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The IB develops inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect.

We value our hard-earned reputation for quality, for high standards and for pedagogical leadership. We achieve our goals by working with partners and by actively involving our stakeholders, particularly teachers.

We promote intercultural understanding and respect, not as an alternative to a sense of cultural and national identity, but as an essential part of life in the 21st century.

All of this is captured in our mission statement:

The International Baccalaureate® aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

The IB's history and philosophy

Download presentations on the history of the IB, and on its educational philosophy. There are also presentations about each IB programme.

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The IB develops inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through education that builds intercultural understanding and respect.

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Introduction
In recent decades, there is a growing body of research findings that consistently indicates the diversity of the students in modern classrooms with a diverse range of readiness levels (Firmender, Reis, & Sweeny, 2013; Peters, Rambo-Hernandez, Makel, Matthews, & Plucker, 2017). That is why, accommodating all students through constructive pedagogy to provide and suggest a vast array of dynamic learning opportunities for students to access the curriculum (Smith 2015), became a necessity for all teachers (Bajrami, 2017).

Therefore, IB continuum was designed to facilitate and promote inclusion from its early development. In the context of IB, Inclusion is an ever-evolving pedagogical process of identifying and removing barriers between students and actual teaching-learning to accommodate a diverse range of students needs which aims to provide multiple ways for students to access the same curriculum by stimulating learners' innate curiosity (IBO, 2018b).

To make it happen, there is a necessity of having a constructive and supportive professional environment that will both advance new teachers' effectiveness and help experienced teachers to gain different skills (Kraft, & Papay, 2014). Therefore, IB provides a wide range of resources and professional development to promote educators to think critically and creatively to advance their practice and upskills them in multiple dimensions (Dickson, Perry & Ledger, 2020), which ultimately enable educators to translate IB philosophy and pedagogy into practice (IBO, 2017).

Even though IB gives significant importance to professional development, numerous studies provide contradictory results (Guskey, 1986). While some studies suggest that professional development both develop teachers consciousness about differentiation (Clair & Adger, 2000; Yuen, Chan, Chan, Fung, Cheung, Kwan & Leung, 2018) and improve teachers' skills which eventually enhance their teaching (Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Edinger, 2017). In contrast, some other papers advocate the fact that professional development does not affect teacher practice in the real classroom settings (Clair & Adger, 2000; Peters & Jolly, 2018; Petty, Heafner, Farinde, & Plaisance, 2015), or change student performance (Darling-Hammond & Berry, 2006).

The presence of such contradictory results in the literature urged the researchers to shift their focus from professional development to the impact of teacher experience on implementing differentiation in the classrooms.

It is because there is a consensus among multiple studies that junior teachers are less effective than their seniors in implementing differentiation (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007; Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, & Staiger, 2011; Wayne & Youngs, 2003). Even though new teachers gain experience at the begging of their teaching years exponentially (Boyd, Grossman, M, Lankford, Loeb & Wyckoff, 2011) experienced teachers are better at content knowledge, classroom management and implementing differentiation (Kaufman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu, & Peske, 2002; Johnson & Birkeland, 2003).

What remains unclear, however, is to what extent teacher experience has an impact on differentiation in the final year of DP.

The literature on how differentiation happens or implemented by teachers is limited and poorly studied. There are only two studies that the practitioner could access (Nazzal, 2011; Stavrou & Koutselini, 2016) similar to that of Dulfer, McKernan, & Brindle (2017). Even though both Nazzal (2011) and Stavrou & Koutselini (2016) contributes to the literature and offers some new perspectives which will lead to an invaluable pedagogical practise both of which suffered from inadequate sample sizes (n:2) as well as considerable design limitations in terms of data collection.

On the contrary, Dulfer, McKernan, & Brindle (2017) kept the sample size larger and varied enough in terms of age and years of experiences (n:18) to provide more reliable data by triangulating findings through the class observations, interviews and surveys which shed light on the reality of to what extend teachers can achieve differentiation in the final year of DP classrooms. Even though many scholars might hold the view that sample size (n:18) can be considered a small sample size; however, Merriam (1998) and Erickson (1986) argued that we could learn from particular cases and generalize different teaching situations despite the considerable amount of variation among teachers.

Drawing upon data provided data by the research (Dulfer, McKernan, & Brindle, 2017), this study attempts to answer how do teachers who have more than 15 years of teaching experience differ from teachers who have less than 15 years of experience implementing differentiation in the DP context, according to Tomlinson's model (2001) of differentiation of content, process, product and create a safe learning environment to maximize learning?

Therefore, this study makes a major contribution to current literacy by shedding light on differentiation in the DP classroom settings which fills the gap between theory and practice by providing practical and promising pedagogies that have a great potential to guide teachers to integrate theory and constructive pedagogy into real-world DP classroom settings.

All in all, the rationale behind the research question, as noted above, is of significant importance, particularly in the context of IB as well as attempts to find one or, in fact, multiple solutions which will enhance the educational practice of teachers.

Consequently, this study attempt to enhance the effectiveness of the educational practice and the findings will eventually be used in practical settings by teachers which makes this study even more valuable in educational literature (Gephardt & Ingle, 1969, p.27; Carson, Connors, Smits, & Ripley, 1989; Dick, 1993; Patricia, 2016). Moreover, this study as an initiative and further studies in the same context might create a culminating effect that can cause curriculum designers to optimize DP curriculum for the betterment of all stakeholders.
Data Analysis
The practitioner followed six steps to analyze the data which was used by Braun and Clarke (2006)

Step 1: Take the data as a whole and become familiar with all provided components which include teacher survey, interviews and class observations.

Step 2: Greater focus was given to class observations to find out what exactly happens in the classroom in terms of differentiation. At this stage, teachers were divided into four groups.

Group 1: More than 15 Years of General Teaching (IB+Non-IB).

Group 2: More than 15 Years of Teaching in IB.

Group 3: Less than 15 Years of Teaching in IB.

Group 4: Less than 15 Years of Teaching (IB+Non-IB).

Step 3: Translation of the qualitative data into quantitative data along with some statistical tests such as Cronbach's Alpha to see the internal consistency (Warmbrod, 2014) and make sure that the data provided is internally consistent and Two-Tailed Independent (Unpaired) T-Test to see whether the result is significant or NOT at p < .05.

Step 4: Look for the patterns and themes that can lead to generalizations.

Step: 5 Identify the patterns and describe them.

Step 6: Produce a report
Limitations
There are several limitations in this study which include small sample size, the inclusion of volunteer teachers. In addition to that, the observations could be made over an extended period of time which would allow us to collect more data and do more observation. However, these types of limitations are common in educational research (Bahati, Fors, Hansen, Nouri & Mukama, 2019; Barber, King, & Buchanan, 2015; Xiaohua & Canty, 2012, Sendziuk, 2010; Nazzal, 2011; Stavrou & Koutselini, 2016). Therefore, the importance of this study is indisputable and sheds light on how much and how often differentiation is explicitly implemented by teachers, specifically in the last year of DP classes.
Results
The classroom observations show that the teachers who have more than 15 years of experience are more likely to implement varying types of differentiations more frequently than teachers who are having less experience in teaching as it was visualized in Figure 1.

Interestingly, teachers from all years of experience levels show more or less similar patterns which are very obvious in the bar graph. Teachers have almost the same types of weaknesses or strengths in terms of types of differentiation and how well or often they demonstrate particular ways of differentiation in their classes during the observations.

Another critical point is that as the teachers become more experienced, the initial area in figure 1 increases proportionally. The most significant difference happens in 3.2.4. Teachers become significantly better at responding to individual student questions and providing more feedback to students (3.2.3)..

However, almost all teachers with varying years of experience could not represent flexible pacing in their teaching (3.2.3). Teachers also fail to encourage students to do self-reflection (3.2.5) in their classes.

Last but not least, teachers also could not design different types of tasks that would allow students to choose to do (3.2.3).

All in all, the strong association between years of teaching experience and implementation of differentiation in the final year of DP classes proven by the data should not lead us to create us generalizations on a larger scale but can provide valuable data for further research.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Even though IB gives considerable attention to differentiation as a part of the constructivist student-centered pedagogy since the beginning of its establishment (IBO, 2014, 2017, 2018a, 2018b), up to now, far too little attention has been paid to what happens in the DP classrooms in the literature.

This fundamental change in the pedagogical approach requires teachers to change both their practice and the mindset about education as it shifts from teacher-centered view to learner-centered education (Swaffield, 2011). Teachers should not think that teaching is just the way teachers transmit knowledge to the minds of students (Brophy, & Alleman, 1998)

Hence, teachers have to be adequately prepared to implement relevant, differentiation techniques to meet with the needs of diverse learners (Bajrami, 2013). They need to know their students well enough to address their individual needs (Tomlinson, 2009). Naturally, this will encourage students to be active shareholders of their classwork to develop and practice creative and critical thinking skills (O'Brien & Guiney, 2001), as well as social skills (Carpenter, & Pease, 2013) which eventually help students to become autonomous learners (Tomlinson, 2005).

Achieving this is not easy. The teachers need more time and fewer hours of teaching, practical ideas, as well as purposeful support from the schools (Black, 2015).

Yet, another challenge is the backwash effect of the DP exams in the final year of DP. The presence of high-stakes exams has a notable effect on the way teachers teach and design their classes (Tarch, 2019).

Even well-trained and educated teachers, explicitly in differentiation, experience difficulty in implementing the differentiation, and they address the time constraints as their most significant obstacle (Nazzal, 2011). To reduce tensions on teachers, school leaders should be responsible for preparing optimum conditions for teachers to reach their fullest potential (Dickson, Perry & Ledger, 2020).

The strong association between years of teaching experience and implementation of differentiation in the final year of DP classes should not lead us to create generalizations on a larger scale but can provide valuable data for further research.

It is very well known that the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme offers rigorous and challenging college preparatory coursework (Kyburg, Hertberg-Davis & Callahan, 2007) but also provides readily available curricula to be completed in two years (Crowell, 2013).

Another significant tension is the backwash effect of high-stakes exams. (Tarch, 2019).

Consequently, the existing tensions brought new questions to the surface. Hence "do the similar patterns that we have observed in the implementation of differentiation by teachers, with varying years of experience, age, and nationality created by teachers or already existing tensions in the DP curriculum? "

Is this because of the backwash effect of the presence of high-stakes exams? Or is it because of the content-heavy DP curriculum?

Would the results be the same if DP teachers could be as flexible as they are in MYP or PYP teachers?

Would we have different results if we could extend the DP curriculum to grade 10 students instead of only grade 11 and 12 students?

Do teachers' perceptions and the school culture affect how often and how much teachers implement differentiation in their classrooms?

What matters most is what happens in the classroom since the classroom is the medium where the actual teaching and learning take place (Paul & Dylan, 1998).

IB programs as a whole is always undergoing changes for the betterment of the whole system and will continue to evolve. The diversity of the context in which the DP operates in the rapidly changing world has brought with both demands on those who are responsible for implementing it in all dimensions and continuously contribute to its ongoing design as well as development. Another important aspect is in terms of the extent to which those demands can be met while maintaining the integrity of the programme and, indeed, preparing the students for the 21st century and beyond (Hayden & Thompson, 2011).

Further studies can also be focusing on the real roots of challenges that teachers face and preventing them from implementing differentiation in their classroom other than their own limitations.

DP teachers are experiencing pressures and constraints more than MYP and PYP teachers that inspire us to ask more questions.

All in all, the practitioner has taken up a number of points arising from the data findings and attempted to identify areas for further research as several unanswered questions remain.

To what extent it is right to believe that DP curriculum requires more than two years to be taught and implemented as it is demanded.

How many working hours and experience does a DP teacher need to implement differentiation explicitly in both SL and HL DP subjects?

To what extent professional development opportunities developed by IB offer a variety of practical examples for teachers to implement in their classroom?

While those questions unanswered and will take time to have clearance, schools can create proactive and constructive learning environments for teachers to exchange their experiences and share their working strategies not only in terms of differentiation but also anything which will improve the pedagogical approach to translate the IB philosophy into reality.

Over the years, the Diploma Programme increases its demands which creates more pressure on teachers (Watson, 2019). Therefore, experienced teachers should be given more opportunities to provide real-world examples for new teachers. Moreover, collaborative meetings should be designed to maximize the efficiency of the programme coordinators.

Lastly, all stakeholders must cooperate and collaborate with each other and take a step at a time to become lifelong learners as well as create such a school culture to strive for the best.
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Differentiation in the IB DP Settings (Research report by Aybars Dastan)

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Research report - Aybars Dastan Introduction In recent decades, there is a growing body of research findings that consistently indicates the diversity of the students in modern classrooms with a diverse range of readiness levels (Firmender, Reis, & Sweeny, 2013; Peters, Rambo-Hernandez, Makel, Matt

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Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom

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Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tonya R. Moon take an in-depth look at assessment and show how differentiation can improve the process in all grade levels and subject areas. After discussing differentiation in general, the authors focus on how differentiation applies to various forms of assessment-pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment-and to grading and report cards.

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Differentiating Instruction: It’s Not as Hard as You Think

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Imagine a School: Montessori for Elementary Age Learners

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"Imagine a School: Montessori for Elementary Aged Children" combines scenes from two public and four private Montessori schools to show the effectiveness of this philosophy of education. The DVD challenges parents to "imagine a school" where education is hands-on, multi-age and takes place in a cooperative community of learners.

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8  MYP unit planning  Differentiation, resources, reflection