Date of Award

Fall 11-22-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Morgridge College of Education, Teaching and Learning Sciences, Curriculum and Instruction

First Advisor

Norma Hafenstein

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

Pedagogy, Secondary education, Curriculum development

Abstract

The development of 21st-century skill frameworks characterized as being universal, transferrable, and future-facing are ubiquitous among international educational organizations (Suto & Eccles, 2014). The International Baccalaureate (IB) incorporates a similarly articulated universal, transferrable, and future-facing set of skills called the Approaches to Learning (ATL) in its four programmes (International Baccalaureate, 2022b). However, critiques of the IB as being Eurocentric and solely concerned with the development of learners for Western educational experiences calls for a critical examination of the ATL as promoting monocultural skills which are not contextual, personalized, or humanizing (Refai, 2020). This multiple-case study and document review utilized the conceptual frameworks of Biesta’s (2022) subjectification domain of schooling and Salazar’s (2013) principles and practices, and tenets of a humanizing pedagogy to examine the humanizing aptitude of the organizational intention and educator operationalization of the ATL in the IB’s middle years programme.

The study’s findings indicate that there is a degree of an intention for the ATL to be humanizing from an organizational standpoint. However, there were findings that indicated that the guidance for teachers and schools suggested activities which were antithetical to the pursuit of humanization as conceptualized through Biesta’s (2022) dimension of subjectification. Participant interviews included MYP practitioners from all three regions of the International Baccalaureate, the Americas; Africa, Europe, and the Middle East (AEME); and Asia Pacific (AP). Findings from the interviews indicate that while MYP practitioners exhibit humanizing pedagogies in their operationalization of the ATL, it is unclear whether that operationalization is a result of the ATL. All practitioners agreed that the ATL are universally applicable and beneficial to all learners regardless of context.

Copyright Date

11-2024

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Leah Yates

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

226 pgs

File Size

1.9 MB

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