Reviewing reflexivity in International Baccalaureate research: An examination of how practitioner-researchers position themselves

Over the last forty years, the estimated number of international schools worldwide has increased from under 300 to over 3000 in 2012. This explosion is a response to the needs of a world in which borders are being traversed with ever greater ease and children increasingly need to be prepared for the global opportunities that await them. In this book, international school specialists reflect on where the movement has come from, how it stands and where developments are heading, offering insightful observations on these unique institutions. This is a comprehensive resource for students, researchers and professionals with an interest in the future of education in a globalized world.

ABSTRACTThe International Baccalaureate (IB) is a secular educational franchise, educating the globally advantaged and potential future leaders. Drawing on Bourdieu, this article involves original interpretivist research, reviewing data surrounding the international IB school and its educational leadership. It presents findings pertinent to the remarkable pervasiveness of Christianity and Christian values in the orientation of IB directors in a Western European context.IB directors foreground Christianity in their make-up. In the fluid global market-place of IB schools, consistency is rare, and highly valued. Through Bourdieu, IB directors emerge as islands, with relative freedom from the State. They lead a secular school, with an implicit Christian orientation. The IB purposefully pluralises the culture of the IB experience through the IB learner Profile (IBLP). In the main, IB school leadership rejects the operational consistency of the IBLP and embraces pluralism through the consistency of Christianity.The international school is an incubator for Anglo Christian values providing cultural laundering, ontologically tied to the imperial gaze in this globalised neo-liberal schooling context: the international gaze.

In 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) added to their PISA regime the assessment of “global competence”. Given this novel, data-driven approach to governing the internationalisation of K-12 education, this study compares this recent intervention to a longer-standing mode of governing for the pedagogical ideals of international education – the approach of the International Baccalaureate (IB) across its 50-year lifetime. It employs a comparative, critical discursive analysis of how these two influential transnational organisations advance the pedagogical ideals of international education in neoliberal times. It illuminates the history and development of the IB’s soft governing for “international mindedness” and the OECD’s more recent approach to governing for “global competence” via PISA. As an entity without state authority, the IB has used a regime of centralised examinations for curricular control and quality assurance in the international schools where it was first adopted. However, IB has never attempted to use formal assessment as a direct technique of governing for international mindedness. Arguably, its liberal-humanist foundations and the need for “malleability” of IB across its many sites of adoption has mitigated from taking a too direct approach to its idealist ambitions. Whereas OECD’s testing for “global competence” is more ambitious and problematic. Despite the OECD’s use of liberal and social-justice vocabulary, its human capital development orientation remains active in its neoliberal conception of global competence. Contrasting these two transnational modalities of governing for the pedagogical ideals of international education, offers insights into the trends and prospects of internationalisation of K-12 education.

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.

This article posits that world-class education is international education, as defined by UNESCO, and presents International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes as examples of this phenomenon. It begins with the IB’s 1960s origins in international schools, which educated the children of globally mobile parents who worked principally in the UN and its agencies, and in embassies and multinational companies. Its origin led to its perception as elitist, but it has since been democratised in public (state) schools in quite a number of countries, notably in North America; starting in 2012, the IB offers the IB Career-related Certificate (IBCC) programme for students following vocational courses. Then follows an overview of the four education programmes of the IB, in order of creation: Diploma Programme (1970), Middle Years Programme (1994), Primary Years Programme (1997), and the IB Career-related Certificate (2012). Attributes of a world-class education are suggested: the concept of interdependence between nations, the shaping of attitudes, the relevance of curriculum content and teaching methods, and the importance of including an international perspective. The article concludes with a list of competencies for a world-class education based on the IB Learner Profile.

Over the last half century, international schools have come to represent an increasingly important sector in the changing global education context. International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in particular, and international schools more generally, can be viewed as specific types of educational contexts for leadership practice. In this article we report the results of a mixed-methods study of instructional leadership practices in IB schools located throughout the world. In the quantitative phase, we analyzed data from a global survey of IB program IB coordinators conducted in 2008. The broad trends revealed by the quantitative analysis were then considered in light of qualitative data obtained through in-depth case studies of five IB World Schools in East Asia. Reference to the qualitative data enabled us to explore how instructional leadership was distributed in these schools, as well as how these leadership practices contributed to smoother student transitions across IB programs. Our combined results suggest that instructional leadership is widely distributed in IB schools and contributes to creating cross-program coherence. The study contributes to research on school leadership by illuminating how instructional leadership is distributed in international schools, a heretofore under-researched domain of educational leadership.

This chapter seeks to identify the degree to which international education has become increasingly available to students who, for whatever reason, have previously been unable to access it. After commencing with a description of the nature of ‘international education’ and of the ‘international schools’ for which it was originally intended, the discussion delineates different aspects of democratisation. Then the programmes of six international education providers are discussed including their spread around the globe: International Baccalaureate, Cambridge Assessment International Education, Fieldwork, Oxfam, Global Learning Programme and Global Issues Network. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the democratisation of international education for the future.

The text of the article is available in the PDF.

The number of International Baccalaureate (IB) students applying to Japanese Universities is increasing. Okayama University is a Super Global Japanese National University which started IB admissions since 2012 and presently, has 36 IB students in 11 faculties and 1 special program. Through IB student support, IB research and conducting surveys, Okayama University is aiming to become an IB friendly University. Twenty college counselors from International Schools and First Article schools in Japan, filled out a survey anonymously, regarding the following topics; expectations of Japanese National Universities; disappointing aspects of Japanese National University Admission policies; suggestions to improve existing admission policies; reasons behind IB students choosing Foreign Universities over Japanese Universities or choosing Private Universities over National Universities, respectively. Lack of understanding of the IB education system, leading to unrealistic expectations of IB students, was a major concern among all college counselors. Unfamiliarity with overseas admission policies regarding age at admission, language requirements, IB credit transfers and recognition of the IB Diploma, led IB students to opt for foreign Universities. Finally, Japanese Private Universities with admission policies similar to overseas Universities, offering a wide range of study options, are prioritized over National Universities, irrespective of high tuition fees. Multiple approaches are necessary to become an IB-friendly University. A clear understanding of the IB education system which is very different from Japanese High School education, is essential. Okayama University is making every effort towards balancing the needs of IB students with the expectations of Japanese University teachers to become more IB friendly.

Purpose: this study offers a rare insight into senior leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) international schools. The IB international school profits from the perceived quality and consistency of the IB brand; international schools, however, suffer from an endemic culture of change and reinterpretation. The IB learner profile (IBLP) offers scope for consistency and an overarching ethos, and research finds that ‘buy-in’ to the IBLP and modelling of it in all aspects of school life are essential in achieving this. It emerges that buy-in to the IBLP in directors is split between the personal and the operational. Research method: This interpretive study explores IB directors in multiphase research over two years employing an aspect of critical phenomenology through the lens of the IBLP and Global Citizenship Education (GCE). Findings: Only one in six directors uses the IBLP in leadership. Generally, directors attribute the IBLP a junior status. Analysis through Bourdieu finds IB directors have higher loyalty to (loosely defined) GCE through their Christian values. A foregrounding of individual values over the secular IBLP places IB directors as primary catalysts for the change culture unravelling the consistency of the IB international school, confirming the value of the IBLP in leadership.

International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in Asian societies such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have experienced a quick rise since the turn of the millennium, propelled by the globalisation and marketisation of education, proliferation of cosmopolitan imaginations associated with international education, but saliently framed in the vocabulary of neoliberalism. With the increasing adoption of international curricula into local and national education systems in the Asia–Pacific region, IB has become a reference point and local brand for international quality education and policymaking. This paper is part of a comparative and qualitative study of varying IB practices and implementational conditions in the Asian contexts of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that has witness phenomenal growth. This growth has also led to claims that elite schools in Asian Pacific regions adopt IB to increase their international competitiveness and stand out from other local competitors associated with the neoliberal market agenda. The empirical illustration from the study within the three contexts reflected an evident tension in the neo-liberal market agenda, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. While navigating a competitive globalised market, the schools had shown a more measured approach in guiding their practices, particularly during the pandemic but were still balancing the educative and the market rationale. Our analysis indicated that although leaders and teachers were trying to shift away from a neoliberal mandate to rethink their aims of the curricula approach and the individual’s place within their education systems, this has been a challenge due to the existing frames and pressures of the local education market. Schools were intent on moving towards a more balanced approach towards excellence as schools paid more attention to the educational goals, but the competitive market pressures slowed this. Schools demonstrated encouraged collaborative approaches to developing curricula, accessed common platform for shared training, and teachers leveraged each other for support, but this was done informally and through personal networking opportunities. Despite the pandemic appearing to unsettle the neoliberal hegemony, ushering in a kinder, more collective, socially just politics within schooling and education across the IB schools in adherence to its core philosophy, the tensions of the neo-liberal market impact on policies and practices are still at the forefront and very much visible in the three varying contexts.

Globally, decision makers in an increasing number of schools from the governmental, nongovernmental, and international sectors are making the decision to change their curriculum and pedagogical frameworks to implement the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes (Booth, 2015; Doherty, 2009; Gough, Sharpley, Vander Pal & Griffiths, 2014; IB, 2019a; Marshall, 2014). The IB is an international education foundation which provides a continuum of four education programmes for primary, middle and secondary years of schooling. While the IB Diploma Programme (for the 16 to 19 age group) is the oldest, most established and widely recognised of the IB programmes, it is the Primary Years Programme, catering for the 3 to 12 age group, which has shown the greatest growth, at approximately 8%, in the past ten years (IB, 2019a). With the aim of providing a better understanding of why and how school decision makers are deciding to implement the Primary Years Programme than is currently available, the phenomenon was investigated through the following research question: How can we understand school decision makers’ decision to implement the Primary Years Programme? The investigation was a qualitative, single-site case study, which allowed for an analysis of the context in which the site was located, and employed problem-based methodology (Robinson, 1993) as a framework through which the decision makers’ actions, their personal and contextual constraints, and the consequences of those actions, could be viewed, and a theory of action be produced. By relying on interview and document data, and employing constant comparative analysis, categories and themes were generated which then allowed for the development of a theory of action for the decision makers’ decision to implement the Primary Years Programme. The findings of the study indicate that although the reasons for implementing the Primary Years Programme at this site aligned with the reasons reported in the existing literature, the circumstances of the school played a far larger part in the decision than has been previously reported. It was also found that the process of deciding to implement the Primary Years Programme was far more complex and intricate than reported in existing literature. The process involved a number of actions on the part of the decision makers which were designed to prepare the Elementary School to make the decision to implement the programme. These findings suggest that the decision to implement the Primary Years Programme can only be understood in the context in which it is made. It is envisaged that the findings of this study can be drawn upon by school decision makers who are currently considering the decision to implement the Primary Years Programme, as well as the IB consultants who assist interested schools through the Primary Years Programme authorisation process.

ABSTRACTThe Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) celebrated its 50th anniversary as an organisational entity in 2014, having first appeared in 1964 as the International Schools Examination Syndicate. In January 2015 the 5,000th programme had appeared at a school in Albania. The IB, now offering four programmes, has moved significantly over recent years into state funded schooling, especially in the United States, and Ecuador. At the same time there has been no significant growth in Africa where the operational paradigm remains largely unchanged since the 1980s. The 76 schools in 25 countries located across the continent of Africa in mid-2015 accounted for just 1.8 per cent of all schools worldwide. Twelve countries in Africa had a solitary ‘international school’ offering the IB programmes. This paper is the first to address this situation. This article reveals the growth and extent of IB activity across Africa, and offers possible reasons for the ongoing dearth of schools.

This article focuses on the ideology of international education as it developed during the twentieth century and analyses it into three elements: core beliefs about internationalism; the characteristics of a virtuous and worthy human being; and a set of pedagogical principles, based on enquiry, collaboration and debate. The idea, encapsulated by the International Baccalaureate (IB), of a universally available and applicable programme of international education is examined and the contrast drawn between the period in which the IB first emerged, when its target audience was mainly international schools for expatriate communities, and the current situation where the vast majority of IB programmes are taught in state and private “national” schools. The idea of a universal educational programme is seen as having its origins in the Enlightenment project whose key features are analysed. The principles of the Enlightenment have been under attack in recent decades as a result of developments in philosophy and the political changes which have moved us into a more multi-polar world. The implications of these developments for international education, and in particular for the idea of a universal education programme, are examined. The article concludes with thoughts about the future strategic agenda of the IB.

In recent years, global citizenship education (GCE) has been a trending concept used by national and international educational institutions, as well as researchers, to explain the increase in the internationalisation of education. The rise of GCE is set against globalisation and ever more diverse populations within nations, in the condition of super-diversity. GCE has emerged as a result of the shift from multiculturalism to post-multiculturalism. The implication of this shift is an emphasis on international education, where GCE is one of the key markers in schools’ responses to providing an internationally minded curriculum. This at times has resulted in schools incorporating GCE in their visions and mission statements, sometimes without a full understanding of the extent of this concept.This research study focuses on a comparative analysis of GCE in two primary schools, one international school in Singapore (Stamford International) and an independent school in Australia (Coastal College). The research focuses on how these two schools have engaged in the processes of internationalisation of their education through the adoption of international education models, utilising the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) or the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) and other local curricula to generate hybrid internationally minded education programs.The study is located within the domains of “comparative education” and “international education,” areas of enhanced research interest as a result of the growth of international schools globally and the existence of state and independent schools that have adopted international curricula. An internationally minded curriculum is perceived to evoke notions of inter-culturalism, transnational connectivity, and global sensitivity in its design of curriculum, implicit pedagogical approaches, assessment practices and research knowledge and skills. It is believed that embedded within such a curriculum is a distinctive set of knowledge and skills, relevant to both the global and national schooling landscapes. However, in a more market driven competitive schooling environment, global citizenship education is also at times linked to branding and used by schools to position themselves advantageously in their specific school market contexts.Drawing on various theoretical resources on global education, global citizenship education, international education, as well as theories of post-multiculturalism, this research sought to investigate how each case study school responded to the concept of GCE through their curriculum. The broad overarching research question framing this study is: How have schools, with an internationally-minded focus, responded through the curriculum (IPC and IB respectively) to the impact of globalisation and the attempt to produce global citizens? The research specifically investigated firstly how each case study school has responded to the concept of GCE through their curriculum (IPC and IB). It also aimed to examine the factors that enabled the take-up of GCE through curricula in the two case study schools. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, document analysis, school website analysis, as well as field notes, were analysed both inductively and deductively, teasing out the key themes. Document analysis included school policy papers, curriculum materials, syllabuses, websites, newsletters and other forms of documents that shed light on the issues being researched.The research presented a number of important findings. The findings indicate that various factors within the specific contexts of schools, such as curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders’ and teachers’ values, and the utilisation of human and financial resources play an equally important role in determining and moulding how schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. This response was situated in multiple influential contexts, which include the national contexts of the schools, including the nature of each society, the geo-political positioning of the society, the provision of schooling, the nature of schools and the specific policies governing the schools, which have influenced their approaches towards GCE.Firstly, both schools saw a need to navigate the global-local dynamics to engage with an internationalisation that is context-specific. Stamford International’s key curriculum initiatives, predominantly the IPC, the Singapore Math and the Daily Mandarin curriculum, were results of this fusion. Coastal College’s hybridisation of International Baccalaureate Primary Year Programme (PYP) and the Australian curriculum, the adoption of languages such as Japanese, and cultural exchange programmes, were also attempts to link global and national elements in their approach. Despite the above commonality, the “non-government”/ independent status of the Singapore case study school provided greater autonomy for curriculum development, compared with the independent school in Australia, which still needed to adhere to the Australian curriculum requirements or approved alternatives. The above initiatives were also part of both schools’ marketing strategies to remain distinct and to attract potential students in their respective school markets.Secondly, the school leaders in both schools demonstrated cosmopolitan competencies and were hence able to respond to and adopt organisational practices that were aligned to the demands of the 21st century global society. However the Principals’ leadership styles and their management of GCE practices within the schools also affected the GCE take-up in the respective schools.Finally, the targeted utilisation of human and financial resources was also a significant enabler that further cemented both schools’ practices towards GCE. The human resources, which included the selection of staff, appointing teachers with diverse teaching CVs and international experience, value added to the organisation and moved the GCE agenda forward. In the area of financial resources, both schools had a targeted approach in their utilisation of funding for professional development and curriculum development resources aligned to GCE.A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had affected the schools’ decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, they were mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets. The global focus was thus linked at one level to their overt branding and positioning in their respective school markets.Overall, this research study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge, particularly in respect of empirical research on GCE practices in schools. The findings of the study and the literature review have resulted in the design of an encompassing conceptual model that is able to capture the multi-faceted nature of GCE and provide a more critical understanding of the GCE concept. Most importantly, the comparative investigation of global citizenship education, which is very much lacking in current research, allowed for the exploration of two varying global and national contexts. Looking at two different contexts also facilitated a broader understanding of the global citizenship education policies, models and practices being studied, and enabled an interrogation of the interwoven local, national and global factors at play in the two research schools. The cross-national comparative perspective of GCE as policies and practices in schools also encourages global inter-culturalism and fosters intercultural exchanges of ideas that school leaders can use to effectively run their schools.