#PYP The Null Curriculum? Why PYP Schools Need to Examine Science in the Program of Inquiry

Let me be clear, I am biased. I wholeheartedly agree with the Nobel-Prize winning quantum scientist, Richard Feynman, ” The world looks so different after learning science.”  In my mind, this is the greatest argument for scrutinizing our Programme of Inquiry to ensure that are developing scientific literacy. Scientific inquiry naturally challenges and changes you.

I have been trying to track down the memory of where I first heard a PYP educational leader say that out of our 6 Transdisciplinary Themes, there are some units that should be Social Studies focused (Where We Are in Place and Time and How We Organize Ourselves), another that should be Arts focused (How We Express Ourselves), 2 that are Science focused (How the World Works and Sharing the Planet) and the Who We Are theme can bridge multiple disciplines. Of course, it’s very easy to read the transdisciplinary theme descriptors and arrive at these conclusions, but this whole notion of a theme as the “arts” and the “social studies” unit is incongruent with the whole notion of what IS supposed to transdisciplinary learning. But whenever I look at a school’s Programme of Inquiry (POI), this sort of thinking seems to leave its fingerprints everywhere in their curriculum design. Look at your own POI, right now. I double dog dare you! You’ll see exactly what I am talking about.

I’d like to challenge this discrete packaging of developing knowledge by themes. Furthermore, I’d like to use this term, the Null Curriculum, ironically, to explore what it means to our POI.

The Null Curriculum: the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire. -Elliot Eisner-

For those who don’t know, Elliot Eisner, a curriculum thought leader and art education advocate, coined this term null curriculum, in which he often stated that art appreciation is an important and often neglected aspect of our school’s implicit curriculum. However, this term is transferable to other subject matter. When we relegate science and its thinking skills to only a couple of TD themes, we are minimalizing its importance, making it null; especially since it is not a “special” (visual art, music/performing arts, additional languages and PE) that IB schools offer a couple times a week. Therefore, Science, as a subject, only gets to be spotlighted and explored for 6-12 weeks a year, for maybe 3 hours a week during the time in which we are not teaching math, literacy or the special subjects.

Did you just do the math? 36 hours or 3 days of Science learning a year. Ouch. That’s not a lot dedicated time to an area of learning that we know is emerging as a necessary element of our students’ lives. We know that technology is changing the dynamics of our society and STEM (Science, Technology, and Math) is becoming a focal point for innovation in many schools (which many schools have expanded STEM to STEAM to include art as an essential component) So shouldn’t we be examining our POIs to make sure we are in synch with emerging trends and provide a balanced curriculum?

Here’s what troubles me the most, science, in my mind is the binding agent of all the other disciplines. It is an inherently transdisciplinary inquiry. That’s because science explores the “magic” that remains invisible until we apply scientific habits of thinking. It starts off with What Does It All Mean, Man?-sort of thinking; our curiosity and our imagination are naturally provoked and we are driven to make discoveries which only lead to further questions and a revealing of new possibilities. Science, in my mind, is a big game of What If? which can be applied to all manner of subjects and cultivate deeper thinking. 

When the Arts and Science Get Married: Changing How the World Works to How We Express Ourselves 

I’d like to pull out some central ideas and challenge how you can put more science into other themes.  How We Express Ourselves is probably not the first one you would have picked so I’d like to start there.  Here’s the overview of the theme.

How We Express Ourselves: an inquiry into…the ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs, and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend and enjoy our creativity; our appreciation of the aesthetic.

Now, I’m going to hit close to home and share the How the World Works unit that we did with our 1st graders:

Understanding sound and light can transform experience.

Put this central idea in that theme descriptor above. Think about how students could have applied their knowledge of light and sound if we had inquired through this theme.  We could have developed perspective-taking and thinking about an audience. We could have explored acoustics and how light enhances a performance. We could have used design thinking. It would have been messy learning. We, students and teachers, included, would have gone into the learning pit, and we would have had fun, we would have been challenged. It would have an impact and lasting memory on all of us. It would have been exhilarating and excruciating at the same time. Really the only constraints of this collaboration would be the depth of our lines of inquiry.

What about this central idea from another school’s  How the World Works Unit?

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed.

The same sort of collaboration would have been possible.  If we extended the central to include more concepts, I think there would be a richer learning experience. For example:

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed for a purpose.

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed for communicating a message. 

The second central idea makes me wonder how we might explore art curation or how manufacturers and designers consider the impact of plastic on our world. What about  Addis shoes made out of plastic?-Can you think of how you can teach students material science and apply it to innovation, making treasure out of trash? We just did this concept of transformation with musical instruments to make a sound garden at our school. (This unplanned collaboration came out of a Sharing the Planet unit) This is only one idea of a hundred possibilities. I’m not even scratching the surface. What ideas float up in your mind?

Here’s another central idea:

People are inspired to create by observing the natural world. 

If you pull out a piece of paper and start mind mapping the possibilities of this central idea, it would be hard to write only 3 lines of inquiry for it. My mind goes to weather, jumps to landforms, then airplane design or bridge building then wonders how we could capture movement and change in our drawings or dancing. I think about culture, whether it is folktale creation stories or costumes.  There all sorts of connections that can be made. I am only limited by my imagination.

I’d like to share one more thought about the marriage of art and science in our curriculum. Have a think about what Eisner is postulating:

Did you read that last line? Connoisseurs of…the world. When you marry science to all the other areas of learning, you get all sorts of delightful experiences. You apply skills. You apply knowledge. So stop thinking that How We Express Ourselves is the Arts unit! It goes beyond those boundaries of that discipline, from passive to active learning, when you combine it with science.

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I’m going to revisit this idea of putting science into other themes.  I just really want to challenge this notion of what disciplines are emphasized during a unit of inquiry. I want us PYP educators to really be true to the transdisciplinary nature of our framework’s design–not because we are blindly following Making the PYP Happen, but because the future world in which our students will live demand that they can transfer knowledge and skills between disciplines. Technology is blurring the lines between subject areas and we need to prepare students for the shifting nature of what we will call “progress”.

Perhaps you have any other thoughts that you would like to add to this discussion of curriculum. Please share! It helps all of us grow!