Primary Years Programme Making the PYP happen - ITARI

Making the PYP happen
Concepts: what do we want the students to understand
Why include concepts as an essential element
The decision to structure the PYP curriculum around important concepts or big ideas is driven by these
beliefs:
! A good curriculum offers a balance between the acquisition of essential skills and knowledge
and the search for meaning. Education is without meaning if students never really understand.
! Education for understanding, with a focus on important ideas, has often been sacrificed to a
superficial introduction to isolated facts and skills. The pressure to cover the syllabus and the
expansion of the curriculum have resulted in many students leaving school without ever really
understanding.
! By starting with the students prior knowledge, and by confronting and extending their early
conceptions, we begin to promote real understanding.
! The exploration and re-exploration of concepts lead students towards a sense of the essence of
each discipline and an appreciation of ideas which transcend disciplinary barriers. If concepts
are approached from a range of perspectives, students can gradually arrive at a deeper
understanding.
! Transdisciplinary units structured around concepts provide a context in which students can
understand and, at the same time, acquire essential knowledge, skills and attitudes.
In summary then, the driving force at the heart of the PYP curriculum is a set of powerful ideas, or concepts,
which we believe have great significance within each discipline and which transcend disciplinary barriers.
These concepts provide a structure for the exploration of significant content. In the course of this
exploration, students acquire and practise essential skills and reach a deep understanding of the concepts.
Is it possible to identify a set of concepts around which to structure a
curriculum
Several years of research have been carried out involving the analysis of curricular models in use in
different national systems and in international schools. This research has focused on, firstly, whether or not
there was a consensus on a set of concepts in which each has universal significance, and secondly, the status
and role given to concepts in the various curriculum models. The results have led the PYP to conclude that
there are clusters of important ideas which can usefully be grouped under a set of overarching concepts,
each of which has major significance, regardless of time or place, within and across disciplines.
Having reached these conclusions, the PYP has designed a conceptual framework for the curriculum,
structured around a set of ideas or key concepts. It is realized that these are not, in any sense, the only
concepts worth exploring. On the contrary, the concepts which have been selected serve more as labels for
clusters of interesting ideas. Taken together, they form a powerful set of ideas which drive the
teacher/student constructed research projects, the units of inquiry, which lie at the heart of the PYP
curriculum.
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