Latest / IB Unplugged / Designing a Pathway for a Changing World w/ Naheed Bardai

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Designing a Pathway for a Changing World w/ Naheed Bardai · IB Unplugged

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I think theory and practice,
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that's probably the other major kind of innovation, where we say, in one course,
0:05
do not only be planning for the doing,
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but then actually doing the doing.
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Innovation in society
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tends to outpace education practices all the time.
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At best, education is about 20 to 30 years behind what the world is really needing.
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And the IB recognize this and realize that we've basically got a relevance issue.
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Students aren't necessarily learning what they need to know to be better
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prepared for their lives in the future.
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Often we're just reacting to things that have been taking place for years.
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So the IB has put together the systems transformation pathway.
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It's arguably the most significant structural evolution in the IBDP in decades.
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And it helps to meet that key question
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how do we maintain rigor while also being relevant for students?
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So in this podcast episode, John and I get to talk with Naheed Bardai,
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who is the principal at UWC Atlantic College in Wales,
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and he's known as really
1:00
being one of the founding architects of the Systems Transformation pathway.
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Naheed has worked in Kenya and Canada,
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and he's been at UWC Atlantic since 2021.
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And he's just a phenomenal educator
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that you can just feel the passion that he has for this program.
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And when you talk to him about the system transformation pathway,
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you see how much he cares about this being a success for students worldwide,
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not just at UWC Atlantic, and how much he really believes in that
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this program is helping students prepare, not just for college,
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not just for the world that they're in right now, but the one that
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they're going to be leading 30 plus years from now.
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So we're really excited about this episode, and let's get started.
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High Naheed, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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We're so happy to be talking with you today.
1:59
Thank you. As am I.
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So Naheed gets to join us from a 12th century castle
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off the coast of Wales, which is not our average location.
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What's something that really still catches you off guard
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about being able to teach and lead a school in such a location?
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I mean, it's one of the most amazing, not only physical structures to be in,
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but just natural environment.
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So the connection that you have with the natural environment,
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but also the history of this beautiful place in Wales,
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you can't just get used to it and take it as routine or for granted.
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Every day there's something new that you notice.
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So it's just a really inspiring place to be.
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Good. Yeah.
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I think, it's one of those things where
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you can't ever really get used to it and it can't ever become normal.
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Just seeing the, like your office alone.
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I'm like, that is really spectacular.
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Yeah.
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And nor should we, because it really is that special.
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It's hard to understand what this place means
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to the people who have been here or lived here for centuries before us,
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or to alumni who have, you know, attended here, some of them 60 some years ago.
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Wow, yeah.
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That rich history, of the place where you're in, obviously affects
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what you're doing now.
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And, you know, Naheed you've got this incredible professional career.
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I know you've worked in Kenya, in Canada, now in Wales.
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Is there something from each of those places that you've maybe carried
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with you or, I don't know, a habit, a phrase or a way of seeing things
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that has shaped since you've been in those places to who you are now?
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Yeah.
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I've been really lucky in that way, I really valued
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what I've been able to experience and learn in each of the various places
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and so like, in Mombasa, for example,
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it's really about the importance of being entrepreneurial
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in the space of education and how important that is.
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At the same time, being really sort of purpose led.
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That's where I really felt that in my bones, you know, being purpose led.
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And then going to Upper Canada College in Toronto was really interesting
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because that was my home in some ways. I was born in Toronto and
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great to go back to that city,
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which is meant so much to me, in a great school, in the city as well,
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a really important school.
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And there I really learned about community
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and what it means to have a really strong, established community
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and how important that is in the overall architecture
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of a school.
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And then coming to UWC Atlantic, I mean, it's taken it
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to another kind of level where I've been able to combine
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both the really deep purpose, as well as the deep sense of community.
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And being a place that is so aspirational
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and so upward facing with its purpose, it really gives new meaning
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to what it can be to be an educator, an educational leader.
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Great, I love that.
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I love how it's kind of pulling each piece together
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and how you're really able to put that together.
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I think, in your role, you get the kind of opportunity
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to get to know most of the staff that works at your school,
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but I'm curious, if there's something that you do
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outside of work that absolutely nobody would guess.
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Yeah.
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That's interesting.
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I got little quirks and stuff like that I do,
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but I'm really a family person in a lot of ways.
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And so I really enjoy spending time with family.
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And I love food, as do many people.
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But, I definitely have my quirks around some habits,
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around food in particular.
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But I would say one of the things that I really enjoy
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that probably most people don't know is how important my morning routine is to me.
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For some reason, that's something that's really grounded me over time.
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It often involves a bit of exercise,
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a bit of meditation and grounding in that kind of way.
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But most importantly, a kiss with my kids in the morning.
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Nice.
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I love that. That stuff speaks to me as well.
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I'm very much on a morning routine and keeping things
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structured at that start of the day, you know, which is useful.
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Awesome.
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Well, thanks, Naheed, now we
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feel like we can know you a little bit more.
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And let's dive into our episode today,
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because I'm really excited to be talking with you about this, where
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we're talking about the systems transformation pathway.
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And I know you were a founding architect of this.
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And, a couple of years ago, I got to go to a session at the IB
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Global Conference that kind of gave us an update of what it was about.
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And I just remember being so excited about it because I thought,
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this is such a smart direction, such a cool thing that's happening.
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So, you know, I'm chuffed that we get to chat right now
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and I get to learn a little bit more about it.
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Let's start things off with just first the problem.
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What was the problem with the DP?
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Why did we have to kind of create the systems transformation pathway,
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or what was the actual opening?
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And I guess it kind of starts
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with just like this tension between rigor and relevance.
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The IB is known for its rigor.
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But I know you've talked about
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rigor and relevance not necessarily being the same thing.
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Where do you see that gap, and how does the system's transformation
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pathway address that gap?
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Yeah, that's a big an important question.
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So, that the journey started in 2021 when I joined the college.
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And I was very lucky to have a very supportive
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and aspirational board behind me.
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And that's part of what makes all this work
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when you take such an important and potentially risky step like this. And,
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for me, it is very
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much about grounding what we were trying to do,
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embedded in the values and mission of the school, of UWC,
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and we took three of the most important pillars, peace, sustainability
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and experiential learning and thought of them as interconnected,
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and ask ourselves what would it look like if a new educational program emanated
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from the intersection point of those three things?
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And the reason why that was important to think about in the first place
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is because of my deeply held belief in 2021
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that education was not adequately
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preparing young people for the world in which they are moving into.
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If we think about the rate of change in our world in 2021, let alone today,
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we are experiencing the greatest acceleration of change
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that humanity has ever seen or faced on so many different dimensions,
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whether it be socially and politically, economically to some extent,
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whether it be environmentally and through to our ecological crisis
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and those kinds of things.
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And today, the AI sort of revolution, if you want to call it that,
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there are so many accelerators in our world
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that are shifting what our world looks like,
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but education is so slow to respond.
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We are living in a world today of education,
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broadly speaking, that is of the 80s, 90s,
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2000s at best, especially when we talk about a diploma education.
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I was going to say that's a bit generous.
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Yeah, right?
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Look, I have alumni from the very beginning of the IB diploma.
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You know, I have someone who graduated in 1969,
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who has given me his transcript of the pilot of the IB diploma.
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And when I speak about the IB diploma today,
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he understands what I'm talking about.
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Obviously it's changed. But you know what I mean.
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And so, for me,
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what was really important was to do justice to our young people,
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so that they are better equipped to manage
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the difficulties, challenges, joys, you know, in our world.
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And I think of the world of 2060,
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that's the archetype that I have in my mind,
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and I ask myself, you know, how are we preparing
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our young people today for the world of 2060?
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Because our graduates who just graduated in 2026,
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they're going to be in their early 50s in 2060.
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And at that time, they will be the leaders of civil society, of government,
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of corporations, of universities, and so on and so forth.
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And so, the question that I asked myself, is our education preparing them
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well enough to manage the world of 2060, not the world of 2030,
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or the world of university?
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So that was what we were working with.
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And, for me, in that sort of frame then,
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it was really about thinking what are the gaps
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and what does a young person need to complement
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their educational experience, not replace it, but to complement it.
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And if all that they have is a schema of the world
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that is disciplinary based, then that's not good enough to understand
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the complexities of our world,
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because there's no problem in our world today
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that's worth talking about or worth thinking about,
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that sits along disciplinary lines.
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All the challenges in our world are systems based.
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It confluence of multiple factors and disciplines and knowledge sets
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and all those kinds of things.
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But yet education is not structured in that way.
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And so then thinking about that differently was really the beginning point.
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And to your point about sort of relevance and rigor,
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sometimes it can be a bit caught up in the rigor side,
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because that's architecture that we create and impose,
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but it's not necessarily what is needed or necessary
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per se, in the way in which we prescribe those things.
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And so relevance for me is particularly important,
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because, of the diversity of young people that we work with
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and the settings that they come from, and worldviews that they have,
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and so relevance of the learning
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to the young person for me is really important,
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but also relevance to the needs of our world.
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So, a few thoughts when I think about those things.
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Let's pause for a second,
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because systems thinking is one of those terms that gets used a lot
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in education, leadership, and sustainability conversations,
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but not everybody means the same thing when they use it.
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At its simplest, systems thinking is the practice of looking beyond
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individual events
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to understand the relationships, patterns, and structures that create those events.
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A classic example would be climate change.
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You can't understand it through a single discipline.
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You need science, economics, politics, human behavior,
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technology, culture and ethics all interacting together.
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That's what makes it a systems problem rather than a subject specific problem.
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For many educators, systems thinking will feel familiar because the IB has long
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encourage students to make connections across subjects and perspectives.
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What's different here
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is that systems thinking becomes the organizing framework itself.
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If you'd like to learn more, a great starting point is Peter Senge’s
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The Fifth Discipline and Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems,
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which remain one of the most accessible introductions to the field.
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I think now, as we talk about AI revolution, as you might have said,
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the rigor piece is really being tested quite heavily, and any time that we speak
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with students or teachers who want to get into education
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for good reasons, I would say, it's always about doing something that's relevant.
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It's always about doing something that's meaningful and impactful for young people.
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Not necessarily
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oh, I need to be sure that I stand out amongst everybody else.
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That's sort of a secondary piece.
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So, I love that.
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That was a big focus is to really, you know, drive into
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what is currently relevant and, as you say, what's going to be relevant in 2060?
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I really appreciate that frame of thought.
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Yeah.
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No, I agree and I think something that you said in the beginning about
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that you had a board that was also willing to take the risks
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and that you kind of your community was ready to take the curricular risks.
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I think that that's something that can't necessarily be taken for granted either.
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I would say that this is a program that is very risky because, in a good way,
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it changes a lot of the kind of fundamental pieces
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where you have to also still protect the credibility,
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thinking about it's always universities.
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I feel like John and I blame universities for everything
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sometimes on this podcast.
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But I mean, you know, thinking about the exam results the university
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offers, all of that kind of stuff, but how important it is to take
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the curricular risks, it's those short term risks for long term gains.
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Is there anything that really
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was a barrier or a sticking point, or anything
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that was really hard to overcome in balancing that for your school
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taking this on?
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Yeah, I mean, there were a couple and you know, I really do have to applaud the IB.
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And this is a really strong partner of course.
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The idea emanated from the college,
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but very quickly became something that we went into partnership with the IB.
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And I can basically remember a call with Pekka in January of 2022.
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He was also relatively new at that time, as well.
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And we talked about what this kind of change could mean.
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And it was still very much in a sort of seeds is what we were talking about at
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that moment in time.
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But, in some ways, there are two risks, right?
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I mean, on one hand,
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a risk was doing something that stepped outside the bounds too far
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that our students perhaps would not get a qualification.
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At one point, that was a consideration
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that we would be doing this in such a way that they would not graduate
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with any kind of high school qualification, including an IB diploma.
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And they may not therefore gain access to the kind of university that they want.
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And the university recognition, which I have little realm of control over.
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And, you know, those kinds of things. That was one domain of risk.
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The second domain of risk was actually the exact opposite.
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What if we don't go far enough
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with the kind of change that we're thinking about?
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What if we, because of being paralyzed of the fear of the risk of those things,
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we don't actually make a substantive enough change that actually makes
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a meaningful difference to the education and preparation of the young person
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to handle the global challenges of the time.
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Yeah.
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And to me, that is a bigger risk that we don't go far enough.
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Yeah.
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And so it was toggling those two things that was there.
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Where do you think you landed on that spectrum?
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I think it's a pretty happy balance.
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And I think we've managed to achieve the sort of pushing out
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to be a bit more radical in what the education is, but also more
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relevant and more appropriate to what a young person needs for our world.
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I still think that there's always more that can be done
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in that sort of way, but I think where we've gotten to right now is great.
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And as I said, it's the combination of two organizations initially coming
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together who can agree on a risk appetite, that they both can live with.
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That's what needs to be partnership.
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That's been really important.
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And I think before I could move too much further,
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I do need to give credit where it's due.
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And so while you're speaking to me right now about this
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and I'll be answering obviously all the questions,
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there's another person who's been absolutely instrumental.
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Marija Dang is her name.
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She's the chief architect, an engineer,
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and a designer of this program, in so many ways,
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who joined us very early in the sort of process.
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So just wanted to make sure I give her credit where it's due.
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Thanks, Naheed.
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You know, I very much appreciate that we've identified that
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there was change needed.
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I'm interested in kind of knowing more about those early signals.
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What were those signals inside,
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maybe the school community, that something needed to change.
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And we recently spoke with a recent graduate of the IB
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diploma program, who spoke a lot about student voice and their impact in helping
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to shape the way that their curriculum was being offered to them.
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And I'm interested, you know, were students part of that?
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Were they some of the first ones who kind of push that idea,
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or did it mainly come from staff, like how did the idea sort of generate?
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So it came from a couple of different places.
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I guess to say it first started with
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that sort of bit of dissatisfaction around the state of education today.
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And it also then came
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from actually a professional development
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course that went on at MIT called Compassion Systems.
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You may have come across it before, when I was at Upper Canada College,
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and that's where you could see,
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the systems frame from an educational lens came more into my horizon.
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I've understood well from a leadership lens,
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but also from a curricular kind of education lens that way.
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And as I came to the school here at Atlantic, what became clear was that
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the education that we were providing
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as an IB diploma, was really,
17:42
not totally relevant to the diversity of students
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that we have here, because in many ways, we are a sort of small
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emblem of the world in many ways, because we've seen so many different
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nationalities across socioeconomic,
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sort of diversity and all those kinds of things.
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And it was like saying, here's the closed corpus of
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like an economics textbook, and this is the knowledge you need,
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because we're telling you, you need this,
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regardless of what part of the world you're in, regardless
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what problem you're trying to address.
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And I think that there's some truth in that.
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If that's the only truth,
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then it's simply not enough.
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And so we need to find a way to think about how we flip education
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a bit on its head.
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The second thing that signaled for me was that as we think about the UN SDGs
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and we were in the midst of Covid at that time, and we began to see what it means
18:31
for the world to come together and handle a really sort of complex challenge, both
18:37
STGs’, which we set separate,
18:39
but then also those in our face around Covid.
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And for me, it became really apparent
18:44
that, as a global community, we were struggling around a lot of things.
18:48
Certainly the science was
18:49
innovating at a scale that was unprecedented,
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but it was amazing to see how paralyzed we were about thinking
18:56
about the fairness of access and the way in which we thought about
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other human beings with no fault of their own
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where they're born determines their destiny,
19:06
these kinds of things.
19:07
If you look at the point where to start is
19:09
students coming back to the college, at the time in the UK,
19:13
it depended on the passport you held
19:14
determine how many days you had to be in quarantine, for example.
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So if you came from one country, in some cases you had no quarantine.
19:21
If you were another country, ten days of quarantine.
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You know, and so those stark, and those because of vaccine access essentially.
19:27
And so those stark realities that came confronting you
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as a school leader, which many of us in the space had to deal with,
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just really highlighted
19:37
the kinds of challenges that we face as a world and therefore is our
19:40
education responding appropriately to these kinds of challenges?
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And that's where I think we fall down.
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So those are some of the signals that were there at that time.
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Maybe you're wondering what is the Compassionate Systems Framework.
19:52
Developed at MIT,
19:53
it integrates cognitive systems thinking
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with social emotional learning and mindfulness.
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The goal is to ensure that students don't just analyze complex systems
20:02
detached, but actually build deep empathy for the human
20:05
and the ecological communities living within these systems.
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It bridges the head and the heart in educational design.
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For the next segment,
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I would love to really dive into the systems transformation pathway.
20:17
And so let's go back to 2023. now.
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I think we have good
20:22
leading up to there,
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what was actually invented from scratch?
20:28
And then what surprised you about what already existed?
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I know you said you're kind of taking elements of very
20:34
UWC centric philosophies and your vision and things like that.
20:38
You're taking pieces from the IB.
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Could you walk us through that building process?
20:43
Yeah.
20:44
So what happened is in sort of 2022, the prototyping workshop
20:48
here at the college,
20:49
and we had the IB present, we had some students who were present.
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We had staff, we had other alumni, one of them helped to write the UNSDGs.
20:58
You know, others were fintech mag CEOs and this kind of thing.
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And we came up with a nugget of what we felt this should be.
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And some of the principals at that time, brought up in March of 2022, were,
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you know, we would take two courses away from the IB diploma
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to be the space for something to come in.
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We were going to have no exams and no essays.
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We were going to think about systems and systems being the core focus, it
21:18
being a combination of theory and practice combined into one academic program.
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We were going to think about how young people can take the knowledge,
21:27
invite the knowledge in that they require, or that they need to solve the challenge
21:31
in front of them, rather than presuming that this is what you need.
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And so those were some of the principles.
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And so as we speak then began building, we then very quickly after that,
21:41
in around September of 2022, began to go into partnership with the IB.
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And that's where we began building now collaboratively, which is amazing.
21:50
And so now it became this joint sort of process that went from October
21:54
of 2022, all the way until our first launch in August of 2023.
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And so pulling then on the expertise of the IB,
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but then also of people like Marija, who I mentioned earlier,
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as well as the college
22:06
and some of the things that we have done here over a long period of time,
22:11
really helped us to move forward.
22:12
And some of the innovations were things like really creating a systems based
22:16
education, systems thinking, about systems and how they're designed,
22:20
thinking of what the modules were underneath that
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to teach that to young people.
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And from what we could find,
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and we did a massive global scan, we could not find any other program
22:29
in the world that was delivering a systems education
22:33
to a young person, before the age of university.
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So that for us was totally new,
22:40
that we had created in that kind of way, in that formal kind of way.
22:45
And then from there, thinking about how you put together,
22:47
I think, theory and practice,
22:49
that's probably the other major kind of innovation where we say in
22:52
one course, do not only be planning for the doing,
22:55
but then actually doing the doing, as part of the course itself.
22:59
So with the way that's manifested itself is in what we call the self-directed
23:03
and collaborative interventions that students undertake.
23:07
So, that for me has been really, really interesting.
23:10
But of course, borrowing on the thinking of lots of other people,
23:13
Vanessa Andreotti
23:14
is that the model that comes to mind that I know, was really significant
23:17
from the thinking standpoint, but of course, many others as well,
23:20
that helped inform.
23:21
So I don't also pretend like it's somehow in a vacuum that we did this alone.
23:24
That's not the case.
23:26
But, yeah, we're really excited about what's there.
23:28
And that was one for two years.
23:29
And so, lots of proof of concept, in that kind of way.
23:34
Absolutely.
23:35
Naheed, let's get into just the practicalities, just a little bit
23:38
of this to help people understand it, because I know this is still in pilot.
23:42
Ideally it's going to be rolling out 2030
23:44
for schools to adopt if it fits their context specifically.
23:48
But I know I've had students describe this as their super HL,
23:52
because it's effectively two SL’s combined.
23:55
So students would still do their three HL subjects.
23:58
They would do the systems transformation pathway, and then one SL subject.
24:02
It's all coursework assessed.
24:04
They do go through, as you mentioned, that sort of systems thinking.
24:07
There's design thinking change maker, project management, that sort of stuff.
24:11
And they've got sort of four main projects
24:13
that they're doing as the whole assessment scheme.
24:16
You know, I'm interested because it always feels like trying to create
24:20
a new IB subject feels like it has to fit models that exist.
24:25
It has to still be university recognizable.
24:28
It still has to meet the rigor and the demands
24:31
of what is going to be assumed as an IB subject itself.
24:34
So when you were designing it, what were some of the hardest design decisions?
24:39
What did you have to let go of in the initial idea of the systems
24:43
transformation pathway,
24:44
and yeah, what were the tensions in creating the the course
24:47
so that it would be recognizable in the IB?
24:50
Yeah.
24:50
And this is where working collaboratively has been really important.
24:53
So you know, Jenny Gillett at the IB has been sort of the main person.
24:58
Marija and her, you could say, were kind of the main point
25:00
people who work incredible people to work with.
25:02
And so, you know, there were lots of things
25:05
that were kind of sort of tension points, some of them big
25:08
and some of them little smaller, within that sort of sense.
25:12
So one of them, for example, was the very idea of having
25:16
14 points attached to a course
25:19
that then had no kind of exam to it, which is the best way
25:22
to standardize something,
25:24
from that kind of assessment lens.
25:27
That was hard.
25:27
And that took quite a bit of talk and collaboration and discussion
25:31
across the IB in particular to make that kind of thing happen.
25:35
And again, this is what the courage of the IB
25:36
is really important to acknowledge in this.
25:38
That was one example. Second example
25:40
a little bit of sort of
25:41
perhaps less serious, but for us was really important,
25:44
as we think about the theory and practice piece,
25:46
we really wanted the real world this to stand out,
25:50
and we really wanted the real world outcomes to be a part of this course.
25:55
And so for example, we're saying, okay,
25:56
these students go into their home community to do this intervention,
26:01
were they, you know, working with someone else in their community
26:03
to do some sort of change,
26:06
we want to figure out
26:08
how we assess them and give them feedback on the change itself
26:11
and the quality of the work that they really did in real life.
26:15
And we were really kind of convicted that that's what we need to do.
26:20
And after thinking about it and talking about further
26:22
and getting Jenny's input and so on, it became apparent that was just
26:25
too much of a risk to take, because we can't control for factors
26:29
that are outside of our realm of ability, for a young person in that moment.
26:34
So what if there's a flood in that part of the world that they're from,
26:37
and they can't carry out their work in the way that they planned,
26:40
or if there's a strike, or what if it's unsafe.
26:43
And then how do we now untangle that or decouple that
26:46
from like an assessment that helps them to get 40 points from their diploma?
26:49
So there were these really kind
26:50
of practical things that even though we had a particular ideal,
26:53
there were practical challenges that would have potentially
26:58
challenge or cause the student to feel the brunt of some decision
27:02
that we were making in a room, kind of thing.
27:04
And we had to walk back from some of that, from a practical standpoint,
27:08
for those kinds of reasons.
27:09
So there were things like that that were really kind of
27:12
interesting to think about.
27:14
Some of the other bits were like, okay,
27:15
of course we want this program to be successful.
27:18
And so how do we select our first cohort?
27:21
Right?
27:22
You know, and what are we going to emphasize?
27:25
And then we could go back and say, you know,
27:27
why are we creating this?
27:28
We creating this
27:29
so we hope it can eventually be a public good.
27:31
That was one of the motivations, really, to partner with the IB.
27:35
Because the IB could scale something in a way that we never could on our own.
27:38
And if our purpose is not for this to be some sort of privately held,
27:43
you know, privilege like program that was going to benefit
27:46
these like, 5000 students here,
27:50
that's one thing, but that's not what the purpose of this was.
27:52
It was to create
27:53
something that would be shared as widely with the world as possible,
27:56
if it's a good education.
27:58
Every student in the world is my student, right?
28:00
And so, in that kind of way, the IB is the best
28:04
scaling partner that we could have.
28:06
And so, you know, just thinking about then
28:09
who do we select in this program?
28:10
We're actually selecting students for scalability to test for scalability,
28:15
not for highest possible achievement to make it look good.
28:19
Right?
28:19
So we set out choosing intently to the most diverse cohort
28:23
that we could from our own student body, that was truly representative across
28:27
socioeconomic, national, linguistic, additional learning needs,
28:31
English as a second language, all that kind of stuff.
28:34
So we could see is this good education for everybody,
28:37
or just for those who are best prepared, if that makes sense.
28:40
Yeah.
28:40
So those are some of the design choices intentions that we've had.
28:43
Tell me a little bit more about that, because obviously
28:46
you've got these intentions,
28:47
you wanted to see if all these ideas would work were two years into it.
28:50
What's been the feedback so far?
28:53
Does it work? Is it scalable?
28:54
Is it something that's a public good for everybody, or does it only fit the UWC model
28:59
of very internationally, intentionally international group of people?
29:03
Can it go everywhere else?
29:04
What's been the feedback?
29:06
Yeah, that's a great question and a big one.
29:09
It's been on our minds since the very beginning of this pilot.
29:11
I think the IB did something really clever.
29:14
As you probably know, there are now three other schools that are
29:16
doing this pilot as well, which is wonderful, so it’s a small community.
29:19
And the four of us in combination are quite different to schools.
29:23
So you've got the other three schools being K-12 schools.
29:27
Some of them are more, sort of local
29:30
in their population and have fewer international students.
29:33
So UWC in Singapore, Southeast Asia in Singapore,
29:38
Upper Canada College in Toronto, and then Mulgrave in Vancouver.
29:41
So having four different contexts
29:43
to also see how this then scales, is really helpful.
29:46
So what we can see so far is that, absolutely,
29:50
this program can scale.
29:52
The question will be, you know, is all that
29:55
we are doing here as part of the program design,
29:57
is all of that scalable?
29:59
And I suspect that probably not all of it is, but I would say the majority is.
30:02
And so that's something that we will collectively,
30:04
as a group of schools with the IB, begin to start figuring out, as we think
30:07
about how this pilot begins to grow in 2028 and then again in 2030.
30:12
I think the other thing that we've done that is really worthwhile or has been
30:15
really worthwhile, is our other partner has been the University of Cambridge,
30:19
in the Faculty of Education. And they have conducted
30:21
some really robust research on this program, really from a student
30:26
experiential and teacher experiential standpoint.
30:29
They came for the first two years
30:31
interviewed every single student four times over the two years,
30:34
and every single teacher four times over the two years,
30:37
and created a 100 page report for us, that was largely qualitative in nature,
30:42
that gave us some really interesting insight into what
30:45
the experience was for our young people.
30:48
And it's been tremendous to read and to see what some of the core
30:51
kind of takeaways were from that.
30:53
So to say that the feedback we've had has been from a variety of kind of sources
30:56
and understanding,
30:57
and I'm confident that it is achieving the aims that we've set out for it
31:01
to achieve, and that it is something that is deserving
31:05
of being put out there in the world for young people to experience.
31:09
Yeah. No, I think that's fantastic. I know I've read some.
31:11
I didn't read the 100 page report, but I've read some of it.
31:14
And it seems like there is such a positive impact on the students.
31:20
And I think that it's great that you have that external validation kind of coming
31:24
from these different directions, so that in 20, 30 other schools
31:28
can also have that confidence, did a lot change throughout.
31:34
Now I'm just curious of like, were there things that in the first year
31:39
you thought were going to go one way, but then you iterated upon
31:42
based on either the feedback or the experience with the other schools?
31:47
Yeah.
31:47
There have been a
31:48
number of things, and they tend to be more, in the
31:52
sort of assessment and curricular kind of realm,
31:56
where, for example, some of the order of things, the sequence
31:58
of the ways in which we were teaching the students about systems,
32:02
was thought of to be, you know, perhaps a better way of access,
32:05
an earlier access point in a different kind of way was going to be better.
32:08
And so reordering some of that work, is an example.
32:12
Second was some of the methods
32:14
that we would use around the case study, which is one of the assessment points,
32:17
where with the IB and working through our team,
32:20
and some of the teams from the other schools, rethinking a bit about
32:24
the ways in which we approached that particular piece of assessment.
32:27
So there have been things like that that have been really important.
32:30
And then the other pieces that we've learned along the way around,
32:33
like teacher preparation and how do you take teachers
32:35
who are fundamentally disciplinary trained,
32:38
but may have interest in other expertise around systems,
32:41
but how do you prepare them for this kind of course.
32:44
How do you have a team taught course,
32:46
which is how we do it here.
32:47
We have, at this moment in time, five teachers in the classroom,
32:50
teaching 50, 52, 54 students at one time.
32:55
How does that work?
32:56
And how do we optimize that?
32:57
And how do we make that smooth,
32:59
from an experience standpoint for students as well?
33:02
How do we think about when they split into what we call our areas of impact,
33:05
of which there are five and then you have enough sort of five groups of students
33:08
working in parallel with now a teacher attached to each one?
33:12
How do we try to ensure differentiated experience that's appropriate
33:16
for the group and cater to those students and that teacher, while at the same time
33:19
ensuring some consistency of experience across the five?
33:22
You know, so there are things like that that have shifted,
33:25
you know, over time and hopefully improved.
33:28
Have you seen a lot of change in any of,
33:31
so they're also taking biology HL, or biology SL,
33:35
have you seen a lot of change in the regular classes?
33:39
I don't know what to call them.
33:41
Regular classes?
33:42
Sorry, John.
33:44
The old fashion classes.
33:46
Oh, that's worse, that's worse.
33:49
Well, I mean,
33:50
part of our our theory of change, I guess you could say, is that we wanted
33:54
the systems transformation pathway to have impact beyond
33:58
the 50 some students
33:59
who take this program, as well as the, you know, sort of ten teachers
34:03
in total between first and second year, who are teaching the course.
34:08
And so part of the design has been that, generally speaking, all teachers
34:11
teach a systems transformation pathway, but then they also teach other
34:15
IB diploma courses, with the hope that they could transfer
34:18
some of the good stuff that applies appropriately from the system
34:21
transformation pathway into their anthropology course,
34:24
or into their language course or the TOK course, you know, those kinds of things.
34:27
And so while we haven't hard programed for it,
34:31
it has more organically taken shape in many ways.
34:34
And we also have invited a lot of teachers
34:36
in to come and experience and see the systems transformation pathway
34:39
and then take out what they can, again, without being prescriptive about it.
34:43
So that's the approach we've kind of taken.
34:45
I mean, it sounds like it's possibly modifying the approaches to teaching
34:49
anyway, you know, when we think about I'm an IB educator, what does it mean
34:52
to be an IB educator versus a teacher of a specific subject?
34:55
There's different ways to approach your course.
34:57
There's different ways to approach your teaching and learning.
34:59
So I would assume then this is also that frame of mind of like
35:03
how am I bringing in systems based thinking into the way that I teach.
35:07
This is actually transitioning quite well to our next segment,
35:10
which is a lot about what it means in practice.
35:13
You know, like I said, I went to a session on this at a global conference
35:17
a couple of years ago, and I remember being absolutely psyched.
35:20
And, pretty naively, I walked up to to Jenny Gallett,
35:23
you mentioned Jenny and she was presenting, and I was like, we want in.
35:26
We would like to be a pilot and like, we want to do this as well.
35:28
And she's like, it's a little bit more than just putting your hand in the air.
35:33
But for a DP teacher,
35:34
or a coordinator like myself, who can't wait until 2030 and do
35:39
want to be doing these kind of things right now, where do we start?
35:42
Even with existing structures that are there,
35:45
how do we kind of bring in this system style thinking into teaching biology,
35:49
for example, or teaching history or something like that,
35:51
that is more disciplinary right now?
35:53
Yeah, that's a really great question.
35:55
And, I think, you know, where it starts from is,
35:59
you know, really thinking from a school standpoint
36:02
in the context that our educators will be in,
36:05
what do we see as the sort of purpose of our education and really just
36:09
having conversation as a dialog to start with about that?
36:12
And I'm hoping that in IB school, most people will land on saying
36:16
that is to help to make the world a better place in some way, shape or form.
36:18
Right? And some variation of that.
36:20
Then the question becomes, okay, well, how do we do that?
36:23
What is actually the theory of change that enables that to take place?
36:28
What's the nature of those kinds of problems?
36:30
And I think what we will soon find with that kind of investigation is that, okay,
36:33
how do we begin to solve the ecological crisis,
36:36
even just in our community that we belong to?
36:39
How will we handle future pandemics in our world?
36:43
How do we create better peace in the way that we do things?
36:46
And when we begin to unpick that,
36:47
we'll see that, actually, those things are pretty complex,
36:50
and they sit at the confluence of multiple systems.
36:54
And so we begin to see that these are actually fundamentally systems problems
36:59
that are very hard to solve without understanding how systems
37:02
function, how they're designed, and then how they can be redesigned.
37:06
And so that creates the sort of meaning
37:09
or the purpose of why a systems approach is helpful.
37:13
And once we grounded in that, then I think we have a good rationale
37:17
and foundation for an organization to now begin saying,
37:21
well, let's spend a bit of time now learning about systems.
37:24
So I think in the absence of that, it becomes just another thing that we ask
37:27
teachers to do that is, you know, their add on and those kinds of things.
37:31
And I think grounding it in purpose really helps to give it
37:35
more investment and more reason.
37:37
And then from there, I think it's about
37:39
either online or, in some cases, face to face, engaging in some systems learning.
37:44
And so for example, as a college, will be soon launching
37:49
a systems leadership
37:51
course for teachers to help to prepare them for,
37:54
you know, 2028 and 2030 as part of the roll out,
37:57
and giving them a sort of basic systems education.
37:59
There are other institutions that do that as well.
38:02
And so I would suggest engaging in practice, or in
38:05
professional development, in that kind of way,
38:07
and then just trying it out, you know, and beginning to think about
38:11
how can we integrate
38:12
or change a history lesson slightly to take a more systems based approach
38:16
and to map things or to map stakeholders or fairly simple things,
38:20
to think about the systems iceberg as a tool, for example, and applying it.
38:24
And these are, I would say, they can be complex at first sight,
38:28
but actually once you begin working with it,
38:29
you realize it can be quite intuitive in some ways.
38:32
And then begin applying it in various domains.
38:34
I think that's a great entry route in.
38:36
And then if you want, people like our team here and we settled many,
38:41
many visitors over the last two years come to see us and we're always
38:44
welcome to others from outside
38:46
who want to come and have a look and see what we're doing and learn.
38:48
So I think a couple different ways we can do that together.
38:51
Nice.
38:51
Well, I'll come and visit in a couple of weeks time then.
38:54
So, see you soon.
38:56
The systems iceberg model is
38:58
one of the easiest frameworks to bring into any DP classroom today.
39:02
In this analogy or model above the water line, sits the event, what just happened?
39:07
But then beneath the surface lies the three deeper levels.
39:10
First the patterns over time, then the underlying structure
39:14
is causing those patterns, and then at the bottom,
39:16
the deeply held mental models driving the structures.
39:20
Asking students to look below the water line shifts them
39:22
from a memorization of events to a systemic analysis.
39:26
This model can also work
39:28
well as a tool for analyzing TOK real world situations.
39:32
What I like about what you just said, correct me if I’m wrong,
39:34
but it feels like a practical evolution
39:37
of international mindedness, like teaching international mindedness,
39:41
well, you can't think internationally unless you're recognizing
39:45
multiple systems and multiple perspectives that are all playing into one thing.
39:49
So nothing happens in isolation,
39:51
and therefore we have to consider all these different aspects.
39:53
It's kind of a way I might approach it as an international minded approach,
39:57
but this feels like it's just sort of taking that next step in that evolution.
40:00
So it's a little bit more practical for teachers to then implement regularly.
40:04
Yes. And, you know, I find the real strengthen is in doing the doing,
40:09
so to speak. Right?
40:10
And while not every school or teacher will be wanting
40:14
to take their history class and then doing a systems intervention
40:17
because of what they've learned in their class.
40:19
I mean, CAS becomes a natural way
40:21
where now, you know, with the class pilot,
40:24
and there's some flexibility there, ways in which you think about systems
40:28
and applying the systems work through a CAS lens,
40:32
gives you another venue or avenue to that.
40:34
Yeah.
40:35
Well, and in the collaborative sciences project, the new iteration of that one
40:38
very much lends itself to this style of approaching a problem,
40:43
yes, through a scientific lens,
40:44
but there's, you know, lots of ways that you can approach it.
40:48
I see those as natural evolution steps to it.
40:51
Yeah.
40:51
I think that the IB in general, I feel like in the last maybe,
40:56
I don't want to put a number on it,
40:57
but let's just say five years or so, I'm hearing more and more
41:00
the interdisciplinary studying, and it's like, that sounds so good.
41:06
But then it's like, what do you do?
41:09
I mean, we talk about it regularly in Kognity,
41:11
of how do we make our platform and our subjects more
41:16
facilitating interdisciplinary studying.
41:20
And because, like you said,
41:21
no real problems are solved in isolation of one subject.
41:26
But I think that a lot of schools don't know how to do it in a genuine way,
41:30
where it's not just like, okay, the history teacher was shadowing
41:34
the biology teacher and then they mentioned
41:38
mitosis once later on in the school year,
41:42
I guess, what are your reflections on
41:44
do you feel like this
41:46
the systems transformation framework is solving that problem?
41:50
Do you feel like it's something that they need to be done together?
41:54
Yeah, I guess curious your thoughts on it at your school, in your experience?
41:58
Yeah.
41:59
I appreciate you mentioning that,
42:00
because it also has been one of the core kind of design principles.
42:04
And again, if we walk it back from the purpose,
42:07
what is the overarching purpose that we see for our school
42:11
and for our young people as they engage in the world?
42:13
When we walk it back from that, then we clearly, you know, understand that
42:17
the complex global challenges of our time and of their time, are inherently
42:23
non disciplinary based, are systems based and are indeed transdisciplinary.
42:27
So, then we have designed the course to be transdisciplinary, in nature.
42:31
There are no disciplines attached to it.
42:33
Think about the PYP almost. Right?
42:35
Like in many ways the PYP has it right, in many ways.
42:39
And to just be clear, I'm not saying we should throw it disciplines.
42:41
Right?
42:42
I'm not saying that they should have no disciplinary understanding
42:45
or expertise or experience as young people through their education,
42:48
but if that's all that they have, then that's not enough.
42:52
And so having this transdisciplinary systems experience,
42:55
because inherently a systems approach
42:58
will be transdisciplinary, especially in its application,
43:01
because systems can just be a kind of toolkit.
43:04
If you don't, then think about this application.
43:07
So transdisciplinary then with that, how that then manifested itself in our school.
43:12
What it means is that we have teachers of multiple disciplines
43:15
teaching the course together and really embracing,
43:20
not just their professional kind of degree,
43:23
you could say, or degrees in any cases, but also their whole lived experience.
43:28
Because transdisciplinary for us
43:29
means beyond its disciplines but also beyond disciplines.
43:33
And so really invoking the totality
43:36
of human and other kinds of knowledge that we have
43:39
and bring all of that into what we do if we think about systems change.
43:43
And so in that sort of way, you bring your whole person
43:47
to what you do as an educator.
43:49
And so that's how it's then lived itself out.
43:51
And it's a very rare situation where we are talking in a disciplinary sense.
43:56
We may be talking about data at one point or data analytics at one point.
44:00
And we may talk about narratives and storytelling
44:02
in another part of the course,
44:05
or when I saw when I went to a college and observed
44:07
one of their classes of the STP, which is fascinating.
44:10
They were doing like a Harkness table style literature approach
44:13
to a topic, you know, so you'll see those things.
44:16
But they'll cross and they'll cut and will change across time
44:19
in the way in which they're done.
44:20
But most importantly, when the students are engaged,
44:24
as they're gearing up for their interventions,
44:27
their intervention may have a slightly kind of physics
44:30
nature to it because they're doing something about energy, for example.
44:33
And so they will invite the knowledge they need around
44:36
physics in to address the kind of challenge that they're facing.
44:39
But then it's in its application to people,
44:41
which is inherently a sociological or a political question.
44:45
So they automatically have to merge the physics with the politics
44:48
to kind of make it work in practice, you know?
44:50
So which is why the application becomes, you know, so important.
44:55
So that's a bit of how the interdisciplinarity then kind of fits in.
44:59
It's all super exciting to me, to be honest.
45:01
And I'm thinking back on some stuff I was reading specifically
45:05
different educational theorist and Basil Bernstein years ago, basically
45:09
criticized transdisciplinary interdisciplinary
45:12
learning and was all about, you know, the you have to be in specific subject
45:16
disciplines at this age,
45:17
and only once they get to a later age is it actually worthwhile
45:21
now with my sort of university careers guidance hat on, and I'm
45:24
sure that some of our listeners will be thinking of this as well,
45:27
Let's talk the university recognition question,
45:30
basically. You mentioned it earlier.
45:32
You know, this is a course that has 14 points
45:35
associated with it in the whole IBDP, you know, maximum 14 points
45:38
they could get, because it's effectively two standard level courses.
45:41
How is this handling the assessment rigor without any traditional exams?
45:45
It's all assessed by based off of coursework.
45:48
How are we handling that assessment rigor?
45:51
How are universities then recognizing this?
45:53
Because I would assume that many universities
45:55
would actually very much appreciate that students see all the transdisciplinary
45:59
areas in which this problem is presenting itself.
46:02
But we would know from university and careers guidance side
46:05
that certain universities are just looking for experts
46:08
in economics and experts in, you know, this field.
46:12
I need to see how great are you as a mathematician.
46:14
And they don't necessarily see why that transdisciplinary thing works.
46:19
Talk to us about that. How are we
46:20
navigating that line?
46:22
Yeah.
46:22
And it's been such an important feature. And,
46:26
you know, in many ways,
46:28
part of our like risk table, literally as a school,
46:31
you know, about how we manage of this kind of thing because it is
46:35
a huge priority and challenge and issue.
46:39
And again, that's where the IB has been really helpful
46:41
because they have tremendous expertise
46:42
in the recognition space, which just we as a school simply don't have, or
46:45
any individual university team will just not have.
46:48
So I guess the first thing is that from an assessment standpoint, having purely
46:52
coursework is not unique because the arts already have that as a design.
46:56
So in some ways, we leaned a little bit and we took what we could learn from
46:59
the arts in terms of how we design in this sort of way.
47:03
And then, again, through the help of the IB, thinking about the setup of it.
47:07
So each of the assessments, even though there's four of them,
47:10
each of them are, at the very least, externally moderated.
47:14
So it may be internally assessed, externally moderated for 50%
47:17
of the overall mark.
47:19
And the other 50% is externally assessed entirely.
47:22
So through those mechanisms, you sort of have a bit of a distance
47:26
from the school itself when it comes to the assessment
47:28
to be able to validate and those kinds of things
47:30
with the assessment. And then the back end,
47:32
The IB is also doing
47:33
kind of various analysis on how students are performing on their other
47:38
IB subjects in comparison to this course, and getting a sense of the spread
47:41
of the difference. And how is that over time, over a number of students.
47:44
So there's a whole bunch of
47:45
analysis going on on the back end as well that the IB is taking care of to help us
47:49
with that kind of question.
47:50
And then to the IB University recognition arm,
47:53
Paul Toulon and so on, and others on the team helping to kind of
47:56
educate universities about what this is about.
47:59
Probably I've spent most of my time
48:02
after our curriculum stuff was getting sorted out in various hands,
48:06
in the early days,
48:07
I spent a lot of my time working with universities,
48:09
and really educating them on some of this stuff.
48:12
And so every time a university or a group of university
48:14
would come and visit the school, they had to have,
48:16
or they'd like it or not, a mandatory locked door session in my office
48:19
where I was telling them
48:20
about the systems transformation pathway, where they wanted to hear it or not.
48:24
Well, so that I could begin educating them about it and getting their
48:27
feedback and their thoughts.
48:29
And so that was really interesting
48:31
to get their insights and questions.
48:33
So now fast forward kind of two years from that time and having now
48:37
two sets of graduates,
48:39
while we do not define ourselves
48:41
by kind of highly selective universities and that kind of thing,
48:45
it is helpful as a lens to understand the success of this program
48:50
in its sort of receptivity to universities, because typically,
48:54
if some of those universities will acknowledge
48:56
and accept students of this course, then most of the universities probably will.
49:01
So that's the kind of theory we've been working with.
49:04
In that domain, we've been, you know, hugely successful.
49:07
So I mean, every top IB League school you can think of has accepted students
49:11
from this program now over the last two years.
49:15
We've had multiple
49:16
students into Oxbridge, as well, who took this as a course, also.
49:20
We've had students receive scholarship for it
49:22
from other parts of the world who are not UK or US based.
49:28
So in that way, it's been hugely successful from a university standpoint.
49:32
And indeed,
49:33
universities especially, I would say, with a slight bias towards North America,
49:37
are definitely excited and looking for students
49:39
with this kind of prior preparation.
49:41
I've been pleasantly surprised by UK schools have been also quite receptive,
49:45
as well as schools like in Hong Kong, for example, have also been very receptive.
49:49
Probably we've had a bit of, more lukewarm reception
49:52
in places like Germany or Switzerland, Netherlands to some extent.
49:57
But it's to some extent somewhat beyond the systems
50:00
transformation pathway, as well.
50:03
But that's been the university receptivity, so far.
50:06
And universities that we've spoken to
50:09
about how they've found the students who have gone, also speak,
50:12
you know, really highly about it and are just interested
50:16
for more students. So that's great
50:18
from our standpoint.
50:20
All they have to do is visit you in your office as you give them
50:22
the overview of the systems transformation whilst they're looking out over,
50:27
you know, the beautiful sea, and they're playing a bit of foosball
50:29
and then sitting down at the conference like,
50:32
yeah, they realize, oh, all these things can fit in one space.
50:35
Yeah. No, it's fantastic.
50:37
Because that's also, I mean, whether anybody likes it or not,
50:40
that is the one of the huge priorities, especially for parents
50:44
when they're selecting schools for their, for their children and things like that.
50:48
It all has to come together.
50:50
That is one really important arm.
50:52
So it's it's really encouraging
50:54
to hear how much success you guys have found so far with that.
50:58
When educators hear coursework instead of exams,
51:02
some immediately worry that standards might be lower.
51:05
But that's not necessarily what the research tells us.
51:09
Authentic assessment asks students to apply knowledge
51:13
in realistic contexts rather than simply recall it
51:16
under exam conditions.
51:18
And when it's done well, it can actually demand more sophisticated thinking.
51:23
Of course, the challenge is reliability, because a written examination
51:27
is comparatively easy to standardize across thousands of students,
51:31
whereas projects are far more complex to assess consistently.
51:35
One of the really fascinating things about the systems transformation pathway
51:39
is that it's trying to balance both authenticity and rigorous moderation
51:44
processes.
51:46
But fundamentally,
51:47
if we believe that education should be better than it was in the past,
51:51
and we want to move away from kids sitting in rows,
51:54
facing the main orator of knowledge at the front of the classroom,
51:57
and instead do all the things we now know help to create
52:01
authentic and enjoyable learning experiences,
52:04
then why on earth
52:05
would we keep our assessment model the same as it was hundreds of years ago?
52:09
This isn't new either.
52:11
Wiggins's work in 1998 on educative assessment
52:14
or Darling-Hammond Ancess and Falk’s 1995 work titled
52:18
Authentic Assessment in Education, and more recent work like the 2019
52:22
OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030, all point toward better assessment
52:28
models that do not reduce knowledge and learning to a standardized test.
52:32
As we wrap up this conversation, even though I think John
52:34
and I could sit here and ask 100 more questions,
52:38
wondering, I think you've given a few really good examples
52:41
throughout the episode about things
52:43
that schools can do now, if they're eager for 2030,
52:47
you mentioned systems, leadership courses.
52:50
You've mentioned kind of the
52:52
some of the more action oriented elements to the classes.
52:56
Is there anything else that you would encourage teachers or school leaders
53:00
to do in the spirit of this course in preparation for 2030?
53:06
Yeah, I think it's really to be clear about the reasons
53:09
why you'd want to take on this course as a school, because it is designed
53:13
to be radically different from what is a typical diploma course.
53:18
So if the rationale is that it's a great option
53:21
because some of our students
53:21
don't like exams, and so it's a great way to kind of bypass the exam thing.
53:25
Or, you know, if it's because it sounds like it's a great way
53:28
to get into some good universities, that kind of thing.
53:30
I would suggest that that's a great recipe
53:33
for this course not being done well in your school.
53:38
I think so being really clear about the purpose in the why,
53:41
and then really trying to align the systems and structures
53:44
that you have in the school towards that, and that includes your board.
53:49
So I would be spending time on that.
53:51
I'd be beginning to build partnerships in your community,
53:56
places where
53:58
the young people in your school are able to go and participate
54:01
and intervene or apprentice themselves to others
54:05
who are doing systems work in the community.
54:07
And so finding friendly places for students to lend to do
54:11
some of that work, is really important and I think would be really helpful.
54:15
And then I also think, preparing teachers,
54:18
it's never too early to begin preparing teachers for this, as well.
54:22
And again, I mentioned some ways around that and as a college,
54:26
what we see is one of our core priorities going forward is helping to
54:30
have this course land well
54:32
out there in the IB world,
54:33
and a part of that is helping to prepare teachers.
54:35
And so, we want to be part of that support and solution as well.
54:39
Excellent.
54:39
I appreciate that a lot, Naheed.
54:40
Especially as a school kind of chomping at the bit to get going here.
54:44
It helps to know
54:45
there are things you can do in these next four years
54:47
to make sure that you're ready as a school to adopt this program,
54:49
if it is, you know, as you said, you know, contextually appropriate
54:52
and that it meets your purpose and your why.
54:55
But if so, then there are specific actions you can take now to set the scene,
54:59
I guess it would be
55:00
so that it's easier to accept the course, once it becomes available.
55:04
Yeah. Wonderful.
55:05
Naheed, you're a brilliant person.
55:07
And I would love to spend more time together
55:09
and just sort of talk about this and to learn more from it.
55:12
But I guess for now, I really, really appreciate you
55:13
taking the time to chat with us and tell us a little bit more
55:16
about the systems transformation pathway and share it with our audience as well.
55:19
I know there are many people out there
55:21
that are excited for this course and excited for the work that you've done.
55:23
And I guess from one passionate educator to another, thank you.
55:27
Thanks for shifting things.
55:30
Thanks for, you know, identifying a problem and a gap that needs work
55:33
and just pushing for it because we need it.
55:36
And so I just appreciate your innovation,
55:38
your drive and your passion to make it happen.
55:40
Yeah. Thank you.
55:41
And it's teamwork, you know.
55:43
So, yeah, I appreciate that.
55:44
And, it's all of us together that will be able to help to make
55:47
the kind of changes that are needed for our young people, which they need.
55:51
Great. Thank you so much, Naheed, for joining us.
55:53
My pleasure. Thank you so much.
55:57
John, are we moving to Wales?
55:59
Yes.
55:59
Yeah, as soon as possible,
56:01
because obviously that's where all the innovation is happening.
56:03
Who would have thought it'd be up in Wales? But it is.
56:06
I know.
56:07
This is not the first person we've talked to in a castle.
56:10
I also realized that. What a world.
56:13
Our show exclusively talks to people in castles.
56:16
That's how we recruit our guests these days.
56:19
It's on a point system.
56:20
No, I mean, I think the juxtaposition
56:23
of talking about the most innovative program
56:26
that the IB has done in a 12th century castle
56:32
it was not lost on me.
56:33
Yeah, it's remarkable actually. Yeah.
56:35
It really is. And Naheed is remarkable.
56:38
Whenever we talk to guests that are just so into the programs
56:43
that they're working on or the ideas that they're sharing, and I'm just all in,
56:47
I'm like, this is the future, the system transformation pathways.
56:51
It's so exciting to see.
56:54
I think what he said about this, they could have gone in any direction of
56:58
going too strong, too risky, and then it's not actually
57:03
going to work and scale,
57:06
versus being too safe.
57:09
And I do agree with him that I feel like this has really hit
57:13
a good sweet spot here of it is radically different.
57:16
Yeah.
57:17
And it is going to radically transform education for these students.
57:22
But still within enough of the constructs
57:27
of modern society that students
57:31
will still get to go to university and, you know, things like that.
57:34
I really appreciated that he outlined those things.
57:36
You know, they talked about
57:37
how it's a great innovative idea, but we want to make sure that it still
57:41
applicable in this space.
57:45
But I also very much appreciated him saying, you know,
57:46
what if we undershoot this?
57:49
What if we don't take as big of a step as we could do right now?
57:52
And I thought that was something that was really inspirational.
57:55
And I very much appreciated that perspective of it.
57:58
You know, so I know for me personally, like, I'm super excited for 2030.
58:01
I guess you are as well.
58:04
Tell me about it from a Kognity angle,
58:06
what are you guys looking forward to
58:08
when you think, you know, 2030s coming up here a few years,
58:11
what are we going to do about it?
58:12
I think my product team would kill me
58:13
if I was like, we are doing all the things.
58:16
No.
58:18
If it was up to me, we would do all the things all the time.
58:20
But, no, I think that, like I mentioned in the episode, there's
58:25
we care so much about
58:28
kind of the pedagogical practices
58:30
that start shifting when programs and curriculums evolve.
58:34
And that's at the heart of the way that we build is being aligned
58:39
to the teaching and the learning, not just kind of handing off a tool.
58:43
And so we've always wanted to find new ways of interdisciplinary
58:49
teaching between the different subjects in the IB.
58:52
But like we said, it's a hard nut to crack for a teacher,
58:56
and then also for the resources.
58:58
So I think then talking transdisciplinary, I'm really excited about
59:03
having a new framework, because I think that there hasn't
59:06
been maybe such a clear framework for interdisciplinary
59:10
studying in the traditional diploma program,
59:13
where this actually gives you the direction to go.
59:19
Like, what does that actually mean?
59:21
And where do we put these subjects together
59:24
and explore them beyond the content?
59:27
And so, I don't have any answers obviously,
59:31
but I'm really excited to start looking for them
59:34
to figure out what it looks like, not just for the actual system
59:38
transformation pathway, but also, like you said, what changes about
59:42
the individual disciplines, as well, and what we can do differently there.
59:47
Yeah, one thing I've always respected about the IB
59:50
is that they've allowed a lot of teacher autonomy
59:52
in the way that they set up their curriculum,
59:54
the way they set their syllabi.
59:56
You know, these are the fundamentals,
59:57
but the way you go about teaching it or how you want to do is kind of up to you.
1:00:01
At the same time,
1:00:02
or I guess, on the opposite side of that coin, is that it was really up
1:00:05
to the teacher to bring out global challenges like climate change,
1:00:09
biodiversity loss, mass migrations, energy crises, that sort of thing.
1:00:14
And depending on which teacher you had, you might have a vastly
1:00:17
different experience.
1:00:18
But as you've alluded to, this systems
1:00:20
transformation pathways, I feel a lot more explicitly focused on
1:00:24
let's address problems, not address curriculum.
1:00:28
And I got a lot of time for that.
1:00:30
I love my curriculum.
1:00:31
Don't get me wrong, I love teaching what I get to teach, but why I love it
1:00:35
is because I see the way that it infuses itself into all these
1:00:38
major challenges that I feel like systems transformation is point blank,
1:00:43
let's start with a challenge, and then let's look at it
1:00:45
from all the different
1:00:46
disciplines that might support our understanding of that challenge.
1:00:49
And I just think that's such a smarter way of going through things.
1:00:52
And I'm looking forward to that because I think it's going to add
1:00:54
more consistency across the program as well.
1:00:56
I think more students will then see things in that transdisciplinary manner,
1:01:02
which, as we spoke about, that's preparing kids for 2060.
1:01:06
Yeah, definitely.
1:01:07
I think all the cast coordinators
1:01:08
are probably so giddy about it too, because it's like I think
1:01:12
different schools approach cast differently.
1:01:13
But this is really also putting a lot of the heart of that
1:01:17
component of the IB into the whole program, too.
1:01:21
So obviously we're excited about this.
1:01:23
We think that this systems transformation
1:01:25
pathway is going to be really cool, and it might feel like it's too far away.
1:01:28
You know, 2030 is a long ways off.
1:01:30
But just as Naheed said, there's lots of things
1:01:31
that schools can be doing now
1:01:32
to help lay the groundwork so that you're ready to bring on
1:01:36
this new innovative idea, that I think is going to be really great for all schools.
1:01:39
So we're really glad you joined us for this episode.
1:01:41
We hope you are feeling just as inspired as we are,
1:01:44
and we hope to see you next time on IB Unplugged.
1:01:47
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast
1:01:49
for IBDP educators, helping you teach with more confidence, creativity and joy.
1:01:54
This podcast is hosted by Courtney Marline and John Patton and produced by Katilina
1:01:59
Gaffney, edited by Damir Zvekanov and supported by Karla Cetina.
1:02:03
If you have a topic or question for us to explore,
1:02:06
please reach out on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
1:02:10
See you next time.