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CAS Student Guide

The nature of creativity, action, service
Creativity, action, service (CAS) is at the heart of the Diploma Programme. 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 Programme.

CAS enables students to enhance their personal and interpersonal development through experiential learning. At the same time, it provides an important counterbalance to the academic pressures of the rest of the Diploma Programme. A good CAS programme should be both challenging and enjoyable, a personal journey of self‑discovery. Each individual student has a different starting point, and therefore different goals and needs, but for many their CAS activities include experiences that are profound and life‑changing.

For student development to occur, CAS should 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 they do not replicate other parts of the student’s Diploma Programme work.

Concurrency of learning is important in the Diploma Programme. Therefore, CAS activities should continue on a regular basis for as long as possible throughout the programme, and certainly for at least 18 months. Successful completion of CAS is a requirement for the award of the IB diploma. CAS is not formally assessed but students need to document their activities and provide evidence that they have achieved eight key learning outcomes. A school’s CAS programme is regularly monitored by the relevant regional office.

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

The CAS programme 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
Learning outcomes are differentiated from assessment objectives because they 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 students have:

• increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth - They are able to see themselves as  individuals with various skills and abilities, some more developed than others, and understand that they can make choices about how they wish to move forward.
• undertaken new challenges - A new challenge may be an unfamiliar activity, or an extension to an existing one.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• engaged with issues of global importance - Students 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).
• 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.
• developed new skills - As with new challenges, new skills may be shown in activities that the student has not previously undertaken, or in increased expertise in an established area.

All eight outcomes must 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 the equivalent of half a day per school week (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.

Creativity
Creative activities should have a definite goal or outcome. They should be planned and evaluated like all CAS activities. This can present something of a challenge where, for example, a student is a dedicated instrumental musician. It would be artificial to rule that something that is both a pleasure and a passion for the student could not be considered part of their CAS experience. How, though, can it help to fulfill CAS learning outcomes? It may be useful to refer back to the section “The nature of creativity, action, service”, particularly to the second principle: personal challenge—tasks must extend the student and be achievable in scope. Perhaps the instrumental musician can learn a particularly difficult piece, or a different style of playing, in order to perform for an audience. The context might be a fund‑raising activity, or the student might give a talk to younger children about the instrument, with musical illustrations. Appropriate CAS activities are not merely “more of the same”—more practice, more concerts with the school band, and so on. This excludes, for example, routine practice performed by IB music or dance students (as noted earlier), but does not exclude music, dance or art activities that these students are involved with outside the Diploma Programme subject coursework.

Action
Similar considerations apply here. An outstanding athlete will not stop training and practising in order to engage in some arbitrary, invented CAS physical activity. However, modern approaches to sports coaching emphasize the notion of the reflective practitioner, so it is possible for the athletics coach to incorporate relevant CAS principles and practice into training schedules for the benefit of the student. Setting goals, and planning and reflecting on their achievement, is vital. “Extending” the student may go further, for example, to asking them to pass on some of their skills and knowledge to others. If their chosen sport is entirely individual, perhaps they should try a team game, in order to experience the different pleasures and rewards on offer. Some excellent “action” activities are not sporting or competitive but involve physical challenge by demanding endurance (such as long‑distance trekking) or the conquest of personal fears (for example, rock climbing). It is important that schools carefully assess the risks involved in such activities. Alternatively, a student’s “action” may be physical exertion as part of a service activity, perhaps in a project as outlined in the section “Projects, themes, concepts”. To avoid possible confusion, it is appropriate to note that the use of the term “action” in CAS is very different from that in the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP). In the PYP, action is a powerful concept that is part of the whole philosophy of learning (see Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education); in CAS, action relates specifically to physical activity.

Service
It is essential that service activities have learning benefits for the student. Otherwise, they are not experiential learning (hence not CAS) and have no particular claim on students’ time. This rules out mundane, repetitive activities, as well as “service” without real responsibility. A learning benefit that enriches the student personally is in no way inconsistent with the requirement that service be unpaid and voluntary. The general principle, sketched out in the section “The nature of creativity, action, service”, that the “rights, dignity and autonomy of all those involved [in service activities] are respected”, means, among other things, that the identification of needs, towards which a service activity will be directed, has to involve prior communication and full consultation with the community or individual concerned. This approach, based on a collaborative exchange, maximizes both the potential benefits to the recipients and the learning opportunities for the students. Ideally, such prior communication and consultation will be face‑to‑face and will involve the students themselves. Where this is not possible, schools need to work with appropriate partners or intermediaries, such as NGOs (non‑governmental organizations), and make every effort to ensure both that the service provided is appropriate, and that the students are able to understand the human consequences of their work, for both individuals and communities.

Creativity, action, service guide
For students graduating in 2010 and thereafter
International Baccalaureate
Peterson House, Malthouse Avenue, Cardiff Gate
Cardiff, Wales GB CF23 8GL
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 29 2054 7777
Fax: +44 29 2054 7778
Website: http://www.ibo.org