Using the MYP Themes to Build Meaning with Adrian Von Wrede-Jervis

I mean, I think in the same sort of way that you find NYP that I described in this sort of balance act between the DP and the PYP, I think education as a whole is in this balance act between two, what are being projected as being very disparate arguments.

One is the community that is convinced that there isn't enough knowledge in our curriculum, that we've moved too far towards the sort of ephemeral skills and the notion that we're sort of trying to jump and over content to get to critical thinking.

And I think with the advent of AI, there are some advocates that have even embraced that idea that, well, now we've got a machine that will give us all knowledge, then we just need to train for critical thought.

Right.

gives them, well, they get apoplectic at that.

Nightmares.

And so in a certain way, I think MYP gets projected as being sort of a polar opposite to something like the IGCSE alternative.

And I think some of those knowledge-rich folk would prefer that we stuck to a curriculum that was more focused on

knowing.

Knowing those parts, yeah.

And I think that's a false dichotomy, to be honest.

Yeah.

But I have some criticism as well of some of the ideas that the knowledge only crowd tend to focus on.

In particular, I'm not the greatest fan of the notion of cognitive load theory.

And perversely, that's because I think it's controversial.

It's necessary to understand it, but it's not sufficient.

The way that it projects learning as being essentially a memory task that we have to get this knowledge somehow past our working memory into a long-term memory.

We have to trick our brain into being able to recall the knowledge that we have.

I think that's a... dangerous way to present knowledge.

And that thought, you know, I can remember from way back in my learning days of teacher school is that there's kind of the bucket theory, the idea that you opened up the head and you filled it with stuff.

And then we depended on the human nature and human intelligence to connect the dots.

And then, of course, with MYP over the years, there's been the discussion of conceptual learning and start with the concepts and then go draw from or learn enough so you can do that concept things.

So this is interesting to me that it kind of was, it's almost like it's a pendulum swinging back and forth.

Well, in some ways, I think that's where NYP did itself a disservice.

I think a lot of training was on, we start from the concepts and then we work down to our unit plans.