Chapter Two

The Structure of Knowledge

When reading this chapter, I remembered my second IB training for PYP in Atlanta. Mostly, it was not the best training, but what I got from it, what I still remember was the quiz that our trainer gave us. It had a few nit-picky questions [sorry for that lice reference] like “in what year did the revolution begin?” The answer to that question would vary depending upon which revolution one was addressing. The important thing, our instructor emphasized, was that we focus not on the details but on the concepts – what is a revolution? Why do revolutions happen? It is through these deeper questions that students gain understanding. This is a lot like the example that Erickson gives about the Civil War on page 34.

What we want for our students is for them to gain that deeper understanding – the question for us becomes how do we get them there? I had an interesting experience as a parent this evening. We were eating dinner and discussing Beowulf with the kids. No, we don’t always have intellectual conversations about classic literature around the dinner table, but the movie Grendel was on the Sci-fi channel so we were trying to explain it to the kids [incidentally, our explanation took so long that we missed much of the movie]. John explained to Will that Beowulf’s basic plot [hero faces bad guy and wins] has been used in many stories and Will said something to the effect of “so it sort of inspired modern literature.” Now, Will is a smart guy, but I give credit to our school for that level of conceptual thinking. I see how he thinks deeply and makes connections that frankly I know I did not make at his age. We should be proud of our program!

Interdisciplinary Connections

I felt like Erickson’s discussion on the transfer of knowledge gave me some insight on interdisciplinary teaching. Often we make the mistake of trying to link topics rather than concepts. If we look for the concepts that we teach and try to make connections there, I think it will be easier for us to plan genuine interdisciplinary units.

The Paradigm Shift and the Texas Model

This chapter offers great insight into the organization of the IB MYP curriculum framework. The call for teachers to “clearly articulate for themselves the focus concepts and ideas they are guiding students toward” [34] correlates with the AIMS listed for each subject area. Does this mean our guiding questions should in some way make a connection to the AIMS we have for each unit?

I also think it is important to note that she does not advocate abandoning factual knowledge all together. At our dinner table tonight, Will could not have made the conceptual link about the story of Beowulf if he did not have the factual knowledge that many stories have a hero that fights the bad guy and wins. Information and concepts go hand-in-hand. The system of education, especially in our public schools, puts heavy emphasis on facts, but our students need concepts too. As Erickson so eloquently put it, students “with strong conceptual structures in the brain are better able to process the massive amounts of incoming information, and better able to transfer knowledge” [39].

Conclusions

I found the samples to be helpful [especially the language arts dialogue] and overall I saw many connections to the IB curriculum guides for the various subject areas.