Acıbadem Schools is an IB PYP World School.

We started our studies and preparations to become an IB PYP School in 2018. We were granted the IB PYP candidate school status in March 2019 and we successfully completed the authorization process in January 2021.

 

In line with its mission, Acıbadem Schools aim to raise inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who will help create a better and more peaceful world with intercultural understanding and respect. With the terms “International-mindedness” and “Global Citizens” we do not mean individuals who know a foreign language and travel around the world, but we aim to raise individuals who own international values and attributes determined by IB Learner Profile, which integrates with the beliefs and values of our school.

 

For educational practices at international standards:

We aim to ensure the academic, social and emotional well-being of our students by aligning our national curriculum with the IB PYP curriculum framework. 

With this program, which is designed for students between the ages of 4-11, we focus on the development of our students as lifelong learners who inquire and learn both in the classroom and in the world outside. Thus, we provide opportunities within the school for our students to play an active role and contribute to their local and global communities. 

We believe in the importance of our students being agents. We constantly encourage them to become independent learners and take responsibility and ownership of their own learning. We support our students' efforts to understand and comply with the world, while helping them to create personal values that will serve as a foundation for them to develop and enrich international-mindedness.

 

Our teaching and learning approaches:

• Transdisciplinarity: We believe that supporting our students existing knowledge and experience with new learning experiences in different areas will better prepare them for life. With a transdisciplinary approach we plan our learning and teaching practices by integrating multiple subject areas within the common framework of our common goals. We place a strong emphasize on inquiry by planning learning and teaching practices around transdisciplinary themes.

• Inquiry: The leading pedagogical approach is inquiry for us. We commit to raising students who are actively involved in their own learning and take ownership of this learning. We create opportunities for our students to initiate their own inquiries. In this way, we support the development of the learner profile in our students by helping them to become critical and creative thinkers, researchers, collaborators and communicators. Throughout the inquiry process, students develop positive relationships with their peers, teachers and other people in the learning community, and ensure that they sustain this relationship. We also provide them with opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills through meaningful connections with the environment, ideas, materials and concepts.

 

• Concepts and conceptual understanding: Concept-based learning is a powerful vehicle for learning that promotes meaning and understanding, and challenges students to engage with significant ideas. We provide our students with opportunities to integrate new knowledge with their existing knowledge and apply these understandings in a variety of new contexts. We drive learning experiences by using concepts as a lens and develop conceptual understanding with the help of transdisciplinary unit of inquiries. 

• Skills: We explore the skills (thinking skills, research skills, communication skills, social skills and self-management skills) that make up our learning and teaching approaches and course-specific information within the context of transdisciplinary themes. We support our students by providing many opportunities, both inside and outside the classroom, to practise these skills.