Comparison as translation: Internationalisation in the International Baccalaureate and Taiwanese schooling

Abstract

Concomitant with globalisation, there has been a revival of research about international education. International education or educational internationalisation can no longer be simply deciphered as education that is implemented in international schools exclusively for expatriate students or as education with a special focus on knowledge of other nations. Not only have the constitution of student populations and education content changed, there are also some international inter- and non-governmental agents that have become influential in formal education, a realm conventionally restricted and ceded to nation states. The multidirectional global flows of people, media, technology, capital, and ideas (Appadurai, 1996) and the superdiversity observed in nation states (Vertovec, 2007) also challenge our conception of international education.This research responds to this challenge by seeking to answer two interrelated questions: 1) How can we appropriately compare entities that are diverse in terms of social, cultural, historical, and institutional aspects; and 2) How does international education, based on the cases of the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the internationalisation of schooling in Taiwan, make itself intelligible in contemporary globalisation? The first question is methodological and functional, which attempts to explore and elucidate how different education systems can be compared without presuming commensurability between them. In addressing this first question, this research proposes a methodological approach, which is referred as comparison as translation. Using this approach, the second question empirically aims at understanding international education from the two cases.This research compares international education as employed in the IB and in the internationalisation of schooling in Taiwan. The former is an international non-governmental organisation proclaiming to provide quality primary and secondary programs around the world and to cultivate “international-mindedness”, while the latter is a national education system in a post-colonial society, located in entangled and complex geopolitics and under a process of citizenship reconstruction. To properly compare the two cases, which are diverse in many ways, for example, in respect of their cultures, histories, institutions, and geopolitical positionings, this research inter alia seeks to critically reflect on the colonial roots embedded in comparative education research (Sobe, 2017), including various presuppositions such as methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick-Schiller, 2002), and the so-called “northerness” of globalisation theory (Connell, 2007). Utilising the theorisation offered by Jullien (2013), Sakai (2006), and other theorists (Mignolo, 2012; Spivak, 2000; Stengers, 2011), the research proposes and exercises a comparative approach that resembles the process of translation and in which the researcher acts as the translator. It is argued that similarities and dissimilarities of the two cases are not innate, but created through a dialogical comparative process in accordance with the researcher’s positionalities in the comparison.Four sources of data are incorporated in the analysis: authoritative texts published by the IB and leading figures, official texts and reports produced by the Ministry of Education or senior policy makers in Taiwan, theses written on various themes concerning international education in the IB, and theses about Taiwanese educational internationalisation written by postgraduate students. The analysis of intertextuality looks at referencing, elaboration, and/or (mis)interpretation among authoritative and thesis texts. The corpuses constituted by theses are analysed through the ideas of collocation and concordance, which focus on generating connotations of particular concepts from their textual circumstances and associations with other concepts. Through such a comparative analysis, it is argued that international education articulates a particular cosmopolitanism through incarnating the imagined global community (cf. Anderson, 1983/2006), elaborating deterritorialised multiculturalism, and developing a specific kind of mobility.The research makes theoretical and methodological contributions through proposing and applying a comparative approach which conceptualises comparison as translation, that is, to interpret the idea of international education as constituted by the IB from the Taiwanese understanding as constituted in internationalisation of education policy, and vice versa. Through reconsidering international education from cosmopolitan perspectives, while acknowledging the need to reject methodological nationalism, recognise the impacts of globalisation, and at the same time take account of the continuing significance of the specificities of culture, this research engages with debates around contested and emerging definitions of international education. The research also develops the concept of pan-Sinicisation in Taiwanese education practice, which contributes to discussion of the extended transnational educational/cultural impact of a regional great power, China, in the globalising world.