International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (pyp) Study

IB (International Baccalaureate, hereinafter referred to as IB) programmes are designed for students aged 3-19 as a coherent and continuous educational system, which can be implemented from kindergarten to pre-university stage. Since 1968, IB programmes have been well developed among 140 countries around the world and 3145 schools are authorized by IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization, hereinafter referred to as IBO) as IB world schools. Currently, more than 904,000 students are studying in IB world schools.In recent years, Schools in China have also accelerated the pace of cooperation with the IB Programme. As January 2011 IBO official website shows that China already has 55 IBO member schools, 17 PYP (Primary Years Programme, hereinafter referred to as PYP), 17 courses offered MYP (Middle Years Programme, hereinafter referred to as MYP), 47 DP (Diploma Programme, hereinafter referred to as DP) schools. Although the vast majority of IB world schools are private owned or international schools, public schools have also shown deep interests to integrate IB pedagogy and curriculum with their school based curriculum. The rapid growth of IB world schools in China, has aroused scholars'attention, however, PYP as a comparatively young member of the IB world still remains a virgin area which has not been well studied and rationalized. Therefore, the author wants to take a deep research on PYP, hopping to make decent contribution to China's national curriculum development.This paper is divided into the following 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is mainly about IBO background, its curriculum and methodology. Chapter 2 will be an introduction of the IBO and its development worldwide. IB development in China will be emphasized in chapter 2. Chapter 3 is about PYP characteristics, can be summarized as concept driven curriculum, inquiry based teaching, interactive approach, and multi-tool assessing method. In Chapter 4, a bilingual international school will be cased studied as a fine example how a private owned school has successfully gone through the PYP authorization stage, yet remain its east meets west pedagogy. Suggestion about how local schools can smoothly adapt international programme will be outlined in the last chapter, hope can be constructive to our national curriculum development in China.