Central Idea
Cultural identity is not static but continuously constructed through everyday practices, economic systems, belief structures, historical forces, and power relations shaped by place and context.
Venue
Goa
Chorao Island
(Coastal and Island Communities | Mangrove Ecosystems | Portuguese-Influenced Cultural Landscape)
“Ways of Living: Culture, Place, and Community Identity” is a Diploma Programme experiential learning journey that uses Goa’s coastal, island, and heritage spaces as living systems through which students critically examine how culture is lived, represented, sustained, and transformed.
The programme positions students within everyday cultural environments where livelihoods, tourism, faith, food practices, architecture, and performance intersect. Rather than treating culture as display or tradition alone, students interrogate how cultural expression is shaped by geography, economic necessity, historical power structures, and contemporary consumption.
Through structured inquiry, place-based observation, community interaction, and guided reflection, students analyse tensions between lived culture and curated culture, between community identity and tourist representation, and between continuity and change. Experiences across fishing communities, mangrove ecosystems, markets, forts, churches, and performance spaces require students to question authenticity, authority, and whose narratives dominate cultural spaces.
The programme is intentionally designed to surface ambiguity rather than resolution. Students are expected to hold competing interpretations, revise assumptions, and engage critically with how culture functions as both lived reality and public representation.
Aligned with IB Diploma Programme philosophy, the journey integrates conceptual inquiry with direct experience, ensuring learning remains context-dependent, ethically grounded, and intellectually demanding.
Individuals and Societies
Students examine livelihoods, tourism, colonisation, trade, faith, and community organisation as social systems shaped by power, geography, and historical context.
Environmental Systems and Societies
Engagement with coastal ecosystems, mangroves, and marine environments supports analysis of human–environment interaction and sustainability within lived cultural systems.
The Arts
Exposure to music, dance, architecture, and ritual practices enables analysis of artistic expression as a carrier of identity, memory, and belief.
Language and Literature
Students interpret cultural narratives through reflection, discussion, and analytical writing, examining how stories, symbols, and spaces communicate meaning.
Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
The programme generates real-life situations around representation, authenticity, authority, and perspective. Students confront questions such as whose culture is represented, how knowledge about culture is constructed, and where certainty breaks down in interpreting lived experience.
Inquiry-driven • Concept-based • Experiential • Analytical • Reflective • Interdisciplinary • Culture-centred
Learning Intent
This programme is designed to move students beyond cultural appreciation toward cultural analysis. Students are expected to interrogate representation, tolerate uncertainty, and construct informed perspectives grounded in lived experience rather than assumption.
IB Learner Profile Focus
Inquirer • Thinker • Open-Minded • Knowledgeable • Reflective • Caring • Balanced
Includes
Pre-Tour • On-Tour • Post-Tour Learning Engagements
About Us
Careers
Signup
Login