it's not necessarily something that you invest
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in a government or some sort of, macroscopic
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entity that you vote for, and they taking care of it.
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I think increasingly, you know, we're sort of building into
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the consciousness of young people, sustainable development
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goals, global problems, things that we all need to solve ourselves.
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And of course, in an increasingly mobile environment, you know,
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you're not even sure exactly where you're necessarily going to be doing it.
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I hesitate when I say that because, of course, the majority of the world's
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population still lives where it was born and where it will die.
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We mustn't forget that.
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We mustn't sort of get swept up by a global elite,
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which is a small percentage, that's extremely mobile.
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Even in those places, though, the idea of community still shifting.
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Even if you never leave your home, it's suddenly
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children
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and kind of younger people have these bigger
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and more global communities virtually, and those are starting to influence them
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a lot more than previous generations too. Absolutely.
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And we also need to give them the confidence, the knowledge and skills
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to be able to thrive beyond wherever they are,
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if that's what they want to do.
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And to kind of take ownership
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and responsibility in terms of what they can bring and contribute,
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to their society, to their group as well.
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I think this, brings us up into a kind of our main topic
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here in this episode, which is about, reforming assessment.
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And so to kick us off on that, I'd like to invite you up onto a soapbox
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and be able to explain to us, really set the stage, what are the most
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important reasons why you believe that assessment needs to be reformed?
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What we need
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for today and tomorrow
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it's creativity.
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It's future fitness, it's innovation,
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it's intercultural competencies.
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Learning to live together.
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You look at the World Economic Forum's, forecast of skills for the future,
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you get elements
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like the ones I've just mentioned.
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Up there in the top set of ten skills needed.
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And yet when you look at the end of high school in most schools,
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what's being tested hasn't really changed all that much
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since about the 1850s.
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It's largely knowledge regurgitation.
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It's the ability
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to take tests and to win on tests, which is great,
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but how many tests are you actually going to do in your professional world?
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The environment that we're living in is about managing projects,
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interacting with people,
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and viewing for thinking up the box.
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And yet, you know, we've got all these young people cooped up in examination
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rooms doing multiple choice tests, short item responses, cramming
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knowledge, and getting all stressed about it, just before.
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So that's one problem.
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It's a lack of curriculum relevance,
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which is driven by the assessment model, because it's not as if educators
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and curriculum design teams don't know that
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we need to be testing new types of knowledge.
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It's just that the assessment instruments
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that we've created make it very difficult to do that.
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That's one problem. They're basically three.
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The second, it's, the narrowing of assessments.
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So you look in a primary school classroom, kids, they’re drawing,
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they're playing music,
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they're running around outside,
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having fun, having naps.
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The learning is transdisciplinary.
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They're looking at units of inquiry.
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They're doing projects. It's great.
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There's a lot of exploration.
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And if you look at what the parents are doing with them outside of school day,
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they're often putting them in extra sports and arts classes.
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And, you know, it could also be in the communities that
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they're having a lot more outdoor experiences.
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In general,
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what happens is that broad base of experience gets more and more narrow
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as we get closer and closer to the end of high school,
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where we have to focus on certain subjects.
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And what happens is we start to drop those extracurricular activities
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that we're doing.
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High school kids don't go to sports day anymore.
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They stop being in the school play.
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They don't have enough time.
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And basically the curriculum becomes more and more narrow.
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Okay?
15:18
And I'm not talking about, you know, A-levels being more narrow.
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For example, narrower than, the baccalaureate,
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it's the amount of content
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that needs to be looked at within subjects.
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And the heaviness of it,
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is such that the psychic energy of young people,
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is focused almost entirely on that.
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And you get a lot of talent, a lot of gifts that are lost.
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X could have carried on with the sports that they were so good
15:51
at as a young child.
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But they stopped
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because they have to make choices.
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You know why
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could have gone on with, you know,
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art and music
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and theater, but, you know, had to make some choices.
16:06
And guess what? Chose science and maths over that.
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There's nothing wrong with science and maths, but it's a pity that we
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narrow things down so much, and then you can get into choice systems.
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Or you can get into curriculum design
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configurations. It doesn't really matter.
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What you see is a narrowing in the experience.
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And the last thing, the last thing.
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Let me just get to the last thing.
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Yeah, it's the high stakes nature of it.
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And this is maybe the worst bit.
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Yeah. It's become so ultra competitive.
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There's so much stress.
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There's so much ego, around performance,
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around, you know, getting into the right university, about getting the best school,
16:45
about being better than others, that it creates teaching to the test,
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learning to the test,
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extreme stress,
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and also superficial learning, a kind of learning
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bulimia.
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So those are the three problems.
17:01
I'd say it's,
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the broad based nature of learning,
17:07
is narrowed
17:10
the stakes and the competitiveness,
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I should say, is heightened to an unhealthy degree.
17:18
And the creativity, the exploration is lost.
17:25
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18:05
Yeah, I think,
18:07
when you were talking, especially about that second point, about the narrowing
18:10
and also especially, I think, in the IB, where it is quite competitive,
18:14
there's also really this push to focus on what they say,
18:18
what you're good at, or what they expect you to get high scores and where,
18:22
I'd imagine I was thinking about your example,
18:24
where you're saying that they told me I was probably going to not do
18:27
well at French.
18:28
I could have gotten a higher score if I picked another subject, but then
18:33
this was ultimately the class that sparked your passion
18:36
and that you were able to do.
18:37
I wonder how often and how tricky that is that trade off of just because
18:41
you're not necessarily good at something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
18:45
But when you're so focused on assessment, then you're always going to,
18:50
by default, be kind of pushing these children
18:53
and these students to do what you expect them to score better on.
18:59
Hey, look, it's happening all the time, particularly in language.
19:01
So, you know, in a bilingual environment, students doing a second language
19:06
and after, you know, 3, 4 or 5 years, it's pretty good at it.
19:11
And so they should be doing language A.
19:14
But the chances of them getting a seven in language A
19:17
are much lower than them getting a seven in language B,
19:21
so the school pushed them into language A and possibly against their will,
19:26
because on the other side you got universities
19:28
saying you need to get a seven.
19:31
You need to get, you know, X score.
19:34
And that 1 or 2 points difference
19:37
is going to have a huge effect on the child's, future.
19:41
And so there's a conflict there
19:42
all of a sudden.
19:44
If I heard you correctly,
19:45
it sounds like the relevance of the assessments that we have now
19:49
is far removed from what we need to be focusing on for young people.
19:54
And it kind of a almost a challenge to the early specialization.
19:59
You know, like you mentioned, sort of the narrowing of content
20:02
and narrowing of what people are going to be focusing on,
20:04
you know, as a university careers advisor.
20:06
I think of this through the lens of, you know, helping people
20:09
identify what they think they want to do later on in life.
20:12
And in that respect, I guess I can align with this idea of,
20:14
oh, we want to help you get toward that specialism
20:17
and figure out, is this actually what you want to do?
20:19
Or, you know, where do you think in the wrong thing?
20:21
And do we need to pivot a different direction.
20:24
But it lends itself to, you know,
20:26
I know you're about to publish a book here
20:28
called Changing Assessment, How to Design Curriculum for Human Flourishing.
20:32
And when we think about the curriculum and specifically what you just pointed to,
20:35
the narrowing of that curriculum and kind of getting that specialism
20:38
toward the end of the IBDP, an entry into university,
20:42
we know that curriculum can be designed for many different purposes.
20:45
And I'd like to,
20:46
you know, dive in a little bit more to what you're looking at here.
20:48
What's the thought behind the term human flourishing?
20:51
Do you see that encompassing that specialization
20:54
that people might be trying to acquire before university?
20:57
Or do you see it widening more and kind of,
21:00
you know, doing the opposite of what you were just mentioning with regard to,
21:03
like narrowing the curriculum and instead expanding that curriculum for people
21:06
as they get close to, you know, leaving, secondary school.
21:10
Yeah. Look, it's challenging.
21:12
It's much easier to point out the problem than to come up with a solution.
21:17
Speaking of flourishing, let's just just draw an analogy, okay?
21:21
So you plant a seed in
21:26
a pot,
21:27
and you want there to be lots of soil.
21:30
You want the soil to be rich.
21:32
You want the soil to be full of nutrients
21:35
to receive water.
21:39
And as that seed
21:40
grows into, you know, a plant and starts
21:44
to really reach up and grow its leaves, it it needs oxygen.
21:49
It needs sunlight.
21:51
And the longer you can keep
21:53
that healthy ecosystem going,
21:56
the more resplendent, the more flourishing that tree will become.
22:00
I think it's kind of the same with human beings, and that if you take
22:05
an educational experience where a child
22:09
is receiving a number of different,
22:13
rich interactions,
22:14
experiences, keeping his or her or their mind open,
22:19
exploring different, avenues,
22:24
it's stimulating all sorts of, new, connections.
22:28
And there's health and joy in that.
22:31
If you take away all the pressure as well, it you know, it comes with exams.
22:34
But what we do is and we kind of uproot that plant and put it in a much smaller
22:38
pot where, okay, now you need to focus on this.
22:43
It works for some, it doesn't work for others.
22:46
And it's those others that I'm kind of interested in,
22:49
the ones that drop out of school, the ones that say, this isn't for me
22:53
because the school doesn't see my passion or my passion doesn't belong in school.
22:58
You know, I want to be an entrepreneur.
23:00
I want to be a racecar driver or whatever.
23:04
And school isn't letting me let that talent flourish.
23:08
So we have to figure out a way of broadening assessment
23:12
so that those gifts that are growing into talents, those there's some leaves
23:17
or branches that are really reaching out, that we nourish and keep them going.
23:24
Whereas what we've done is just saying,
23:25
okay, can only really flourish in maths and history in English.
23:29
And, you know, those are beautiful subjects, but not everybody fits into that.
23:33
What about the guys who don't fit in there?
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That's the thing that keeps coming back to me
23:37
after all these years in education and observing human beings,
23:41
observing so many intelligent people, young and older,
23:45
who didn't fit into that rigid system of school.
23:48
And so what are we doing about it?
23:50
That's what's pushing.
23:51
And I think this is what I talk about in the book.
23:54
There is a way of broadening assessment,
23:59
so that we can get closer to that vision of flourishing.
24:03
So, yeah, I mean, talk me through
24:06
it's not necessarily, an abolishing of assessment.
24:10
It's an evolution of assessment.
24:12
And are you thinking of this more in now
24:14
it's about assessing more of those skills and competencies rather than,
24:20
or is it like the the medium of assessment?
24:23
What are kind of the most important changes that you think need to happen?
24:26
Yeah. Great question.
24:28
You kind of said
24:29
it already using the word competence.
24:32
So you know, we talked about 21st century skills.
24:35
I'm not so keen on skills, whether the soft skills or hard skills
24:39
because the skill is technical aptitude.
24:42
What we're looking at in a competence,
24:45
it's a unity of skill,
24:48
of knowledge and of attitude.
24:51
Your knowledge is your CV, the experience,
24:54
degrees, diplomas or qualifications.
24:57
Your skill is okay, how
24:58
well you can, you know, use this program or, work with that tool
25:04
or, do such and such a thing.
25:07
Where the attitude
25:08
it's showing up on time.
25:10
It's working in a team.
25:12
It's being a follower, a leader.
25:15
It's being empathetic.
25:16
It's knowing how to listen, to work with people.
25:19
And the list goes on.
25:21
The three need to come together.
25:22
And once you start thinking that way,
25:25
you kind of redefine what it is we're aiming for.
25:28
So it's not, you know,
25:30
history, English,
25:33
geography, physics, maths.
25:37
And then on the side of athletics,
25:40
music, visual arts
25:42
and then at home, you know,
25:46
passion project, YouTubing
25:48
DJing. It's you think about all of those things
25:52
and you say, what are the competencies that they are evoking?
25:56
Is it possible the student is good at maths,
26:00
and the student who is setting up a business
26:03
that they're actually exemplifying the same kind of competence.
26:08
There might be more emphasis on the skill
26:12
in one area and a bit more emphasis on the attitude in the other.
26:15
Is it possible that a student who is passionate about the environment
26:19
and is working on environmental custodianship,
26:21
and then a student is very good at geography,
26:24
to actually exploring a similar competence, is it possible
26:28
that a student who's chosen a number of,
26:31
subjects, maybe extra subjects,
26:34
and a student who is, involved in some kind of highly creative,
26:40
entrepreneurial project that they're actually exemplifying the same competence.
26:45
Once you start thinking that way,
26:47
then you assessing these clusters of skill, attitude
26:51
and knowledge, academic and nonacademic,
26:56
and you wind up with this new vision
26:58
where the educated person
27:01
might have got their diploma
27:04
through one of many different pathways.
27:08
So we've come up with seven.
27:12
This is actually the work with Unesco, some flagship papers done in 2017.
27:17
And it's really very powerful.
27:19
Because a lot of different skills, matrices and competence,
27:24
frameworks out there.
27:25
But I think this to me and to the people I've worked
27:27
with, is the most compelling and enduring one.
27:28
It's lifelong learning, learning to learn and living to learn throughout your life,
27:34
which we know is needed, self agency,
27:37
so that's autonomy, entrepreneurship, standing on your own two feet,
27:41
critical thinking, having an opinion, balancing rights and responsibilities,
27:46
and all of the ethical kind of responsibility that goes with that,
27:50
different types of interaction.
27:52
So a lot of interactions interacting with the environment,
27:54
the world, interacting with tools and resources.
27:57
And, you know, that's not become obviously artificial intelligence now rapidly
28:01
evolving tools and interacting with other people.
28:04
Okay.
28:04
Social skills, people skills if you like.
28:08
It's more than a skill.
28:10
That's a shorthand and,
28:13
transdisciplinarity.
28:14
So areas of learning where you're transferring across domains.
28:20
And the last one is literacies multi literate ness.
28:22
So health literacy
28:23
cultural literacy financial literacy scientific literacy numeracy.
28:28
And what we've done is we've said within these seven areas you can identify
28:32
just about all the activities that are students involved in
28:37
and award them for the progress they're making.
28:41
So what you get at the end, and this is where it really becomes very powerful,
28:44
I feel,
28:46
it's a representation of each student
28:49
that is more or less weighted to a different competence.
28:53
But there are no winners or losers because some have got more of this
28:56
and some have got more of that.
28:58
But we're not all trying
28:59
to do the same thing,
29:00
because when you put people in an environment where they have to compete
29:04
against one another and you're taking the top 5%, the top 10%,
29:07
as opposed to saying, hey, we're really looking for people who are,
29:10
you know, lifelong learners or here
29:12
we're really looking for people who can transfer knowledge.
29:16
It's a little bit like that cartoon that you must have seen
29:19
where there's a tree and there's a seal and an elephant and a monkey,
29:22
and I think a goldfish.
29:23
And the judge says, right, climb up that tree.
29:25
So you're getting rid of that issue.
29:27
And you also starting to mitigate some of,
29:31
the competitive sort of one upmanship,
29:34
zero sum game mentality that's,
29:38
infected assessment so much over the years. It’s not perfect.
29:42
But we've been working on this in my school for five years now.
29:46
And, you know, it's changing the game.
29:50
And this is the learner passport.
29:52
This is the learner passport. And in my book I talk about it at the end.
29:55
It's not the only alternative transcript.
29:57
And that there are quite a few out there, which I think is good as well.
30:00
It's good that there's a a multiplicity of different,
30:04
attempts to capture student competencies, because what that's saying
30:08
is that they're more grounded and situated in specific contexts.
30:14
And that's also important.
30:16
This all one size fits all thing.
30:17
It's very industrial.
30:19
As part of the problem. But
30:20
ours is that the one we've developed at
30:22
Ecoland is the learner passport.
30:25
So what is the learner passport
30:27
actually look like or what's the story that's told in that?
30:31
So let's say what would your learner passport look like?
30:36
So it's a donut.
30:38
We started with a radiograph.
30:41
But because everyone's got such a deficit mindset at education,
30:43
they started looking at the troughs instead of the spikes.
30:46
So it's like oh there's not much of that.
30:47
There's not enough of this is not doing well.
30:49
Just let's forget about the peaks and troughs things
30:52
and let's have a donut.
30:54
So there's a circle and then you've got bands which show,
30:58
the amount of learning
31:01
and flourishing has taken place in each of those seven areas.
31:04
And those seven areas have been,
31:07
populated by data,
31:10
over four years, that is celebrating students academic achievements,
31:16
extra curricular achievements, home achievements.
31:20
So the university admissions office
31:21
the employer gets this, you know, technology backed donut.
31:28
There's more detail underneath that.
31:30
You can you can find out more
31:31
about how each of these competencies were put together.
31:35
And each one will be different.
31:37
I don't have a passport.
31:39
Maybe we should do one for ourselves.
31:42
But I guess
31:45
I think I have quite a lot of lifelong learning because I'm someone who's,
31:49
something that motivates me, and I like kind of, you know,
31:51
taking on new challenges, doing new courses,
31:55
creating things.
31:56
It's very much part of my DNA.
31:58
So I imagine if it were valid,
32:02
that's what would show up.
32:04
And probably quite a lot of interacting with others.
32:10
Of course, it's a bit skewed if you're doing with adults.
32:11
It's not to say you can't do with adults because it's kind of reflecting our,
32:16
work, which dominates a lot of our time.
32:19
Yeah.
32:20
Whereas with young people, it's the whole idea
32:23
is it's reflecting what's already there, which is the course that they have to do.
32:26
But we're bringing in some of the things that they've chosen and that exploring.
32:31
And we wanted them to keep exploring and keep choosing these things,
32:34
and that the dream is that, you know, that the kids
32:37
I was talking about earlier who stopped doing, you know, ballet or,
32:42
art or pottery or whatever, it was, jujitsu,
32:45
because they had to prepare for the exam.
32:46
So they've continued with that because, in fact,
32:49
they'll get some kind of credit for it in the end,
32:51
and they'll be considered as educated, as others.
32:56
So now help me understand, does this go
32:58
parallel or alongside IB diploma program stuff as well?
33:02
Or do you see is this kind of separate?
33:06
So whenever you're looking at,
33:09
sort of curriculum reform within a school,
33:13
which is in the form of a framework or some kind of movement
33:17
within a framework, you have to do everything you can to make it substituted
33:22
and to make it integrative and not additive.
33:26
Otherwise you punishing the students.
33:27
You're saying, okay, I'm going to make you do more work,
33:30
because we think this is important. And you know, they hate it.
33:33
And in fact, if you look
33:34
at the way students respond to the IB
33:37
and I love the IB, don't
33:38
get me wrong, but some of the things that have been put in place,
33:42
they don't like it because just a huge amount of extra work
33:45
and they don't see that the meaning in it, the sense in it.
33:48
I mean just sort of uploading and you know, internal assessments
33:51
and going through planning and progress forms and reflections is a lot of work
33:55
and you have to do it like for every single subject.
33:58
So, what we did was we had this vision of the passport
34:00
and we worked with the IB quite early on to see how we could integrate.
34:03
And they let us do CAS through the passport.
34:07
Okay.
34:08
So every student does CAS through the passport.
34:12
And you know, I'm grateful to Ali and his team for allowing us to do that.
34:17
The IB is partnered with a number of schools
34:19
and not only school based syllabuses, but innovative projects.
34:24
So that
34:25
you kind of still getting the IB diploma, but you're doing it through the passport.
34:30
Now, we're not 100% there because there is a bit of lifting that has to happen.
34:34
Discussions with mentors, checking in on your competence
34:39
descriptions to make sure that they are valid.
34:41
The next chapter of the passport is to use technology to make
34:44
that as seamless and as almost, you know, automatic as possible.
34:50
Today's cog tip is from Claudia Rimmer from Collegio Colombia
34:54
Britanico.
34:55
Claudia's tip is to use Kognity’s reading assignments and reflection questions
34:59
before class to help students engage with complex topics at their own pace.
35:04
Having students read and reflect in advance allows our class
35:08
discussions to be much richer and more dynamic as they come in
35:11
with questions, ideas, and a stronger grasp of the material.
35:15
She also finds Kognity to be incredibly student friendly
35:18
and easy to use, which has encouraged independent learning in her classroom.
35:22
Thanks, Claudia.
35:25
Now, I don't mean to
35:26
get too far into the technical bits here, but just in terms,
35:30
so if I'm a student going through this, just make sure I understand it.
35:33
They'll get a report whenever reports are coming.
35:36
And that's that report on the passport.
35:38
So it's their competencies in those seven areas you described.
35:43
And they would also do this alongside preparing,
35:46
as you said, IA’s and uploading coursework
35:48
and that sort of thing for the IB diploma program.
35:50
So is this am I understanding this correctly that throughout the program
35:54
they'll get that learn passport constantly sort of updating and the donut
35:58
kind of shifting and changing as they develop those competencies.
36:02
And then all the while they are still now preparing for,
36:06
yeah, final examinations and all the parts of the IB diploma program.
36:09
That's exactly it.
36:10
And it's not before the IB, but the subjects are doing
36:14
and the grades are getting in those subjects.
36:17
That goes into the the passport automatically.
36:19
Okay.
36:20
We put some web development, basically put some development over it
36:24
so that that happens automatically.
36:26
Everything you're doing for CAS
36:30
comes through the passport and then the things that you're doing
36:34
that might not be in CAS, because you started before the IB diploma.
36:39
Or they don't sort of fit the criteria for CAS.
36:43
If you choose to put them in your passport, they'll be there too.
36:46
There's a bit of element of choice here in terms of what students
36:48
might want to include in their passport.
36:50
Exactly, there is that choice.
36:53
There is some, agency, the mentor, is needed as a kind of coach
36:59
to check in on the validity of the,
37:03
of the passport, competencies.
37:06
Okay.
37:06
We try not to use the word credits
37:08
because credit has a very specific connotation with it.
37:12
That's how it works.
37:13
So basically, if I'm a student, my last four years of school,
37:16
the discussions I'm having with my mentor will be about the passport.
37:19
How's the passport stacking up?
37:21
And at the end of school, I get the passport.
37:23
And we've seen a number of universities show a real interest in the passport.
37:27
So our guidance counselor has helped us develop it.
37:29
And if universities know about the passport and they're interested in it,
37:33
we send it in there with the IB diploma or with the predicted grades,
37:36
and it enhances the application.
37:38
Yeah.
37:39
I mean, like as I'm hearing you describe this, I'm seeing something
37:42
that is very much informed, both quantitatively,
37:45
as you mentioned, with IB scores and that sort of thing and qualitatively.
37:49
And when I think of all the letters of recommendation and whatnot that
37:52
I'm writing for universities, you know, for students as they apply, I'm
37:56
thinking this passport kind of tells a lot of that story,
38:00
because it sounds like it's got evidence.
38:02
It sounds like it's got the qualitative as well as the quantitative.
38:05
It's going through the different competencies.
38:07
And in many ways
38:08
it sounds like it's describing for universities or future employers
38:12
all the specific things that they may need to know
38:15
that a university guidance counselor like myself may successfully touch on
38:19
or may actually miss when I'm writing that letter of recommendation as well.
38:23
So it sounds like it's actually a really powerful tool
38:25
to help describe an individual as they're leaving the school.
38:29
Exactly. That's exactly it.
38:31
It's synthetic.
38:33
You can you can see a lot quickly.
38:36
And things like running off students to know
38:39
what to put in recommendation letters.
38:41
I mean, that's kind of over because they've
38:42
already built up this portfolio and you can see that much more.
38:45
All right.
38:45
I'm getting sold on the idea I like it.
38:49
But talk to me about some of the,
38:52
some of the counterarguments or some of the kind of the,
38:55
for lack of a better term, the naysayers like,
38:57
how did this progress and what were some of the harder
38:59
sort of obstacles to overcome in developing the learner passports?
39:04
And, you know, this kind of moves back to the book and some of the,
39:10
historical,
39:12
and, science of assessment
39:15
driven reasons why we have the model that we do today,
39:18
because it's important not to throw the baby out
39:20
with the bathwater or just think that, you know,
39:22
you can invent things off the bat and there are problems,
39:27
so, you know, in
39:27
assessment, you basically got two very important constructs.
39:31
They're not the only ones, but but they're important.
39:33
It's reliability and validity.
39:36
Right.
39:37
So reliability is
39:40
if I were to run this test over and over again
39:43
in different circumstances, maybe with different cohorts,
39:46
would I get a similar kind of band of results?
39:49
Is the test, something that is fair
39:54
and can be administered in different contexts?
39:58
Or is it sort of,
40:00
yeah,
40:02
do I get my students essays and just throw them down the stairs?
40:05
And the ones that land at the bottom get a seven
40:07
and the one that then at the top get a one.
40:08
You tell me that's not how we're supposed to grade it?
40:11
That's how I grade them. I'm sure.
40:13
But yeah, there's a huge emphasis on this and
40:16
then there's validity, which is am I testing what I'm meant to be testing?
40:21
So if I want to see how well you can run a 100m,
40:24
I don't ask you to do a science experiment.
40:26
And if I want to see how well you understand photosynthesis,
40:30
you know, I don't ask you to play the guitar, right?
40:34
Now, the needle of
40:36
assessment tends to go in one direction
40:39
or the other because unfortunately, there's some tension between them.
40:43
So if I really want to test to be reliable,
40:47
I'm going to make it as objective as possible.
40:51
And if it's objective, it means the things that I'm testing need
40:54
to be assessed as objectively as possible,
40:58
which means that point of view,
41:01
creativity,
41:04
different perspectives kind of flies out the window
41:07
and you wind up with these very, limited knowledge, regurgitation type,
41:13
tests, multiple choice, as a typical example.
41:17
That's really driven the assessment model because assessment is highly politicized
41:22
because it's so high stakes and questions of fairness come first.
41:26
There's a lot riding on it,
41:27
a lot of money behind it.
41:29
People, expecting results to reflect performance.
41:33
And if they don't, there's a problem, understandably,
41:36
but that's killed off some of the validity.
41:38
And so
41:40
as we
41:40
move, you know, further and further into the 21st century,
41:44
and we know that these, competencies for now and for tomorrow are needed,
41:49
there's some efforts to
41:53
weave them into assessments, but, they're pretty weak, to be honest.
41:58
Now, the passport is very valid because we're going straight to
42:03
maybe not perfect, but we think a strong match of their competence.
42:06
The attitude, all the things that we see happening and how it's also reflected.
42:11
So, you know, that so much creativity went into this.
42:16
I really want that to come up.
42:17
There was so much passion and investment and focus here.
42:21
I want that to come out, the way that you were,
42:25
just, collaborating with people was exceptional.
42:28
I want that to come out.
42:29
Where we lose a little bit is on the side of reliability because,
42:35
one passports
42:36
different to the next because some students,
42:40
not some all students are given some kind of agency
42:43
in choosing some of the topics that go in that,
42:46
it's not always that easy to report accurately on what's happened.
42:50
It's a little bit like a personal statement,
42:52
you know, your guidance counselor.
42:53
So, you know, I want to get into university
42:55
and I give you my personal statement and I say, you know, I've done this
42:59
and I've done that.
43:00
Some of it you can't check up on, you know, it's a little bit like a CV.
43:05
So one of our challenges is to try and bring
43:07
as much reliability into the passport design as possible.
43:10
And, you know, we've got the coach or the mentor vetting it.
43:14
We've already got we've got this algorithm
43:16
that converts grades straight into a passport to the coefficient.
43:19
So that's okay.
43:20
But around the more attitudinal constructs that's a challenge.
43:25
And alternative assessments face that.
43:28
Where we're strong I think is in validity. So.
43:32
That's a challenge.
43:33
And another one of the sort of,
43:36
criticisms that you can get of alternative assessments.
43:39
It's the predictability of it.
43:42
Well, it's predictive value.
43:43
So okay, when you say this passport is telling us
43:47
that the student's a lifelong learner, but how do we actually know that?
43:50
So if I see on the donut that can there's this much lifelong learning.
43:55
How do I know that that's really the case later on?
43:58
They actually going to become a lifelong learner.
43:59
Is it really telling me at university that they're going to be in a lapping
44:02
up all these courses?
44:05
Whereas if you've got this
44:06
straight line from high school to university, basically of courses,
44:11
even though high school courses become more complex
44:14
in university because you've got more transdisciplinary and sort of,
44:17
you know, subject branches, there's still more of a predictive element.
44:22
So you can say, okay,
44:23
very well in science, you've got sevens in
44:26
physics, chem and maths.
44:29
You want to do engineering.
44:31
I can see that. Like,
44:33
where's it, the passport.
44:34
If a student's got a huge amount of,
44:37
you know, interacting with the world, how do we know
44:40
in which university funnel they're going to perform?
44:44
So obviously there's some questions there.
44:46
I mean, okay.
44:48
Yeah.
44:48
So it kind of leaves itself open for, some growth still and trying to, as you
44:53
say, like understanding the reliability, the validity of it and really backing up,
44:57
I guess the evidence that sort of supports where somebody is in the knowledge
45:01
that what this passport is suggesting is going to be reliable years
45:06
to come as well.
45:07
You know, in the book I talk about the origin of the timetable.
45:10
It's one of the earlier chapters.
45:12
So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Harvard University,
45:17
was getting students who would come through different types of schools,
45:21
and some had studied 120 hours, others had studied for for 20 hours.
45:25
Courses were different,
45:27
and they were trying to decide who should get in and who shouldn't.
45:29
And there were just they found it increasingly difficult.
45:32
And so they had to standardize things.
45:34
So the president of the college worked with the Carnegie Foundation
45:39
to come up with something called the Carnegie Unit, which is 120 hours of
45:43
study is required for you to have credit to get into this university.
45:48
And, the university
45:51
admissions teams and professors, they didn't like this
45:54
because they weren't used to it.
45:54
And so then to threaten them, with not paying them that pension,
45:59
for them to agree to this, they forced it into this Carnegie unit.
46:04
And once they did that, the universities, they said,
46:06
we're not going to let you in if you haven't done 120 hours per course.
46:09
All of the high schools started changing.
46:11
And then if you take that 120 hours and then you think
46:14
of the number of subjects you tend to do, in,
46:19
standard curriculum, that can change a bit,
46:21
but let's say in an American or European style curriculum.
46:25
And then you think of the number of weeks, working weeks in a year,
46:28
the number of working hours in a day,
46:31
taking, outside, of that break lunch,
46:36
you come up with the fact the timetables are pretty similar
46:40
across different countries so that, you know, they
46:43
something in the region of, you know, four
46:46
blocks of 45 minutes, per subject and then,
46:50
you know, you'll have whatever it is, 30, maybe 36 hours in a week.
46:54
So that creates this checkerboard.
46:58
That's another type of reliability.
47:00
So we know that everybody's getting a similar type of experience.
47:04
Right.
47:04
But straight away you're starting to kill that whole primary kind of,
47:09
project based accordion model where I can go deeper here.
47:14
I can, you know, I can slow things down.
47:16
I can speed them up, and it's become an enemy of learning as,
47:20
one of my, references,
47:22
David Perkins from Harvard actually says, well, maybe that's how it got.
47:26
He says curriculum coverage is the enemy of learning.
47:30
Right.
47:31
So I'm a teacher, you know, I've got this timetable
47:34
and I've got the balance that got about to go off and all these exams
47:39
and I've got the whiteboard.
47:40
So I'm just teaching the curriculum.
47:42
I look over, then I'm like, oh, are the students.
47:45
And that was failing and that was doing really well.
47:48
And that one could actually be accelerated because he already knows everything.
47:51
But I've got to get through the curriculum.
47:52
And then, you know, it's like, oh, they haven't finished the curriculum.
47:55
We haven't finished the course.
47:56
We're not prepared for the exams next week.
47:58
Each each person is different.
48:00
So I'm trying to think about how we can break that down
48:04
and pace the learning differently.
48:06
And I think the passport allows that too.
48:08
if in a mindset, we can say it's okay for people
48:11
to look different when they leave high school, we're not robots.
48:15
And we're not in the 19th century anymore.
48:18
We're in a very different world.
48:19
That was an industrial, revolution model.
48:23
And that's why we keep talking about the industrial model of education.
48:28
It runs deep, you know, all the way into the way we structured
48:31
schools. Architecturally, in fact, not just in terms of time table.
48:37
No, I think that makes a lot of sense.
48:39
And then if I think about that, IB specifically
48:42
if we're talking about at your school how you have the learner passport,
48:44
but then the students are still taking the IB exams.
48:48
And I think that in some ways, when you were describing
48:52
the areas of the passport really easy
48:55
to see the bridges to components of the IB,
48:58
I mean, the lifelong learners, the theoretical components line up.
49:03
But then at the end of the day, you still have students
49:06
taking high stress, high pressure, very demanding exams.
49:11
And I'm just wondering your thoughts of like,
49:15
from what it seems like, you understand
49:18
like it's a, it's a necessary evil right now.
49:21
Or maybe, that's a stretch calling it an evil.
49:23
But to have these high stakes, high pressure exams,
49:27
but then we don't necessarily have a way of getting rid of them completely.
49:31
Like, how have you been able to balance between those two?
49:35
Like, you're so right to point that out.
49:37
You know, if we go back historically to the origin of the IB,
49:41
when it was kickstarted, the first cohorts,
49:44
they had to do the whole IB diploma alongside
49:49
what was at effectively advanced Placement at the time.
49:52
So they had to do two diplomas because the IB wasn't really recognized.
49:56
And this is the price you pay for a form.
50:00
The reason why there's so little reform in education
50:02
is because you're trying to fix a plane while it's in the air.
50:04
There's so much pressure.
50:06
And you don't want to start adding things and especially don't
50:08
want to start experimenting because you got parents.
50:10
What are you doing?
50:11
My kids are guinea pig and what have you.
50:13
Yeah.
50:14
And so the result is nothing changes, which is why it's been so change resistant
50:18
when every other industry is being morphed, you know, hugely by technology,
50:23
education isn't really. I mean, apart from things like,
50:26
you know, access to word processes and whiteboards in the classroom.
50:29
But it's been pretty slow coming.
50:31
So this is a challenge.
50:34
What we want is, as many schools across the world
50:38
to be involved in this kind of work as possible,
50:41
and that's why we've created this coalition.
50:44
It's called a Coalition to Honor all learning.
50:46
50 schools involved, some are doing the global citizenship diploma,
50:50
some are doing, the Mastery Transcripts Consortium,
50:54
some are doing Holo Tracker, which comes out of Singapore.
50:58
We're doing the passport.
51:00
You've got quite a few different models that are being looked at.
51:03
UWC’s have been piloting some interesting experiments. Not experiments,
51:08
but sort of visions.
51:10
And we're kind of putting pressure on the system from below
51:13
because we want it to change and for there to be, more openness.
51:18
Eventually it would be substituted.
51:19
So, you know, maybe you don't need to do the IB diploma.
51:23
You don't need to do A-levels, you don't need to do AP.
51:26
In fact, you could be in a very low
51:28
resource environment where you couldn't afford access to those curriculum boards.
51:32
But you're so good at all these other things
51:34
that, you know, we think you're educated enough to have this diploma.
51:39
It'd be great if that could come from the universities
51:41
top down, first down the way the Carnegie model was.
51:45
But those days are over.
51:46
There's so many universities out there
51:47
and so difficult for universities just to talk to themselves.
51:50
You know, the Bologna reform, which is about basically allowing for,
51:56
trans university,
51:59
credit recognition in Europe that took forever.
52:03
And we, you know, I've gone to university deans, the presidents, and,
52:06
you know, we've tried to get, you know, top people in universities involved.
52:09
It's too complicated, too political,
52:11
because universities also have to recognize established,
52:16
examination boards.
52:17
So what we're doing is from the bottom, which were educating universities
52:21
through admissions offices, person by person.
52:25
And the more universities show interest,
52:29
the more we know we can send those passports to them.
52:32
And if more schools do that and join this coalition
52:35
or other coalitions, it doesn't have to be ours.
52:40
It doesn't really matter.
52:41
But if we can kind of influence the model from the ground up,
52:45
because we can see that there's all this human talent
52:47
that needs to be assessed differently, then maybe the university system
52:51
will change.
52:51
But until we get that, yeah, we're in these
52:54
pretty difficult situations where you have to look at ways of,
53:00
making it
53:02
ergonomic substitute of an integrated, which is why the IB is great
53:05
because they show some flexibility and they allowing schools
53:08
to sort of explore, different ways of getting IB diploma credit.
53:12
I think that's super.
53:13
And I really hope they keep doing that.
53:15
It sounds very exciting and it sounds, you know, like if you're,
53:18
you know, if you're in a school that's doing these things
53:21
or if you're part of those 50 schools
53:22
you mentioned in that coalition, I like the idea of sort of the grassroots.
53:25
Let's put pressure from below as we kind of move
53:29
forward into universities themselves.
53:32
If you were a teacher listening to this right now
53:34
and you're not in one of those particular schools, are there any particular things
53:38
or are there sort of like top tips that you might give to those teachers?
53:42
What would you recommend
53:44
to a teacher who feels like, okay, I can't actually change a system
53:47
in a school that's kind of locked in.
53:48
They're not really moving into this coalition like you've described.
53:51
We're not able to do a passport of this nature.
53:54
We're kind of forced on exams as they are.
53:57
What would you recommend to that particular teacher?
53:59
So they might have a more profound impact on their teaching
54:02
and learning in their classrooms right now.
54:04
You know, right at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about,
54:09
inspiration.
54:10
Inspiration came up and
54:13
human beings tend to get inspired by other human beings.
54:18
So I would encourage
54:19
anyone who likes this idea to join the coalition.
54:24
You can Google it. The Coalition to Honor all Learning.
54:26
You'll find it quickly.
54:27
We have meetings.
54:29
In fact, we've got our first conference tomorrow,
54:32
live conference here at the international school in Geneva.
54:34
Yeah.
54:34
And it's live streamed as well. But,
54:38
we meet online, several times a year.
54:41
And what do you do when you get in that cluster of, like minded educators?
54:45
You just see what people are doing around the world
54:47
every time someone else presents, every time we meet.
54:49
And it's, I think that'll give you ideas.
54:53
Then if you're a teacher and you know, you're teaching
54:56
whatever it is, A-level AP,
55:02
the IB,
55:05
the metric, whatever.
55:06
And you're kind of stuck in that space.
55:10
You know, talk a little bit to administration
55:12
and to your leadership and say like, why don't we,
55:16
why don't we, you know, create something that is expressing
55:19
what we think is important as a school
55:21
or we just another school following someone else's curriculum?
55:25
Or are we actually going to ensure that when students leave,
55:29
there's some kind of special stamp around what they're doing,
55:32
those sorts of ways of doing it?
55:33
I mean, this is slightly different, but, you know, we were big
55:37
school, we've got three different IB centers.
55:40
And we managed to get, everybody on board to teach the same theory of knowledge,
55:46
units on indigenous societies.
55:49
And that's part of a broader vision of global citizenship education, where,
55:53
you know, six all the students across the different schools are doing philosophy
55:56
for children. In your mind, they will doing,
56:00
sustainable development in year ten.
56:01
They will studying the history of Switzerland.
56:04
But it's always in a subject and French or mental class, or the end of the PYP.
56:09
And then in year 12, we took the IB diploma
56:12
students and some students are doing the IB diploma and got them to all share
56:16
this, Tree of knowledge band on indigenous societies
56:21
because we thought as a school,
56:22
we wanted our graduates to all have had that experience.
56:25
The reason why I'm telling you that it's not about reforming
56:28
assessment necessarily, but at least shaping the student experience
56:32
and elements of assessment as they exist in more creative ways.
56:36
I just think it's important that
56:39
we look at society, at the world, at the way it's changing.
56:44
And you
56:44
think, you know, someone has to kind of change the system up there,
56:47
but who's that going to be and when's that going to happen?
56:50
So we need to do what we can using,
56:53
future fitness, creative thinking,
56:57
to make the student experience more dynamic,
57:01
and, exciting and valid.
57:06
You know, the passports quite as kind of strong expression.
57:08
And we've worked on it hard.
57:10
But the other ways of getting it, I just encourage educators to take that mindset.
57:14
And you can read my book when it comes out.
57:16
It's it's open access, no charge.
57:18
It's coming out via Unesco.
57:21
That puts you
57:21
through the history of assessment, the way it is and why it is the way it is,
57:25
and some sort of ideas for exploration
57:28
and breaking the checkerboard, I call it.
57:32
I call it a checkerboard because it's so deterministic.
57:34
You have to actually break through them.
57:36
I like that because it's it's very encouraging for
57:39
I think most people who get into education,
57:41
the idea is you want to have a positive
57:42
and profound impact on young people's lives.
57:44
And I think what you've been describing
57:46
throughout this entire episode right now are the ways in which we can,
57:51
you know, think critically about, are we actually achieving that
57:53
and are we able to achieve that, even if we might feel some constraints?
57:57
There are ways in which we can think creatively about the way
58:00
we are inspiring, you know, the next generation of people.
58:03
So this conversation here has been,
58:06
good for that.
58:07
It's been a good reminder that, like, there,
58:09
you may feel like there's a little bit of constraint placed upon you,
58:13
but every educator has the capacity to reconnect with that ability
58:17
to inspire and to, challenge the way that things are going
58:21
to make sure that just as you said, am I I just following
58:25
somebody else's
58:26
curriculum model that they've thrown here, or am I doing things that are,
58:29
you know, relevant to this particular space
58:32
in this particular time and the students that are here in this space that,
58:35
you know, defines our culture?
58:37
So that's been a nice way to look at it.
58:39
So thank you for that I appreciate that.
58:41
I mean, just quickly, you know, a great guest speaker comes in,
58:45
someone who's going to speak to the students hearts,
58:48
who is, you know, got an incredible story to tell,
58:52
but they all sitting in chemistry
58:55
and in, you know, whatever it is in maths.
59:01
One educator, a teacher will say like, no, no, no,
59:04
they can't miss this class because seen those towards the exam.
59:07
The other will say, this is a once in a lifetime experience.
59:10
Get them out of class.
59:12
Yeah. You'll lose a bit of contact time.
59:14
You know, you'll find a way of making it up.
59:16
Get them in front of this because this is important.
59:18
So it's thinking that way as well. You know. Like,
59:21
what are we really trying to achieve here?
59:23
And if we reconnect with what's our main aim then ultimately
59:27
I think we end up teaching with a little bit
59:28
more joy, a little bit more inspiration, a little bit more vigor as well.
59:32
Great.
59:33
Thank you so much for this episode.
59:35
I've really enjoyed it.
59:36
I love a lot of the ideas of the Learning Passport
59:39
and thinking about this is all why most teachers are teaching.
59:44
It's not because they love covering a curriculum, right?
59:47
It's not because they love exam prep.
59:48
It's also, I think, maybe a secondary effect of the learner passport
59:54
is reminding the teachers also about why they're teaching and being able
1:00:00
to think about their students in a more holistic way also.
1:00:03
So I think it benefits the students, of course, but I do think that there's
1:00:07
probably a benefit to the teachers as well.
1:00:10
Now, I love what you just said.
1:00:12
It is possible, when you're teaching the end of high school
1:00:15
to do more than just teach pass papers,
1:00:19
examination schemes, you know, mock exams, we do all of that.
1:00:24
And in fact, you can get a lot out of it.
1:00:27
But long term, this reform, I
1:00:30
think, will release teacher creativity as much as student creativity.
1:00:34
Yeah.
1:00:34
So many great things we could be doing.
1:00:37
Following, you know, the students and where we see them developing
1:00:41
instead of being stuck in this,
1:00:44
on this checkerboard.
1:00:46
So, that's where we're trying to go, you know, more creativity for everybody.
1:00:50
Excellent. Very exciting stuff, Conrad.
1:00:53
Thank you so much for taking the time in today's episode
1:00:55
and for sharing all this good insights with us.
1:00:58
Really appreciate it.
1:00:59
Thanks. I enjoyed the conversation.
1:01:01
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast, hosted by John Patton
1:01:05
and Courtney Marline and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
1:01:07
Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
1:01:11
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1:01:14
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1:01:17
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1:01:19
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1:01:23
See you next time.