Central Idea
Human interaction with natural and cultural systems reflects underlying values, power structures, and priorities, producing ethical tensions between preservation, access, development, and long-term responsibility.
Venue
Kovalam
Ponmudi Hills
Thiruvananthapuram
(Coastal Ecosystems | Hill Landscapes | Cultural and Heritage Systems)
“History, Adventure, and Culture at Ponmudi” is a Diploma Programme experiential learning journey designed to examine how human values and decision-making shape the ways natural environments and cultural heritage are accessed, preserved, represented, and transformed.
Using coastal regions, hill ecosystems, heritage institutions, sacred architecture, and living communities as interconnected learning contexts, students engage with real-world systems where environmental stewardship, cultural continuity, tourism, conservation, and development intersect. The programme positions students within complex settings where responsibility is contested rather than clear, requiring them to analyse trade-offs, question assumptions, and evaluate consequences.
Through structured inquiry, field observation, embodied experiences, and guided reflection, students interrogate how heritage is curated, how nature is regulated, who benefits from conservation and tourism, and how ethical responsibility is distributed across individuals, communities, and institutions. Rather than presenting culture or environment as static, the programme foregrounds tension, uncertainty, and competing perspectives.
The journey integrates ecological exploration, cultural heritage study, community engagement, and reflective synthesis, ensuring learning is place-dependent, ethically grounded, and intellectually demanding. Students are required to actively construct meaning from lived experience, making the programme inherently TOK-compatible and aligned with IB Diploma Programme expectations.
Individuals and Societies
Students analyse heritage, tourism, conservation, and development as social systems shaped by power, policy, and historical context. Experiences at temples, palaces, museums, fishing communities, and cultural performances support examination of identity, governance, and societal values.
Environmental Systems and Societies / Sciences
Direct engagement with coastal ecosystems, hill environments, waterfalls, mangroves, wildlife spaces, and human-managed conservation zones enables systems thinking around biodiversity, sustainability, human impact, and ecological balance.
The Arts
Exposure to Kalaripayattu, temple architecture, palace design, museum collections, and cultural storytelling supports analysis of artistic expression as a carrier of identity, belief, discipline, and historical memory.
Language and Literature
Students develop interpretive and analytical skills through reflective writing, discussion, narrative construction, and evaluation of how stories, symbols, and spaces communicate meaning across time and culture.
Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
The programme naturally generates real-life situations involving ethics, knowledge systems, authority, and perspective. Students confront questions such as whose knowledge is legitimised, how values shape decision-making, and where certainty breaks down in complex human systems.
This programme is designed to destabilise simplified views of sustainability, heritage, and conservation. Students are expected to tolerate ambiguity, engage with unresolved tensions, and construct informed perspectives grounded in lived experience rather than instruction.
Learning Approach
Inquiry-driven • Concept-based • Experiential • Analytical • Reflective • Interdisciplinary • Ethics-centred
IB Learner Profile Focus
Inquirer • Thinker • Knowledgeable • Open-Minded • Reflective • Caring • Balanced
Includes
Pre-Tour • On-Tour • Post-Tour Learning Engagements
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