The IPC has received great acclaim around the world for the way it helps schools to deliver ‘great learning, great teaching and great fun’. Leaders and teachers in many of our member schools have demonstrated how engaging, dynamic 21st century learning can be implemented in schools and classrooms.

Our journey, though, is a continuing and developing one. So we are delighted this year to have one of the great thinkers about learning and leadership with us to help us strengthen our practice. Dr. Howard Gardner will be leading the first day of our conference, helping us to extend our knowledge, improve our skills and deepen our understanding. Dr. Gardner will be focusing his day with us on three of his key ideas – five minds for the future, leadership and multiple intelligences.

The second day of the conference will focus on developing Dr. Gardner’s ideas with a particular focus on the International Primary Curriculum. This day will be led by Martin Skelton, founding director of the IPC who continues to be fully involved in its development. By the end of day two, everyone attending will have deepened their appreciation of the IPC and developed a range of practical skills, based on Dr. Howard Gardner's learning and leadership approach, that will help improve the delivery of the IPC in schools and classrooms. What this actually means, of course, is that you will be able to make the IPC contribute even more to improving children’s learning.

Key Speaker – Dr Howard Gardner (www.howardgardner.com)

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in Education and in 2000 he received a Fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has received honorary degrees from twenty-two colleges and universities, including institutions in Chile, Ireland, Israel, and Italy. In 2004 he was named an Honorary Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In 2005 he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. He has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education, and most recently (2007) the London-based Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. He serves on a number of boards, including the Spencer Foundation and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Howard Gardner is the author of over twenty books translated into twenty-seven languages, and several hundred articles. For more information, please visit www.howardgardner.com

Who is the Conference for?

Day 1: Open to everyone (both primary and secondary colleagues) interested in the work of Dr. Howard Gardner. Day 1 and 2: Open to all Headteachers, principals and senior leaders of schools; IPC leaders for learning; senior leaders in IPC schools; board members and governors.

About the Conference

Taking place over two days on the 8th and 9th October 2009, the conference will consist of presentations, learning discussions and reflection time.

Location

The conference is taking place at St. Matthew Academy, St. Joseph's Vale, London. The St. Matthew Academy is particularly exciting as it is a through-school for girls and boys from ages 3 to 16, with the powerful opportunities this provides to create a co-educational school for the 21st century in magnificent, new buildings with the latest technology. St. Matthews is an IPC member school.
For details about the school please visit their website:
www.stmatthewacademy.co.uk

Conference Programme

Day 1: Thursday 8 October 2009

08.15 – 09.15: Registration

09.15 – 09.30: Welcome (led by Martin Skelton)

09.30 – 11.00: Session One ‘Five minds for the future’ led by Dr. Howard Gardner

In the future, it will be important to develop five kinds of minds, both in school and in other educational environments:

1. The disciplined mind has mastered one or more professions, arts, crafts, or disciplines. It takes about a decade to achieve such mastery. Lacking such mastery, an individual will be unable to occupy a meaningful niche in any developed society. Discipline also entails the capacity to continue one’s own growth after the cessation of formal education.


2. The synthesizing mind is likely to be the most coveted in the modern era, where we are all deluged with information, much of it of dubious value. The synthesizing mind determines what is important, and what is fluff; it then takes the crucial information and organizes it in ways that are useful to the synthesizer and, optimally, to chosen audiences.


3. The creating mind thinks outside the box. We live in an era where everything that can be automated will be. Only those individuals who can regularly go beyond the conventional wisdom will be valued. While cognitive capacities are obviously valuable for creating, only those of a robust, risk-taking personality and temperament are likely to pursue a creative path.


4. The respectful mind is becoming essential in a world of diverse individuals and populations, who are in regular contact with one another, either face-to-face or in cyberspace. Going beyond mere tolerance, a respectful person seeks to understand others, to work with them, to instill a respectful environment at work and in the community.


5. The ethical mind requires an abstract attitude. The individual develops a concept of him or herself as a person, a worker, and a citizen. Ethics involves a sense of purpose and mission, an open delineation of rights and responsibilities, and a preparedness to act in light of these principles, even when such action goes against one’s self interest.
   While individuals may differ in their strengths and proclivities, optimally each person will develop the full complement of minds. Gardner will discuss the developmental sequence of these kinds of minds, and the ways in which they may conflict with, or complement one another.

11.00 – 11.30: Break

11.30 – 12.30: Session Two ‘Leadership’ led by Howard Gardner

From the perspective of cognitive psychology, leaders are individuals who change the beliefs, feelings, and actions of those whom they are attempting to influence. To bring about these changes, leaders have access to seven different levers, which are appropriate under specifiable circumstances. Perhaps the most powerful lever for a leader is the capacity to create a powerful narrative and to embody that narrative in his or her own life. But new narratives do not easily become accepted; they have to contend with powerful narratives that already exist in the culture. In that sense, leaders are operating in a cognitive Darwinian sphere.

12.30 – 13.30: Lunch

13.30 – 15.00: Session Three ‘Multiple Intelligences’ led by Howard Gardner

In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences. In contrast to the standard view of intelligence as a single, measurable, entity, Gardner contends that human beings posses a number of relatively autonomous cognitive abilities called the multiple intelligences. In his presentation, Gardner will review the background and major claims of the theory; its educational implications; the way that the theory has evolved over a quarter century; and his thoughts about further changes in, and applications of the theory, looking ahead.

15.00 - 15.15: Break

15.15 – 16.00: A chance to visit the school

Day Two: Friday 9th October 2009 – Led by Martin Skelton

The second day provides the opportunity to look at Howard Gardner’s ideas through the lens of the IPC

09.30 – 11.00: ‘Using the Multiple Intelligences to improve learning’

During this session, we will pick up on the implications of Multiple Intelligences as identified in Dr Gardner’s presentation yesterday and in his work in general. We’ll then take the ideas behind multiple intelligences to see how they are applied specifically in the IPC and what this means for classroom practice.

11.00 – 11.30: Break

11.30 – 13.00: ‘Developing 5 minds through your curriculum’

All great curriculums are built on ideas about what kinds of learning matter for children and students. The IPC is no exception. The phrase ‘great learning’ is much more than a bumper sticker phrase for the IPC but a real statement of intent. During this session we’ll be making clear precisely what kinds of learning the IPC believes in. We’ll be exploring that learning and looking at its links with Dr. Gardner’s ‘five minds.’

13.00 – 13.45: Lunch

13.45 – 15.15: ‘Leading the IPC in your school’

If our children are to experience great learning, leadership in schools is crucial. But leading the development of the IPC has to be a shared enterprise in school. Heads, curriculum and year group leaders can lead its development at a whole school or year-group level; individual teachers have to lead its development in their own classrooms.
The third session on day two will look at the most effective ways of leading the development of the IPC and at what we know works. We’ll be linking these ideas of exemplary practice to the ideas Dr Gardner has developed about leadership. In doing so, we’ll be developing a real responsibility to make great learning happen.

15.15 – 15.45: Break

15.45 – 16.30: ‘Planning the way forward’

This final session brings the two days together. We’ll be providing an opportunity for you to reflect on what you have heard in the context of your own school. You will have the opportunity to identify the key actions you and your colleagues need to take to deepen your practice of the IPC and to enable even deeper learning for your children.

Key Speaker – Dr Howard Gardner - Day One only

Dr. Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from twenty-two colleges and universities, including institutions in Ireland, Italy, Israel, Chile, and South Korea. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of over twenty books translated into twenty-seven languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments.

During the past two decades, Gardner and colleagues at Project Zero have been involved in the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy; and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education. Since the middle 1990s, in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, Gardner has directed the GoodWork Project—a study of work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical. More recently, members of the GoodWork Project have led reflection sessions in an effort to enhance the incidence of good work among young people. With colleagues at Project Zero, he is also investigating the nature of trust in contemporary society and ethical dimensions of the new digital media.

Martin Skelton - Day Two only

Martin Skelton is one of the two co-founders of Fieldwork Education. His education experience includes more than twenty years as a teacher and the successful headship of two primary schools. Martin has a Masters degree in Curriculum, Organisation and Management from the University of Sussex. He has long and deep experience of working with schools all around the world.
Martin led the development of the IPC from the very beginning, conceptualized the subject specialist units, the assessment for learning programme and the accreditation protocol. As Director of Fieldwork Education he continues to have daily involvement in its growth. Martin also developed Fieldwork’s unique Looking for Learning consultancy and The Looking for Learning Toolkit. His passion for learning has taken him to nearly 40 countries to work in a wide variety of learning-focused initiatives with schools. He has written widely about education for teachers, parents and children, most often about learning, the management of learning, curriculum development and school improvement planning and policy production. For the past ten years he has been immersed in the results about brain research. His passion is learning but, needless to say his presentations are practical, accessible and jargon-free.

For more information or to book a place

Please contact: Laura Phillips, Fieldwork Education, 25 Buckingham Gate, London, SW1E 6LD, UK,
Tel: +44 (0) 207 531 9696 Fax: +44 (0) 207 531 1333 Email: laura@greatlearning.com or complete and return the booking form

Booking form and information

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• Conference Flyer
• Conference Information