IB Courses: Group 4 sample (Sports Exercise and Health Science)

In this series, which I’m calling the IB Course Description Project, we’re building an audio catalog of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (DP) courses and Career-related Programme (CP) core experiences for students, parents, counselors, teachers, and colleges around the world.

Each episode brings the syllabus to life by exploring the learning, teaching, and student experience behind every course. These conversations can support course registration, help colleges better understand IB courses, introduce new teachers and counselors to the curriculum, or simply provide a deeper understanding of what makes each course unique.

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Our SEHS teacher guide is Anthony De Giorgio

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Sports Exercise and Health Science subject guide

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Transcript

Jon Peterson 0:01

Hi folks, welcome to IB Matters. In this series, we're building an audio catalog of IB diploma courses and CP core experiences designed for students, parents, counselors, teachers, and colleges around the world. Each episode gives voice to the syllabus, the real learning, and the student experience behind every course. I have the subject brief linked in the podcast notes if you'd like to use it as a reference while you listen to this. In this episode, we're describing the sports exercise and health science course, and our teacher guide is Anthony DiGiorgio. So, Anthony, tell us what's your current role and what DP courses do you teach?

Anthony DeGiorgio 0:33

So, my current role is teacher of sports exercise and health science in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at Upper Canada College. Um, I also am an MYP phys ed teacher as well as a well-being coordinator of my school.

Jon Peterson 0:45

Yeah. So, Anthony, why don't you give us the the highlights of the course, a little overview to talk about the syllabus, the internal assessments, exams, and so on.

Anthony DeGiorgio 0:53

So the the new updated guide that came out in 2024 really kind of put the course into three categories and it has this roadmap. And the three categories are exercise, physiology, nutrition of the human body, biomechanics, and sports psychology and motor learning. And under these three main themes, there's a number of different subtopics that help to help the teacher kind of teach them. The bigger frame of all of these three is that they're taught through the lens of health and performance. So everything that is taught always looks at it from one or and both of them. And what this really does is help the students kind of connect their learning to a little bit more of kind of the real world, because sometimes with a lot of these diploma syllabi, um, they can kind of get a little bit esoteric in some ways and the students don't really see how they resonate. So the great part about this course now is that through health and performance, they're really able to connect into their own lives from a kind of just general health standpoint, but also if they're interested in sport, um, connecting more towards kind of the performance side of things as well.

Jon Peterson 1:55

So talk a little bit about the the internal assessment. What's the internal assessment for this course?

Anthony DeGiorgio 2:01

Yeah, so the internal assessment follows all the same parameters as every other group for science. It's four criterion. Uh each of the four criterion has six points allocated towards it. And the four criterion in the course are research design, data analysis, conclusion, and evaluation. And basically, what these four criterion really ask the students to do is to kind of go through from the initiation, the early ideation of an experiment and or investigation, um, to start with, you know, what is the question that you want to ask or do some research into, um, kind of think about the process, think about the ethical constraints, thinking about kind of contextual constraints that you might have at your school, um, and taking all those thoughts, putting them down onto paper and coming up with a research question. And from that research question, what the students are asked to then do is kind of go through the scientific process to carry out some sort of data analysis on the topic. Now, this can be both primary and or secondary, where they can do some of their own primary research, collect their own data, carry out an experiment, do some survey work, um, or they can look to some of the databases that exist in in the literature online and use that to inform it. I found in my experience a lot of the students end up doing a lot of their own experimentation. I think it's a little bit of the fun component of this, , but that's something that they they do have an option on. Um with the data analysis, then what they end up doing is they kind of take the numbers that they get and they do a pretty big number crunching activity and exercise where they use some descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics that they do learn in their math classes, but they learn it more so particularly, and they utilize it more so particularly in the realm of science. So what they're doing here is they're using data to inform any sort of inferences that can be drawn from the findings that they have. Once they've done their data analysis, they then go into their conclusion. And the biggest part of the conclusion is kind of wrapping up what they did in the analysis, but then also kind of taking what they did and applying it to real-world findings. So they're gonna go back for the research that they originally had conducted on the topic, compare their findings to that research, and then think about any sort of practical implications that they might have drawn from the research that they did and kind of compare it to um what could potentially happen if they were to redo this in the future again, which then leads right into the evaluation component of this, where they're really asking the students to use critical thinking skills to think about how they might change things the next time they did it. What were the strengths, what were the weaknesses? Um, you know, could they think about the methodology? Would they do things differently? How does you know a limited sample affect things? Um, there's a lot of different components to what they're doing in this part of the IA. And this is where a lot of students really find, you know, the critical thinking component to it quite difficult. But it's not something that is impossible for them to do, but it really is, I think, a distinguishing feature of the IB because it's really asking them to go the extra mile to really consider their learning and the whole process and how they might make changes.

Jon Peterson 4:56

Yeah. This is a science course, so even though the name might sound like it's you know just sports, it's it's actually science. And so like it's sports science. And so the what you just described reminds me very much of my physics class that I taught, you know, the way the research was done and conducted in the research project. So can you just briefly tell us the difference between the standard level and the higher level course?

Anthony DeGiorgio 5:16

Yeah, so those three topics that I had listed earlier. So basically every student in SL will study those topics. The biggest difference between SL and HL is more a question of depth on those topics rather than introducing new topics. So there are a few new things here and there, but the biggest change to the syllabus now is that every student is learning the same thing. But how deep you learn about the topic and the different subtopics underneath it is really what's the biggest distinguishing feature between SL and HL. And it's good in a way because especially as a teacher who teaches SL and HL, I know that what I'm teaching is the same for both classes, but then I obviously have that extra time, , the 90 hours that are um allocated to the HL course that differentiated from the SL course. I know that that time will be spent kind of diving deeper into the topics that are in the syllabus.

Jon Peterson 6:04

What are you finding students take away from this course? What do they like about it?

Anthony DeGiorgio 6:07

Yeah, I think as you mentioned, like it is a group four science, but it's a little bit different in the sense of it's an applied science. So it's very contextualized specifically to humans and science. And the one thing that I found having taught this course for seven years now and having done this um, you know, at the graduate level and university, is that you don't often get a chance to learn about this stuff in school unless you deliberately take it. And I think one of the distinguishing features of this class is that it really extends into, you know, the real world application. And like I said, those two lenses of health and performance. I think everybody in some capacity is thinking about those two things, whether they're studying this course or not. What this course does, it really allows them to go deeper into those. And a lot of the learning that they're doing can be completely used in any kind of endeavor that they're doing, right? Performance is a broad scoping word. It's a, you know, it can mean sports, but it could also mean if you're an aspiring musician or you're somebody who's really interested in, you know, robotics or any other thing that requires you to perform at a high level. There's a lot of learning in this course that allows you to kind of you know solidify your foundational knowledge. And then the the other side to it is that there's there's an opportunity to really apply it in context. And that's one thing that I've always valued about this field. We call it in Canada kinesiology. It's called that. Uh in some other places, sometimes it's we call it here in Minnesota.

Jon Peterson 7:26

We call it the same thing here in Minnesota. Yeah.

Anthony DeGiorgio 7:28

Yeah. And some other places in the US call it exercise science or they call it human kinetics. So there are different ways of saying it, but the biggest takeaway, I think, for me has always been like there's so much that can be learned and help you in the day-to-day. And I think that's what students really start to see. And they see kind of what they're learning. They see themselves in the learning that they're doing. And I think that's a really good way of hooking students in and driving a little bit of the interest that they have.

Jon Peterson 7:50

Yeah. And then what what do you like? I I'm hearing in your voice that you do like teaching this. What do you like about it?

Anthony DeGiorgio 7:55

Yeah, I mean, this is this is something that, again, I did my undergraduate work in, I did postgraduate work in it. It's something that, you know, there's the science side, which I've always found fascinating. I took this course, our provincial equivalent of this course when I was in high school. Um, I've always been into sports. I still do quite a bit of training. So there's definitely things that as I'm teaching it, I'm relearning in some ways that I'm kind of extending my own learning. Um, you know, I'm in it's informing the training that I'm doing. I think the other side of it that as I've taught this course more and I've I I did a little bit more schooling on this topic is the larger focus on psychology, which I think is something that, you know, as a teacher, you really learn a lot about motivation and personality and mental toughness and psychological skills. So these are all things that are taught in the curriculum, but they're things that I think are applicable to anybody that, you know, is even thinking about how they do in the world in their in their job or, you know, in as being a parent. Like they're things that you can take away. And that's something that I'm always learning as I'm planning for this course. I really enjoy the fact that I continue, I get to continue to learn and that I'm continuing to think about my own performance. And it's a kind of a never-ending process in many ways. Um and it's the course syllabus itself really kind of fosters that idea of lifelong learning, but also the pursuit of performance. And that's something that, you know, I'm always it's not a matter of whether or not like you've attained perfection or excellence. It's just that the continual process towards um learning and just being a better version of yourself. That's something that like I really try to impart on the students as they're taking the course.

Jon Peterson 9:30

Great. Is there anything else you want to talk about, kind of in a holistic way, about this course? Maybe how is it different from a traditional version that maybe you took on the provincial course or what they might be moving towards in college?

Anthony DeGiorgio 9:41

Yeah, I think one of the biggest defining features, like I said, I keep coming back to that health and performance kind of side of it. You know, we live in a world now where the wellness industry has exceeded $7 billion. And it's something that has become very popularized in, you know, the social media landscape. There's um supplements that are just kind of taking over our nutritional space, and there's a lot of information out there. And one of the things that I really try and do in this course is try and use some of the sociocultural or more contemporary examples of this stuff in the media and this stuff in the students' lives and really help them make sense of it. Because one of the biggest things that is a challenge for many people when it comes to health and performance is that they don't know how to sift through the massive amounts of information and kind of separating the signal from the noise. And that's something that we spend quite a bit of time on. Um, you know, obviously still learning about the nuts and bolts of everything, but like, what does this look like when it comes to, for instance, our habits around technology, right? We study the um the nervous system and the endocrine system, but what is dopamine? What what's actually happening in the brain and how does that play out in the real world? And this is something that for me, it's like I never done teaching this course because there's always something new. So I'm staying on top of things. It's allowing me to help the students navigate the things that they're seeing in their own lives, um, how to navigate the you know incredibly complex media landscape and ecosystem. So it's something that I don't think you get as much of an opportunity in other courses to do. You do in some courses, but it's never really contextualized to the human. And that's one of the things that I find a lot of value in. And I think with you know, the necessity of doing these sorts of education, this this sort of education around health and well-being, it allows me to kind of leave my mark um in a way that you know transcends the syllabus itself, but also still highly relates to what we're doing in the course from an IB perspective. I think one of the big things that the IB did in the change to the syllabus was really making sure that the um the syllabus aligned with some of the things that universities wanted to see. So it's something that has changed, and more universities are now viewing it as a science credit for all the reasons that I talked about. Um, but it's something that can definitely be supportive for students who don't want to go kind of the more traditional route of the physical sciences, bio, chem, and physics, um, but really support any student who wants to go into obviously kinesiology and exercise science. But even somebody who wants to go into health science or human science and use it as like a strong, you know, foundational base for moving into even something as high as medicine. Yeah. Um, it's really something that can formulate a really good understanding of like the first principles of this. And then obviously you do it in deeper detail in university. I think one of the other sides to it, and you might want to add this in, like from just a CP perspective, there's like there's a real opportunity, I think, for again, going back to the idea of the non-traditional route, like students who are doing placements, um, you know, if you want to get into like healthcare. So for instance, like physical, like physical therapy, , chiropractic, kinesiologist, um, you know, RMT, there's a real opportunity for students who want to explore kind of the health field and maybe do it in a more applied sense because at the forefront of a lot of like medicine is prevention. And kinesiologists in particular here in Ontario, we sit as um preventative medicine specialists where you're using movement and exercise to actually offset decline in health. So it's kind of situates itself in a bit of a different way. And one of the things that's particularly from a CP perspective, you know, students who are interested in going into coaching, for instance, or going into like recreational activity and instruction, this is a really good course for that as well, because you learn about the science, but you also learn about kind of the behavioral side of health and performance, which is like something that you don't really ever get to learn about unless you take a course like this. And that's a I think a good selling feature for the CP program as well.

Jon Peterson 13:36

That's that's a really good point to think about. Well, thanks there. I really appreciate it and hope to see you back here in Minnesota.

Anthony DeGiorgio 13:41

All right. Anytime. Okay, thank you, John.