1 Educ 5270
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angeli abueg1 Educ 5270
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angeli abuegHello everyone!
I am a veteran Physical Education teacher, with 19 years of experience
both in my home country of the United Kingdom and on the International School circuit.
I have worked in 7 schools in total, on 4 different continents, giving me a balanced
understanding of educational curricula. Throughout my many moves, I have flitted
between the British National Curriculum and the International Baccalaureate programs. I
have worked across the age ranges, from 3-18, implementing a play based curriculum in
the early years while also focusing on examination courses for the pre-university ages. I
have just finished my third year of teaching in the top school in Tanzania, East Africa,
which offers all three IBO programs.
The educational philosophies of my 7 schools have been vastly different. Some have
been selective and elitist exam factories, while others have focused on inclusion and
individual student progress. With these moves, my own pedagogical philosophy has
evolved greatly. In my first seven years of teaching, I had only experienced the British
National Curriculum, and International Schools which have modeled their curriculum on
it. The British system is standard based and very rigid in nature. Specifically in the field
of Physical Education, the emphasis is on skill acquisition through teacher-centric
pedagogy. The teacher demonstrates the recognized technique of a skill, such as a
basketball set shot, and all the students complete the exact same drill/scrimmage to try
to master this skill. Lessons generally stay close to the ‘minimal independence in
decision making’ side of the Spectrum of Teaching Styles which was first proposed by
Moston and Ashworth in 1966 (Moston & Ashworth, 2008). Thus, the British National
Curriculum aligns more with behaviorist philosophy which is characterized by learners
acquiring new behaviors by observing others through modeling, and who are
conditioned with the use of reinforcement (both positive and negative) through operant
conditioning (Zhou & Brown, 2015).
In stark contrast to this, the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, and in particular
the Primary Years Program (PYP), in which I am currently teaching, has a more of a
conceptual focus. Learning is transdisciplinary, focusing on big ideas which could be
studied in any subject area, an example in basketball would be manipulation of space to
gain an advantage over opponents. Students are encouraged to be creative; agents of
their own learning, and partners in the learning process. Learners build relationships
with their learning community, developing into caring, active participants in a lifelong
journey of learning. (IBO, 2021). The PYP curriculum works at the opposite end of
Mosston & Ashworth’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles, with the student working towards
‘maximum independence in decision making’. Learners actively create and construct
their own knowledge and therefore this program of study aligns with a constructivist
approach where construction of knowledge is attained through social interactions
(Brown, 2020).
My evolution into an International Baccalaureate educator has greatly influenced my
teaching to align more with a constructionist philosophy. I more regularly utilize
teaching methods which are non-linear in nature and which foster creativity and social
interaction with their peers. I align with social constructivism in particular, focusing on
the shared construction of knowledge through social interactions, through learning and
teaching methods such as Cooperative Learning (Brown, 2020). Through these
approaches, I have seen great improvements in student motivation and enthusiasm.
Learners from all ability levels are happy and flourishing, as the focus has shifted from
who can and cannot perform a skill to a more mastery climate which focuses on
personal progress. I would find it very hard to flip back to a school which relies more on
standardized assessments and traditional pedagogical approaches.
References
Brown, G. (2020). Difference Between Social Learning Theory and
Constructivism. http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-between-
social-learning-theory-and-constructivism/
IBO. (2021). Primary Years Program. Retrieved from:
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/primary-years-programme/
Moston, M. & Ashworth, S. (2008). Teaching Physical Education. First Online Edition.
https://spectrumofteachingstyles.org/assets/files/book/Teaching_Physical_Edu_1st_Onlin
e.pdf
Zhou, M., & Brown, D. (2015). Educational learning theories. Education open
textbooks. https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=education-textbooks