Mission and Philosophy

IB Mission Statement


ATL Skills

            Approaches to learning (ATL) are skills designed to enable students in the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) to “learn how to learn.” They are intended to apply across curriculum requirements and provide a common language for teachers and students to use when reflecting and building on the process of learning. Dunya IB School possesses an ATL planning chart for all years of the MYP. However, broader implementation of ATLs implicitly and explicitly is embedded in day-to-day learning experiences, so that students have opportunities to practice and incrementally develop a range of ATL skills.

            Approaches to learning are most powerful when teachers plan and students engage with them in connection with significant and relevant content knowledge in order to develop transferable understanding. All teachers in IB school are responsible for integrating and explicitly teaching ATL skills.

            The most effective way to develop approaches to learning is through ongoing, process-focused disciplinary and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Teachers can use key and related concepts along with global contexts as vehicles for teaching effective learning strategies. Likewise, approaches to learning can be powerful tools for exploring significant content. This dual focus (content and process) promotes student engagement, deep understanding, transfer of skills, and academic success.

            The majority of teachers are embedding ATL skills into unit planners and creating opportunities for students to practice them. However, survey findings and classroom observations suggest teachers often do not make explicit reference to these ATL skills.

            In contrast to last year, IB World Schools observed fewer instances of ATLs being implicitly or explicitly embedded into class activities and more instances of ATL skills only being used when developing unit planners. Further, despite reported instances of student reflections following the completion of service or personal projects, we did not observe instances where ATLs were embedded into out-of-class activities.

            Survey findings and site visits also indicate that a small percentage of teachers have not yet bought into teaching ATL skills. Reasons for this limited support include a lack of teacher understanding of how to teach ATLs and administrative support (i.e. limited guidance and opportunities for teacher planning). However, a majority of teachers viewed ATLs as important and strive to implement them.

ATL skills include the following sections of development of the young mind

IB learner profile:



The profile aims to develop learners who are:
