International Baccalaureate Learner Profile Research Articles

Learner Profile Attributes in IB Teaching: Insights from a Continuum School in Turkey

This article presents findings from a case study of a K-12 school in Turkey where teachers shared perceptions of how the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile attributes related to their own practice. While discussing the interdependency of the attributes, teachers considered that being an inquirer is the most valuable attribute for effective International Baccalaureate teachers. Participants at all grade levels believed that being open-minded and r eflective were important attributes. Despite the importance of inquiry, participants shared that they feel most capable of implementing the attribute of being knowledgeable. The conceptual framework developed for this study may be used by schools and teacher educators to develop attributes of teachers who can help students become global citizens with intercultural understandings.

Exploring The Differences And Similarities Between International Baccalaureate Education And Japanese High School Education

The number of International Baccalaureate (IB) students applying to Japanese Universities is on the rise. Okayama University is a Super Global National University (SGU) in Western Japan, which started IB admissions in 2012, and presently hosts 63 IB students including 11 graduates, in 11 faculties and 1 special program. Since the IB journey began in 2012, Okayama University has taken multiple approaches to become IB friendly. Through continuous follow up of enrolled IB students regarding academic and campus life, and regular feedback from faculty members regarding IB student performances and characteristics, Okayama University has discovered some basic differences between the educational approaches of IB accredited schools and Japanese High Schools (JHS). In order to further explore this observation, a two-phase research study was carried out. Between June 2018 and August 2019, the two surveys wer carried out. In Phase-1, University faculty, familiar with IB education, visited IB schools in Japan and JHS, to observe lessons and interview teachers about their respective methods of education. In phase-2, the same faculty members carried out an email survey followed by one-on-one interviews of 10 Super Global High Schools (SGH) teachers in Japan, regarding the similarities and differences in characteristics of their students, based on the Japanese version of the IB learner profile. This chapter reports and summarizes results of this two-phase study and perspectives gained from various first-hand observations.

Nurturing Global Citizenship through IB Learner Profile: A Malaysian Context

Nurturing Global Citizenship through IB Learner Profile: A Malaysian Context
 
 Miftahuljanah Kamaruddin*
 Faculty of Education
 Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
 Malaysia
 jannah.kamaruddin96@gmail.com
 Mohd Effendi @ Ewan Mohd Matore
 Faculty of Education
 Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
 Malaysia
 effendi@ukm.edu.my
 
 
 The impact of globalization has caused the inevitable challenges which demands education to emphasis on developing students holistically in both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) promotes the role of education in promoting sustainable development. Goal 4 in SDG: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” and its corresponding targets. Target 4.7 in SDG 4 emphasis on values education to develop students to be responsible citizens locally and globally. Nurturing global citizenship among students is crucial to ensure students are well equipped with appropriate skills, and being responsible and responsive to the local and global issues. However, students show moderate level of students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes on global citizenship. The Middle Years Programme International Baccalaureatte (MYPIB) was introduced by Ministry of Education Malaysia in 2013 to develop students holistically through the development of International Baccalaureatte Learner Profile. The implementation of the MYPIB in International Baccalauretae World (IB) School Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia has succeeded in nurturing International Baccalaureate (IB) Learning Profile among IBWS KPM students, thus, simultaneously promoting global citizenship among them.
 Keywords: IB Learner Profile; Global Citizenship; Middle Years Programme International Baccalaureatte

Transnationalism and the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile

This article examines the ways in which the International Baccalaureate’s Learner Profile is interpreted and enacted in three different national settings. Using the data collected from a comparative study of the Learner Profile in nine International Baccalaureate schools in India, Hong Kong, and Australia, the article problematizes the widely held belief that understandings of the key attributes of the Learner Profile are nationally inflected. It suggests, instead, that these schools relate to their localities in a range of complex and multifaceted ways, and that the differences between individual schools within the same country are often more significant than differences between nations when it comes to putting the Learner Profile into practice. The article introduces the idea of “transnational learning spaces” to describe a range of common features across these schools, including highly culturally diverse and globally mobile student populations and a shared disposition toward cosmopolitanism.

International schools’ leadership and Christianity

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.

Birds of a Feather: Senior International Baccalaureate International Schools Leadership in Service

This article presents original research into International Baccalaureate international schools’ directors in Western Europe, based on multiphase contact with six director participants over two years and employing an aspect of critical-phenomenology. Successful leadership in this context responds to market demands with a commodification of Anglo identity. Service emerges as central to leadership, closely linked to cultural identity. Female participants appear as more successfully balanced directors. Directors indicate societal values as being more important than the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile.

Leadership of international schools and the International Baccalaureate learner profile

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.

Interpreting and implementing the IB Learner Profile in an internationalised school in China: a shift of focus from the ‘Profile as text’ to the ‘lived Profile’

This article presents findings from a case study that explored the way Sophie, an expatriate International Baccalaureate Diploma art teacher in an internationalised school in Shanghai, China, interpreted and implemented the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile. The findings challenge the view that the Profile exerts a regulatory force on teachers’ behaviour by showing that Sophie not only reshaped the Profile according to her beliefs about teaching and learning, but also resisted what she perceived to be underlying patriarchal and westernising discourses. Findings suggest that the notion of a regulatory discourse should focus on both the Profile as text and also what could be called the lived Profile. Finally, this article offers tentative recommendations for professional development that incorporate both the Profile as text and the lived Profile.

The International Baccalaureate Learner Profile: A Social Justice Framework in the English Language Arts Classroom

The International Baccalaureate Learner Profile: A Social Justice Framework in the English Language Arts Classroom

Learner reflections on the International Baccalaureate learner profile and international mindedness at a bilingual school in Bogota, Colombia

The research presented here shows the reflections of some International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma students of a bilingual school on the attributes of the IB Learner Profile and the extent to which these can contribute to students being internationally minded. I approach the research after reviewing the concept of the self and using pragmatic methodology The research consisted of a questionnaire and semi-structured interview aimed at eliciting from the students their opinion about the extent to which they had equal command of the different attributes and, if they had differing abilities, if they were seeking to improve their command of the attribute(s) and who they though could help them do so. I was also interested in knowing if the students believed that the attributes of the IB Learner Profile helped them to be internationally minded, as suggested by the International Baccalaureate. The results suggest that most of the students believe that they have differing degrees of command of the attributes and that it is necessary for them to develop the ones that they feel less proficient in. They tend to believe that the attributes are developed partly at school, but also by their parents, themselves and others. They tend to believe that they are similar in terms of character to students that study at schools that do not offer the IB, but academically they are somewhat different. That said, they also tend to believe that the attributes of the IB Learner Profile help them to be internationally minded, particularly those of ‘open-minded’ and ‘communicator’, which coincide with the theoretical position of Castro et al (2013) and Singh and Qi (2013). While the school seems to play a significant part in developing the attributes, students seem to believe that they themselves, and parents, also have a key role to play.

Moral education and the International Baccalaureate learner profile

This article analyses elements of moral education in the educational programmes offered by the International Baccalaureate (IB). Particular reference is made to the IB learner profile, a list of 10 virtues which, the IB claims, are fostered through its educational programmes. This approach is evaluated in the light of existing ideas concerning moral and character education. It is argued that the learner profile is firmly grounded in the character education approach to moral education. An alternative perspective is sketched, focusing on student autonomy and personal sense making, allowing students to develop a personal sense of the good life through interaction with others.

International education research and the sociology of knowledge

The ontology of the field of international education is described and analysed in terms of singular, regional and generic modes of pedagogized knowledge. In contrast to singular and regional modes of knowledge which synthesize introjection (orientation onto themselves) and projection (orientation towards external contingencies), generic modes concentrate solely on projection onto the demands of the market. Generic knowledge is characterized as a reductive discourse that couples education to the acquisition of skills and competences. International education may be characterized as a region in which singulars (academic disciplines) are brought together in an integrating framework. ‘Internationally minded values’ are identified as constituting an overarching master view that weakens classification between the contents of the field of international education. It is proposed that the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile, as a specification for international education, constitutes pedagogized knowledge in the generic mode. Possible directions for future research in international education are discussed in the context of these contrasting modes of knowledge.

An international model of world-class education: The International Baccalaureate

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.

International education, values and attitudes: A critical analysis of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Learner Profile

This article provides a critical review of the way that the International Baccalaureate (IB) promotes international education and international mindedness through the IB Learner Profile. While discussing theories of values and attitudes, and the teaching of values and theories of value acquisition, the paucity of such topics in IB texts is noted. It is acknowledged that the IB is in the process of providing support for schools in their delivery of the Learner Profile, and this article is intended to contribute to discussion as to how best that might be done.

The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the construction of pedagogic identity: A preliminary study

Bernstein (1999, 2000) proposes that contrasting educational discourses construct contrasting retrospective, prospective, decentred (market) and decentred (therapeutic) pedagogic identities. In different times and geographical locations the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) has been projected onto a variety of pedagogic identities. In its earliest years there appears to have been vacillation between a weak form of retrospective identity, expressed as nostalgia for a grouped curriculum that prevailed before the introduction of A level in England, and an educational discourse projecting selected elements of the past into the future. A ‘progressive’ decentred therapeutic identity, exemplified by the IB Learner Profile, is the version the IB currently appears to project. However, this article proposes that the IB is assailed by market forces and that the IB DP is being driven towards a decentred (market) identity.

The International Baccalaureate and a framework for class consciousness: the potential outcomes of a ‘class-for-itself’

The International Baccalaureate (IB) examination system in early 2010 was on offer in 2700 schools in 139 countries. Since 1999, the Geneva-registered IB has created a platform for image consolidation, product standardization, and technological linkage. Out of this has emerged a globally branded ‘IB World’, educating the ‘IB Learner’, using an outcomes-based ‘IB Learner Profile’, and ‘IB Community Themes’. It is soon to be aligned within an ‘IB Association’. This creates a potential framework for class consciousness. The ‘IB Learner’, forming a ‘class-in-itself’, might form a self-conscious social grouping, a ‘class-for-itself’. This paper explores possible outcomes, within the context of two ‘agendas’. The ‘agenda for global peace’ desires an irenic class, tolerant and culturally aware. Within the context of an ‘agenda for global business’ a more inner-directed class might appear, sympathetic to globalization and the needs of Capital. Alternatively, a ‘third way’ could appear; a class who is business-oriented but socially-responsible.