I too would like to comment on the inquiry-led pedagogy and concept-based curriculum framework of the International Baccalaureate (IB) as a way of altering the balance of agency between instructor and student.

According to the IB, this is a framework where, "prior knowledge and experience establish the basis for new learning, and students’ own curiosity provides the most effective provocation for learning that is engaging, relevant, challenging and significant." (What is an IB Education. IBO, 2013.) Teachers facilitate structured inquiry among students who then proceed to 'action' and finally to 'reflection' so that metacognition is also encouraged. This 'learning to learn" aspect is another way of giving students more agency over their own learning. ‘Action’ is best understood as the production of a knowledge artifact(s) and teachers are asked to focus on authentic assessments rather than standard testing (MYP from principles into practice. IBO, 2014) but assessment also focuses on the process of learning and not just its products.

In my experience, this can permit teachers to actively employ principles of Project-Based Learning, where students are presented with a complex task/challenge for which they themselves come to see what skills and knowledge they must acquire in order to be able to succeed. Depending on the age of students, this can be more or less scaffolded. An example of this is a current unit that I teach on Poverty and Development (where we look at various definitions of poverty and examine poverty in different parts of the world at both national and individual levels). The task students are set is to create a webpage that includes what they deem to be important about understanding poverty (definitions, ways of measuring, presentation of data, etc) to support a video/screencast that they create which looks at poverty in a specific country of their choice.

Students work individually on producing the website and video/screencast, but work with each other to come up with the supporting material. As teacher, I will deliver sporadic teaching sessions in which as a class we discuss the main concepts involved, but most of the time I operate more as a facilitator or coach moving among students and posing or answering questions. Students do the same.

As a final addition to their websites, students consider the Sustainable Development Goals and identify which one they believe would be most effective in helping to overcome poverty in their chosen country and explain why they think this. At the end of the unit, we share websites out among the class and students are given the opportunity to view and comment on each other’s work.

Within the confines of a high school (students are aged 15-16), I believe that this unit helps to move agency away from myself as teacher and give more of it to the students. The main constraint on units of this kind is the fact that it must also provide students with specific knowledge, understanding and skills to allow them to successfully proceed to the Diploma Programme.

I’m open to suggestions as to how to improve this unit and to further encourage students to become knowledged producers rather than consumers.