Pre-conference workshops

Presented by: Rucha Bhayani and Rohit Vaswani

Across IB World Schools, there is growing focus on artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, ethical use and academic integrity. The IB’s evolving guidance and draft AI design principles emphasize inquiry, critical thinking and educator agency. This workshop begins with the next uncomfortable question: If AI can help students produce increasingly sophisticated work, is the final product still sufficient evidence of learning? If not, what is? AI detection may flag a problem; policy may set the boundaries—neither can become the foundation of our pedagogy. This workshop invites educators to rethink the architecture of learning itself and their shifting roles from delivering content to teaching thinking. Through practical strategies, case studies and collaborative redesign, the workshop empowers educators with a toolkit for coaching thinking, designing for process evidence and strengthening intellectual ownership. Our goal is to protect academic trust without creating cultures of surveillance. The paradigm shift is, assume AI but make student learning visible. 

Presented by: Trapti Trivedi

Student well-being is shaped by more than academic workload. Culture, sex characteristics, family expectations, school context and ideas of success can influence how students experience pressure, belonging and balance. This interactive session will use warm data to explore the relationships between these factors and to understand student well-being within context. It will draw on the presenter's current doctoral research in education examining DP students from various cultural backgrounds in international schools in Singapore. Through reflection, case discussions and collaborative activities, participants will consider why similar academic demands may be experienced differently by different students. The session will also move beyond deficit perspectives by exploring cultural strengths, resilience and community cultural wealth. Participants will connect these ideas to their own contexts and develop practical, culturally responsive strategies that strengthen student agency and well-being. 

Presented by: Alison Ya-Wen Yang 

The IB mission encourages students to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who grow into autonomous, self-regulated individuals. Programme standards and practices make this explicit: students take ownership by setting challenging goals and pursuing personal inquiries. Most schools have mapped approaches to learning skills and celebrate individual success stories. However, connecting those dots into a predictable progression of self-direction remains one of the hardest design challenges in secondary education. Self-direction is a capacity students build, but it depends on how teachers teach. Teachers who learn to structure without controlling see students become more engaged and skilled, and report more confidence and stronger relationships (Cheon et al., 2020). This workshop introduces PILOT: Purpose and goal-setting, Intentions and strategies, Learning path and pacing, Output and quality and Tracking and adjustment. It provides a shared framework for designing coherent student experiences and surfacing the evidence that shows how students are progressing. 

Presented by: Dr. Benedict Hung, Suman Sethi, June Evans-Caulfield, John Cho, and Trish Oliver

Collaboration is more than a buzzword; it is a catalyst for meaningful student outcomes. This session will uncover the transformative power of collaborative practices and their direct impact on learning. Participants will explore the pivotal role of pedagogical leadership in designing systems and structures that foster intentional, shared planning. Through practical tools and adaptable frameworks, attendees will gain strategies to advance collaboration in schools where roles, time and expectations may feel fixed. This session will allow participants to consider team dynamics and ways to drive alignment of instructional goals and school improvement priorities to elevate collaboration from concept to practice. Join us to reimagine planning as a collective effort that drives student success and advances school missions.  

Presented by: Stuart Jones, Jeremiah Chua, and Avi Nanda

All leadership has a vision of what student success looks like. The aim of this pre-conference session is to co-create this vision with leaders to reflect on the tools and frameworks for building sustainability. This workshop is targeted at school leadership either within groups of schools, districts and systems or within single schools, using two lenses to unpack what student success or flourishing means, and developing action plans to support this success in their own systems or schools. 

The workshop will explore how the compassionate systems frameworks for systems flourishing can be overlaid on this matrix to enable deep systems thinking. It will also look at some tools for this approach to be shared with participants. The session will use group work, participant stories, digital enablers and dialogue to create a vibrant learning environment. It will support leaders with their action planning and provide tools to assess their schools’ journeys and forward planning. The session will invite schools or systems already exploring how systems thinking and well-being strategies can help them through change and deepen implementation. Attendees will be asked to discuss their journeys or plans and to support each other in that creation space. 

Presented by: Dr Sonia Soni

International schools are constantly evolving, yet meaningful change is often harder to sustain than to introduce. This workshop explores how leaders can move beyond implementation to build trust, shared purpose and collective ownership. Participants will examine the human, cultural and systemic dimensions of change. Through reflection, realistic school scenarios, peer dialogue and collaborative problem-solving, they will explore why some initiatives gain momentum while others stall. The workshop will challenge assumptions about resistance and consider how leaders can create the conditions for people to understand and contribute to change. Through case studies, participants will gain insights into change management, highlighting enablers and tools with respect to communication, collaboration, change champions, milestone checks, feedback, roadblocks and sustenance.   

Presented by: Sheena Verghis Joshy

This full-day workshop supports school leaders in strengthening instructional leadership through reflection, practical tools and purposeful action. Drawing on Viviane Robinson’s evidence-based capabilities, participants will audit instructional leadership within their own contexts and identify areas for meaningful growth. Using Tschannen-Moran’s Five Faces of Trust, participants will identify a concrete trust-building action and practise a structured coaching model that supports authentic instructional conversations. The workshop will explore the difference between distributed leadership and delegation, reframing well-being as a core leadership responsibility linked directly to the IB programme standards and practices. Research-based frameworks are brought to life through practical activities, including values clarification, coaching triads and appreciative inquiry. Participants will leave with a signed 90-day action plan tailored to their school. Designed for Heads of School, IB coordinators, heads of department and teacher-leaders across all IB programmes, the workshop combines structural leadership tools with the relational skills needed for sustainable improvement.  

Presented by: Marc Mesich

This hands-on workshop equips school leaders from IB World Schools with the personal capacity to harness artificial intelligence (AI) for strategic leadership. Participants will explore the transformative scope of AI tools to expand their executive capabilities. Leaders will build personalized AI assistants—called Gems—tailored to their operational context and grounded in IB standards. These custom tools will automate routine workflows, streamline board reporting and reclaim critical time for strategic leadership. Participants will also build practical skills in data analysis and visualization to evaluate qualitative and quantitative school metrics. Leaders will learn how to transform complex survey feedback into clear executive dashboards while implementing rigorous data privacy protocols. Finally, leaders will establish shared libraries to scale these AI capabilities across school teams, driving institutional efficiency and long-term capacity. 

Presented by: Josh Blue

What does it mean to lead from the heart in a complex educational landscape and uncertain world? This interactive workshop empowers leaders to transform team friction into a catalyst for innovation. Building on the foundational practices of vulnerability and trust, participants will explore the transformative power of radical candour, creative abrasion and deliberate team design. By moving beyond the "culture of nice", leaders will learn to design for dissent intentionally, manage conflict debt and master the art of repair. Participants will leave equipped with actionable frameworks to host more meaningful gatherings, utilizing their IB leadership capabilities to foster inclusive, resilient and highly productive school communities.