The International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IBPYP), an internationally recognized elementary school education program, is attracting attention as a way of future education to foster creative and convergent talents. Accordingly, in Korea, ...
The International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IBPYP), an internationally recognized elementary school education program, is attracting attention as a way of future education to foster creative and convergent talents. Accordingly, in Korea, the introduction and implementation of the Daegu Office of Education and the Jeju Office of Education are actively carried out, and among them, the Daegu Office of Education is leading the introduction and implementation of PYP.
Implementing IB does not only mean implementing curriculum, but also means comprehensive implementation ranging from educational philosophy, educational administration, teacher training, curriculum, and evaluation. Moreover, Korea, which has a national curriculum, has tasks to consider various factors such as academic management, curriculum organization, class, evaluation, as well as school budget, facilities and training to combine the national curriculum and IB curriculum well. Nevertheless, study from a holistic point of view tended to be conducted mainly on IBDP.
Based on this, the purpose of this study is to analyze status of introducing and implementing IB PYP, an internationally recognized curriculum, while maintaining the official curriculum of elementary schools in Korea, with a holistic perspective. By analyzing the status of Daegu, which successfully introduced and implemented IB PYP, it will be possible to help each education office and school considering introducing it. The research questions and research contents to achieve the purpose of this study are as follows.
First, what is the purpose and procedure of introducing IB PYP to domestic elementary schools, and how are teacher training, promotion, and communication conducted?
Second, what about the school's organization, budget, and facilities status for the introduction and implementation of IB PYP?
Third, how does IB PYP change (delete, add, weaken, strengthen) when it is combined with Korea's national curriculum of elementary school?
According to these research questions, the official introduction process of IB was revealed through prior research, and based on this, the purpose and procedure of introducing IB PYP by the Daegu Office of Education, teacher training and public relations status were analyzed. Next, the organization, budget, and facility status of the IB PYP school were analyzed. Finally, after comparing the outline and characteristics of IB PYP with the 2015 revised curriculum through previous studies, the study analyzed the data of IB management schools to examine the changes caused by the combination of IB PYP and national curriculum in terms of academic management, curriculum organization, class·evaluation, and National Curriculum Standards·subject curriculum.
As a research method, document collection and analysis were conducted, and teacher interview was conducted to supplement them.
The results of the study are as follows.
First, Daegu Office of Education was introduced IB PYP in accordance with the timely, educational, social demands, and there was a clear purpose to lay the foundation for implementing IB programs in public education without language restrictions. Based on this purpose, in order to increase the interest and participation of public elementary schools in IB, the Daegu Office of Education established a certification procedure for IB schools that wish to implement IB programs as basic schools → interest schools → candidate schools → IB certificated schools, by adding ‘the basic school stage’ before the interest school.
At the same time, the Daegu Office of Education conducted teacher training, promotion, and communication by dividing it into a large framework of strengthening IB practice capabilities and spreading IB consensus for the smooth introduction and implementation of IB. Regarding teacher training, the Daegu Office of Education supported regular study groups operated by each school, grade, and team, including mandatory training (Category 1 and Category 2), and was training teacher leaders at each school level and subject. With this support, IB schools were trying to improve teacher expertise and creating a teaching and learning community.
Regarding publicity and communication, it was promoted based on a large framework of strengthening public-private cooperation IB governance, strengthening publicity for local communities and parents, and expanding exchanges with domestic and foreign IB educational institutions. The Daegu Office of Education cooperated with and interacted with local communities, other municipal institutions, educational institutions, and the media, and supported IB school teachers and members of the study group to interact with education experts. IB School disclosed information materials and class observation, inquiry and learning contents, notification plans, and actual performance materials such as POI to parents, and guided IB to students in natural class situations.
Second, the organizations and department members of each department at IB PYP school were similar to schools that did not operate IB PYP, but IB PYP schools had coordinator whose role was IB administrative work as education manager, and had additional education staff as assistants.
Regarding the budget, the Daegu Office of Education provided KRW 10 million per school for IB interest schools and KRW 30 to KRW 60 million per school for IB candidate schools. Accordingly, the budget increase or decrease of the school subject to this study from 2018 to 2020 showed a different trend for each school, but in common, the absolute figure and ratio of parental burden income decreased.
School facilities were classified into classrooms, management rooms, special rooms, and auxiliary facilities, similar to schools that do not operate IBs, and expanded special rooms such as infinite imagination rooms, galleries, eco-friendly exhibition rooms, and history halls which help students' inquiry and implementing IB. Especially, it was necessary to supplement and expand facilities for the library that played an important role in IB implement.
Third, for school affair management and curriculum organization, each school secured more than 190 days of annual classes, and the one-unit time was 40 minutes in principle, but actively utilized block classes longer than the unit time. The curriculum was organized and implemented through Creative experience activities(CA) and seven subject groups of national curriculum, and the exhibition was implemented with subjects, creative experience activities. six UOI which were subject convergence with the transdisciplinary themes were designed at the beginning of the semester, and UOI classes were conducted three times a semester, four to five weeks, and emphasized student initiative and subjectivity. The evaluation of the class followed the process-centered evaluation of the national curriculum, and the feedback was reinforced by conducting an essay-descriptive evaluation applying the IB evaluation method. Regarding evaluation records and notifications, descriptions for each subject were entered into NEIS in connection with UOI, and performance evaluation was recorded separately. The student's self reflection on his or her growth and the teacher's description of it were recorded and notified in the form of a rubric that guides the degree of reach.
Also, with the combination of IB PYP and the national curriculum, changes in National Curriculum Standards and subject curriculum are as follows. In National Curriculum Standards, the pursued human image was implemented in terms presented in the PYP learner image and PYP's learning technology was used as a specific strategy to realize six the core competencies of the national curriculum. In addition, IB inquiry units were being designed further from the topic-oriented projects that had been carried out. Next, in subject curriculum, inquiry project was designed by converging 7 subjects group of the national curriculum, not 6 subjects group of PYP. The achievement standards of Korean language, art, and music were mainly fused to the achievement standards of society and science. Mathematics was being learned in the form of individual subjects rather than convergence due to the sequence, level differences, and difficulty in applying to real life. For the convergence of these subjects, the transdisciplinary themes of PYP was used, and based on this, the subject of the inquiry unit was established. In addition, the meaning of the core concept used in the design of the inquiry unit mainly follows that of PYP, but the use of core concept of the national curriculum and the core concept of PYP were mixed depending on the school. In the case of related concepts, keywords extracted from the achievement standards of the national curriculum were added and used as related concepts of PYP. In the process of designing UOI in this way, teachers designed the inquiry unit from the forward method(goal-content-method- evaluation) to the backward method(goal-evaluation-method).
The conclusion is as follows.
First, while quickly accepting social and contemporary demands and following official certification procedures for the introduction of IB PYP, the introduction and procedure steps can be appropriately supplemented according to the local situation. Training IB teachers through teacher training, school self-training, and individual training, while communicating specifically and continuously with parents and students on PYP class plans and notices are the basis for the introduction and implementation of IB PYP.
Second, the added IB work is handled by the IB coordinator to reduce the burden on teachers, and it is possible to implement PYP with the reduction of parent-burden tax. Also, securing facilities to help inquiry is essential for IB implementation.
Third, teachers designed the inquiry unit in a backward method by combining transdisciplinary topics and IB inquiry learning elements with the subject group and achievement standards of the national curriculum. Evaluation followed the process-oriented evaluation of the national curriculum and is recorded and notified as the opinion of students and teachers.
As suggestion, two things were suggested depending on the insufficient part of the study.
First, since this study studied the initial stage of PYP implementation at the level of public education, a follow-up PYP study was proposed based on data after one cycle, taking 6 years from admission of 1st grade to graduation of 6th grade.
Second, since this study studied somewhat limited research subjects of the Daegu Office of Education which the researcher belongs and two schools, a generalizable level of research can be conducted by increasing the sample to more local offices of education and PYP schools.