Tarek Azzam, Sarah Mason, Megan Mansfield, Blake Beckman and Devin Larson—Claremont Evaluation Center
In 2014, the International Baccalaureate (IB) began a curriculum change intended to enhance the Middle Years Programme (MYP), making it “better for students, easier for teachers, and more flexible for schools”. This report summarizes findings from the third phase of a multi-year study examining the implementation and impact of this change, which was named “MYP: Next chapter”. The third phase of the study documented how schools have implemented changes to the MYP and identified factors that help or hinder implementation. In this phase, 2,500 MYP teachers and more than 17,000 MYP students completed online performance monitoring surveys, and 18 schools took part in case study visits. Findings suggest that most schools appear to be implementing MYP: Next chapter in a way that meets IB expectations. Comparing the first and second years of survey data, both implementation trends and student-level outcomes have remained steady. Although no negative changes were apparent, this also suggests opportunities for growth and improvement. Similar to previous years, teachers tend to prioritize written curriculum requirements over embedding MYP concepts into everyday learning, and teacher collaboration remained challenging. Lastly, researchers found “whole-school alignment” to be critical for implementation success.
