These full-day workshops will be held on Saturday 18 March 2023.
Pre-conference workshops dive deeply into educational practices that support starting and sustaining IB programmes.
Some workshops are IB-specific (i.e. IB programme standards and practices), and others are more general (i.e. service learning) but have direct impact on the IB in your schools and communities. These sessions are expected to include a variety of teaching strategies and interactive experiences with adult learners in mind.
Pre-conference workshop 1: Approaches to learning and sustainable entrepreneurship: From Early Years to the Diploma Programme
Presenters: Bianca Starck and Stuart Ratcliffe
Strand: Learning and teaching
Determination, passion, growth mindset, critical thinking, innovation and action: undoubtedly key factors to sustainable entrepreneurship and a better world. However, how are they cultivated in continuum schools, from early years to the Diploma Programme, allowing opportunities for students to apply them in and outside their learning community? In this workshop, collaborative activities will enable participants to understand how definitions of entrepreneurship can be personalized. Educational case studies will explore how approaches to learning foster sustainable entrepreneurship in IB schools. Above all, participants will leave with a new set of ideas to inspire their learning communities and nurture a sustainable entrepreneurship mindset and skill set through the IB approaches to learning.
Pre-conference workshop 2: Creating inclusive classrooms through universal design for learning
Strand: Inclusive education and well-being
This workshop provides educators across all educational contexts with the opportunity to develop an understanding of inclusive classroom practice through universal design for learning (UDL). Strategies focus on removing barriers to learning, understanding learner variability, increasing student agency, developing cultural competency and focusing on inclusion for programme development.
Pre-conference workshop 3: IB World Schools as evolving learning organizations
Presenters: Angela Meikle, Florian Ciprian Baciu, Suman Sethi and Steve Wishart
Strand: Learning and teaching
The primary aim of a continuous reflective process in a school is to ensure that it is always developing the capacity to have a greater impact on student outcomes through the development of teacher and leader practice. Schools engage in collaborative reflection to deepen their understanding of what works well within their context and what needs further development. This supports the school as a learning community to develop intentionally and strategically so that resources and efforts can be allocated effectively.
In this pre-conference workshop, participants will collaboratively explore the concept of an evolving learning organization. This will be achieved through the lens of the 2020 IB Programme standards and practices. The aims of the session will be:
- deconstructing the 2020 Programme standards and practices
- engaging with programme development and action research for continuous growth
- promoting agency to support school strategy
- building capacity to have greater impact on student outcomes.
Pre-conference workshop 4: Thinking about my thinking and acting: Do I really make a difference to learners and learning?
Presenters: Lyn Coote and David Whitehead
Strand: Learning and teaching
Designed for all educators who value being “nosey” about their impact, who aim to enhance collaborative expertise and who seek to strengthen and sustain a shared approach to effective interpretation and use of evidence. Join this session to delve deeper into the following questions.
- What is evaluative thinking and why is it important for educators to be experts in it?
- What does evaluative thinking actually look like in practice?
- How do you build a learning collective where thinking and acting evaluatively is what leaders, teachers and students do every day as part of the learning process?
Pre-conference workshop 5: Transformative programme implementation through the 2020 Programme standards and practices
Presenters: Sean Rankin, Monita Sen and Avi Nanda
Strand: Learning and teaching
The 2020 Programme standards and practices provide an overarching framework for the implementation of IB programmes that supports schools to engage in a developmental and transformational journey. In this highly interactive and practical session, participants will unpack the IB's developmental approach to programme implementation through the lens of the adaptive capacity framework: What, So What, and Now What? In doing so, there will be a focus placed on how this translates into developing sustainable IB programmes that meet the contextual needs of the participants' learning communities. While the content will be accessible to all, Heads of School, programme coordinators, year-level leaders, subject-group leaders and other leaders who aim to enable and empower staff will be the primary audience.
