International Baccalaureate Diploma Program

CAS

Creativity Action Service

Tigard High School

2011

The Diploma Program aims to develop in students the knowledge, skills and attitudes they will need to fulfill the aims of the IB, as expressed in the organization’s mission statement and the learner profile.

The nature of creativity, action, service

...if you believe in something, you must not just think or talk or write, but must act.

Creativity, action, service (CAS) is at the heart of the Diploma Program. It is one of the three essential elements in every student’s Diploma Programme experience. It involves students in a range of activities alongside their academic studies throughout the Diploma Program.

The three strands of CAS, which are often interwoven with particular activities, are characterized as follows:

Creativity:  arts, and other experiences that involve creative thinking.

Action:  physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle, complementing academic work elsewhere in the Diploma Program.

Service:  an unpaid and voluntary exchange that has a learning benefit for the student.  The rights, dignity and autonomy of all those involved are respected.

CAS enables you to enhance your personal and interpersonal development through experiential learning. CAS provides an important counterbalance to the academic pressures of the rest of the Diploma Program. CAS should be both challenging and enjoyable, a personal journey of self‑discovery. Each of you has a different starting point, and therefore different goals and needs, but for many of you your CAS activities may/should include experiences that are profound and life‑changing.

Aims

Within the Diploma Program, CAS provides the main opportunity to develop many of the attributes described in the IB learner profile. For this reason, the aims of CAS are written in a form that highlights their connections with the IB learner profile.

Aims

The CAS program aims to develop students who are:

• reflective thinkers—they understand their own strengths and limitations, identify goals and devise strategies for personal growth
• willing to accept new challenges and new roles
• aware of themselves as members of communities with responsibilities towards each other and the environment
• active participants in sustained, collaborative projects
• balanced—they enjoy and find significance in a range of activities involving intellectual, physical, creative and emotional experiences.

Learning outcomes   (1-8)

Learning outcomes are distinct from assessment objectives because these are not rated on a scale. The completion decision for the school in relation to each student is, simply, “Have these outcomes been achieved?”

As a result of their CAS experience as a whole, including their reflections, there should be evidence that you have:

1.    increased your awareness of your own strengths and areas for growth

You are able to see yourself as individual with various skills and abilities, some more developed than others, and understand that you can make choices about how you wish to move forward.

2.    undertaken new challenges

A new challenge may be an unfamiliar activity, or an extension to an existing one.

3.    planned and initiated activities

Planning and initiation will often be in collaboration with others. It can be shown in activities that are part of larger projects, for example, ongoing school activities in the local community, as well as in small student‑led activities.

4.    worked collaboratively with others

Collaboration can be shown in many different activities, such as team sports, playing music in a band, or helping in a kindergarten. At least one project, involving collaboration and the integration of at least two of creativity, action and service, is required.

5.    shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

At a minimum, this implies attending regularly and accepting a share of the responsibility for dealing with problems that arise in the course of activities.

6.   engaged with issues of global importance

You may be involved in international projects but there are many global issues that can be acted upon locally or nationally (for example, environmental concerns, caring for the elderly).

7.    considered the ethical implications of their actions

Ethical decisions arise in almost any CAS activity (for example, on the sports field, in musical composition, in relationships with others involved in service activities). Evidence of thinking about ethical issues can be shown in various ways, including journal entries and conversations with CAS advisers.

8.    developed new skills

As with new challenges, new skills may be shown in activities that the you have not previously undertaken, or in increased expertise in an established area.

All eight outcomes mu st be present for a student to complete the CAS requirement. Some may be demonstrated many times, in a variety of activities, but completion requires only that there is some evidence for every outcome.

This focus on learning outcomes emphasizes that it is the quality of a CAS activity (its contribution to the student’s development) that is of most importance. The guideline for the minimum amount of CAS activity is approximately three to four hours per week, or approximately 150 hours in total, with a reasonable balance between creativity, action and service. “Hour counting”, however, is not encouraged.

For student development to occur, CAS must involve:

• real, purposeful activities, with significant outcomes personal challenge
• tasks must extend the student and be achievable in scope
• thoughtful consideration, such as planning, reviewing progress, reporting
• reflection on outcomes and personal learning

All proposed CAS activities need to meet these four criteria. It is also essential that CAS activities do not replicate other parts of the student’s Diploma Program work.

International dimensions

The aim of all IB programs is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world.

Creating “a better and more peaceful world” is a large aim. Working towards it should be seen as involving many small steps, which may be taken locally, nationally or internationally. It is important to see activities in a broader context, bearing in mind the maxim “Think globally, act locally”. Working with people from different social or cultural backgrounds in the vicinity of the school can do as much to increase mutual understanding as large international projects.

CAS and ethical education

There are many definitions of ethical education. The more interesting ones acknowledge that it is more than simply “learning about ethics”. Meaningful ethical education—the development of ethical beings—happens only when people’s feelings and behavior change, as well as their ideas.

Because it involves real activities with significant outcomes, CAS provides a major opportunity for ethical education, understood as involving principles, attitudes and behavior. The emphasis in CAS is on helping you to develop your own identities, in accordance with the ethical principles embodied in the IB mission statement and the IB learner profile. Various ethical issues will arise naturally in the course of CAS activities, and may be experienced as challenges to your ideas, instinctive responses or ways of behaving, e.g.,, towards other people. (In the context of CAS, schools have a specific responsibility to support students’ personal growth as they think, feel and act their way through ethical issues.)

Responsibilities of the student

The relevant section of the IB Program standards and practices document states that students should have opportunities to choose their own CAS activities and to undertake activities in a local and international context as appropriate. This means that, as far as possible, students should “own” their personal CAS program.. With guidance from their mentors/advisers, students should choose activities for themselves, initiating new ones where appropriate.

Students are required to:

•   self‑review at the beginning of their CAS experience and set personal goals for what they hope to achieve through their CAS program.
• plan, do and reflect (plan activities, carry them out and reflect on what they have learned)
• undertake at least one interim review and a final review with their CAS adviser
• take part in a range of activities, including at least one project, some of which they have initiated themselves
• keep records of their activities and achievements, including a list of the principal activities undertaken
• show evidence of achievement of the eight CAS learning outcomes. You must have evidence of all your activities.

Evidence of achievement of the eight CAS learning outcomes

Evidence can take many forms: Physical or electronic evidence of completed projects, photos, photo collage, theatre playbills, sports’ teams rosters, signed Debate/Speech Team Competition evaluations, CAS activity daily diary entries, signed evaluation   documents by a CAS activity supervisor (an adult but not a relative), newspaper article about your project, or Eagle Scout Board document of completion of project. The CAS Coordinator has copies of evidence documents you may find useful for evidence.

Evaluation

The most important aspect of evaluation is self‑evaluation by the student.

The school provides you with formative feedback on progress and offers guidance on future activities. The ‘interim review’, mentioned above, is necessary for your formative feedback. The school makes the final decision on completion, which is reported to the IB regional office. There is no other assessment of student performance in CAS.

Reflection, recording and reporting

Reflection needs to be developed. It should not be assumed that it comes naturally. Just as the kind of reflection that a critic applies to a work of art or literature is something that develops with time and experience, so the kind of reflection appropriate in CAS is something that requires guidance and practice.

The fundamentals are simple. Of any activity, it is appropriate to ask the following questions.

• What did I plan to do?
• What did I do?
• What were the outcomes, for me, the team I was working with, and others?

The difficulty lies in the complexity of the possible answers.

Kinds of reflection

Different kinds of reflection work for different people. Reflection can be:

• public or private
• individual or shared
• objective or subjective.

For example, in a CAS group project, the planning stages are largely public, so reflection on them can be largely public, shared and objective. There may, however, be individual views that arise independently, in terms of how satisfactory the process was for a particular student (who may enter and leave the activity with different personal experiences from others).

Carrying out the project is likely to be both public and private, both individual and shared, and both objective and subjective.

Outcomes of a project or other activity are similar: there may be objective successes and limitations of the activity as a whole, but what it has meant for the team and for individuals within it may be more varied.

For some of you, and some kinds of refection (such as private, individual, subjective). Writing is the bet tool for reflection. However, for some, reflective writing does not come easily or naturally. In some cases and for some of your reflections, oral discussions with the CAS Coordinator and Advisor

But writing is by no means the only possible outcome of reflection. You can present your activities orally to peers, parents or outsiders, including the CAS Coordinator. You can make scrapbooks, photo essays, videos/DVDs or weblogs. You can use journals or make up varied portfolios. Or you may sometimes simply reflect privately: some of the most important lessons may be very personal ones that you should be allowed to keep to yourself.

Developing reflection – essential to experiential learning

Moving on from the “What …?” questions outlined earlier, experiential learners, i.e., you, might consider, where appropriate, for yourself and others, and for each stage of an activity (before, during and after):

• how you felt
• what you perceived
• what you thought about the activity
• what the activity meant to you
• what the value of the activity was
• what you learned from the activity and how this learning (for example, a change of perspective) might apply more widely.

Experiential learning – a final word

While different Diploma Program subjects offer varying amounts of opportunity for experiential learning, it is at the very heart of CAS.

The ‘heart’ of CAS: 

• Planning and identifying goals
• Acting – real tasks , concrete experiences
• Observing – thinking about feelings, interactions; analyzing perceptions
• Reflect. Identify achievements, personal strengths and challenges. Evaluate actions. Synthesize understandings
• Apply learning in new situations
• Planning – repeating the cycle