How Important is it for IB Diploma Programme Teachers to Teach ‘Approaches to Learning’ Skills?

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative investigation exploring the perspectives of International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) students in the Enrichment and Learning Support programmes at an independent, all-girls school located outside of London, UK. The school had been engaged in an on-going effort to align its pedagogy with the IB’s student-centred, inquiry-driven pedagogy to foster a teaching and learning context in which Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills would be valued and taught by teachers, and valued and applied by students. This investigation sought to understand the extent to which teachers at this school were explicitly teaching ATL skills and whether students considered it important for their teachers to do so. Two focus groups were conducted, one with students involved in the school’s Enrichment Programme and the other with students with special educational needs and disability (SEND) who were involved in the school’s Learning Support Programme. Findings indicate that although ATL skills tended not to be explicitly taught in DP classrooms, a range of ATL skills were embedded by DP teachers as part of process-focused instruction; nonetheless, students did not always recognise this as being taught how to learn and were unaware that these skills formed part of the curriculum. Both groups perceived effective Approaches to Learning skills to be fundamental to success and well-being in the IB Diploma Programme and believed these skills should be explicitly taught by DP teachers.