The IB’s new vocation
Everyone, it seems, is talking about the knowledge economy and the way in which it will change education in the years to come. As the demand for new, career-related courses grows, could international education be extended to a wider group of students?
Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value,” said Albert Einstein. Developing students who are of value to the world (and who, like Einstein, are pretty successful in their chosen vocations) is what IB World Schools do. But though the IB diploma is a highly regarded qualification, it is undeniably designed for academically oriented students. For those who are preparing directly for employment, and who would like a more career-related qualification, an IB education, along international and intercultural lines, has been impossible. Until now.
In Oulu, Finland, and in Québec, Canada, two pilot programmes offering career-related courses in collaboration with the IB are in the earliest stages of development. The Oulun Lyseo joined forces with Oulu Business College in November 2005 to offer vocational qualifications with elements of the IB Diploma Programme. Similarly, from September of this year at the Collège Laflèche and the Collège
François-Xavier Garneau in Québec, students will be able to choose from five new specialist courses based on IB principles.
It’s an exciting new direction for IB education although, at present, it is a pilot operating on a limited basis. As Monique Conn, IB academic director, is keen to point out, “These projects are still tentative and provisional. We have been working on them for three years so far, and the factors involved are still being examined and negotiated. The pilot framework has been approved by the IB’s governing body, with a mandate to conduct these schemes and to evaluate them carefully. We will be going back to the Council of Foundation with all our findings to seek formal approval in about 2009.”
That sounds like a very thorough evaluation but, as Conn emphasizes, “If you consider that the students in Finland and Québec are on courses typically three years long, 2009 isn’t that far off.”
So, in an era when old-style vocational education is shaking off its (undeserved) reputation as second rate, what do these courses involve?
“We are not looking at narrow technical training, but at courses that will prepare students for a range of careers within a given field,” says Conn. “Nor are we developing a programme or syllabus. We’re developing a framework for blending a generic, broad-based technical and career-related education with chosen elements from the Diploma Programme. In this way, we hope to extend the IB experience in a very explicit and very purposeful way to a larger group of students.”
For the present, any school or college wishing to teach one of these courses will either be an IB World School itself, like Collège Laflèche, or will be partnered very closely by an IB World School, as is currently happening in Oulu.
“In Finland, a local college which is not itself an IB World School is teaching a three-year course called the business and administration international programme,” says Conn. “This is being closely monitored, coached and supported by a collaborating IB school. In Québec, the three-year programmes starting in September will be fashion design and marketing, hotel management, tourism, correctional and youth services intervention and police technology.
“Wherever these initiatives take place, the global issues, the international element and the intercultural approaches need to be considered. Through this approach, which is a mix of local technical and IB courses and core elements, we will be developing a programme framework that the schools understand, explaining what principles they must respect and where the flexibility lies.”
Pierre Michaud, Diploma Programme coordinator at Collège Laflèche, appreciates the qualities the IB can encourage.
“We want to offer students in the career-related education sectors wider access to IB methods and values. These will give them the freedom to explore their potential roles, not only as professionals in their communities but as active citizens.”
Assessment will be by a blend of local level and IB assessment and certificates will be awarded for Diploma Programme subjects taken, as well as by the school itself. In addition, there will be a certificate of international education with IB credentials
for successful participants.
Though locally based, the programmes have the potential to transcend intercultural education frontiers: representatives from both the Oulu and the Québec projects have already met to discuss programme development. Before the end of the year, an online curriculum centre (OCC) forum is planned for the teachers, to promote further discussion.
So if this evolving, career-related education framework proves to be a success, what are the long-term implications?
“I think the potential for extending the IB’s principles to a large number of pre-university learners is huge,” says Monique Conn. “People being trained for specific areas of work need to be problem solvers, need to know how to work in teams and need to acquire exactly the kind of qualities that are represented in the IB learner profile.
“If we can reach students preparing for employment, we will be able to provide many more with a truly international education that will help them understand their potential contribution as global citizens.”
For further information about pilot projects in career-related education, read the following:
Where the local and global meet: Oulun Lyseo and Oulu Business College, Finland
Collèges Laflèche and François-Xavier Garneau, Québec, Canada
Wesley College, Melbourne, Australia
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“We are not looking at narrow technical training, but at courses that will prepare students for a range of careers within a given field,”
