International Mindedness Research Articles

Global Competency and International Mindedness in LIS Education

This article discusses the role of the global competency framework within library and information studies professional education, explores the relevant literature, and places the framework in context of equity, diversity, and inclusion as well as other relevant areas of the field. The author posits that the knowledges, skills, and attitudes of the global competency framework contribute through international mindedness to equity-centered education within library and information studies.

Transnational governing for the pedagogical ideals of K-12 international education: contrasting PISA and IB

ABSTRACT 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.

Teaching for international mindedness in Chicago Public Schools International Baccalaureate humanities classes

PurposeThe International Baccalaureate (IB) programme centers on developing students' international mindedness. Central to this effort is the programme's “Learner Profile,” which details ten attributes that teachers seek to cultivate through classroom instruction. This article reports on the ways that middle grades and high school social studies and English teachers in Chicago Public Schools' (CPS) IB programmes are attempting to implement the Learner Profile as part of their classroom practice to support students' international mindedness.Design/methodology/approachThe project was carried out as a two phase, sequential mixed-methods design. Phase I entailed a survey of IB teachers and programme coordinators across CPS to assess the incorporation of the Learner Profile into instruction. Phase II consisted of mixed-methods case studies of CPS IB programmes selected partially on Phase I data analysis.FindingsWe find that while teachers express high levels of familiarity with the Learner Profile attributes and confidence in incorporating them into practice, we find wide variation in the actual implementation. Taken as a whole, we find CPS programmes take divergent approaches to incorporating the Learner Profile based on differences in understanding of the attributes and its purposes as well as key organizational facets related to implementation.Originality/valueUltimately, we argue that the wide variation and lack of explicit incorporation of the Learner Profile into classrooms is related in large part to the broad, indistinct nature of “international mindedness” as a concept. The programme would benefit from creating more space for teacher and students to critique the concept, especially those working from non-Western traditions.

The contribution of the International Baccalaureate Diploma to educational inequalities: reinventing historical logics of curriculum stratification in a comprehensive system

ABSTRACT International education options have expanded in most school systems around the world with promises of curricular innovation. However, there has been limited attention given to the consequences of this shift for social inequalities embedded in pre-existing institutional hierarchies. The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma, a two-year high school curriculum, has been prominent among recent private curricula, centred on notions of international mindedness and global preparedness. This article seeks to examine the consequences of the presence of the IB Diploma in a school system that is socioeconomically and academically stratified and shaped by strategies of academic distinction focused on local hierarchies. Using quantitative data on IB Diploma students and schools in Australia, it analyses the interaction of the IB Diploma with social inequalities in a system that combines a high level of between-school stratification and a comprehensive (unified) curriculum. We show how the IB Diploma has been successfully used by socially dominant and academically powerful families to consolidate their academic capital and secure educational advantage, thus contributing to the reproduction of social inequality in domestic circuits of schooling. Against its perceived innovative status, the IB Diploma has paradoxically contributed to fostering traditional forms of schooling – including within-school tracking – and a narrowing of the curriculum – including through its strong focus on examinations. It is argued that the social impact of emerging international curriculum options can only be adequately understood if they are simultaneously contextualised within historically constituted local school and curriculum hierarchies.

IB DIPLOMA PROGRAMME CORE AS A SUPPLIER OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

Global citizenship education (GCED) is a growing field in international education. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.7 cited GCED as an official aim of the United Nations for 2030 in order to improve sustainable development, and this has created an increase in global research relating to the assessment of GCED within curriculums. The International Baccalaureate (IB), a private international organization known for its mission statement that promotes lifelong education for a peaceful world, prefers the term international mindedness. Consequently, the IB rarely addresses the concept of global citizenship directly in its Diploma Programme (DP). This paper studies the relationship between the existing DP curriculum and GCED through first providing a definition of GCED and its cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral conceptual domains according to UNESCO’s theoretical framework. The study suggests that the DP curriculum unequally addresses the GCED domains and lacks definitive learning objectives that are recommended by UNESCO. While the IB is known for its international education, the DP does address GCED elements that are crucial to active citizenship within the written curriculum, nor are the existing elements assessed at any point in the program.

International Mindedness: A Revised Conceptual Framework

This paper suggests a revised framework for explaining, developing and assessing international mindedness (IM). A review of the literature – that presents initiatives, challenges, and debates regarding IM – concludes with an overview of selected conceptual frameworks that have been used to develop a shared understanding of IM. When the authors applied one of these frameworks in a previous empirical study, they found during data analysis that some aspects of the framework’s key pillars played a more supportive role and that other components of IM needed further identification. As a result, this paper proposes a revision of the framework that features intercultural competence and global engagement, and identifies more specific components of these attributes, namely knowledge, skills, dispositions, and agency. The paper includes another review of the literature to emphasise how these components are important for the development, implementation, and assessment of international mindedness.

International mindedness as a platform for class solidarity

ABSTRACT There has been reference in literature to the concepts of a Transnational Capitalist Class and a Global Middle Class, but there has been little discussion of how education may form any sense of class solidarity for these groups. In national contexts, ruling class socialisation has been achieved through elite private schooling. But the notion of global classes presents a fundamentally different problem for class socialisation and solidarity since the educational mechanisms for creating solidarity are unclear. This question has achieved prominence through the political discourse identifying and attacking an international, liberal elite who are ‘Citizens of Anywhere’ and ‘Nowhere’. We focus on the role of the elite, traditional ‘International School’, delivering the International Baccalaureate programmes specifically designed to promote ‘international mindedness’ (IM), in the educational trajectories of this echelon of society. We argue that IM offers a class constructed platform in providing an element of global social solidarity.

Social class and the construction of international mindedness: A comparative study of International Baccalaureate schools in Ecuador

The purpose of this paper is to examine how students inhabiting distinctive social spaces and experiencing considerably different material realities define, value and problematize the concept of international mindedness. Drawing on a larger multi-sited ethnographic study of two International Baccalaureate schools in Ecuador, the study found that while students from distinct social backgrounds provided similar definitions of what international mindedness entails, they differed notably in what they considered to be the value and potential pitfalls of embodying the concept as a personal disposition. These differences emerged primarily as a result of how students related to their immediate surroundings and the assumptions they made about their future lives. Focusing on students’ constructions of ‘place’ and their imagined futures provides an important insight into how students engage with international mindedness specifically, and the International Baccalaureate more broadly. Furthermore, it attests to why matters related to ‘social class’ deserve a greater degree of scholarly attention.

Tagore’s “rooted-cosmopolitanism” and international mindedness against institutional sustainability

ABSTRACT Cosmopolitanism is often seen as a western concept associated with liberal individualistic values. It is also associated mostly with the urban educated middle-class. However, cosmopolitan thinking has been also prevalent in the East. Scholars in the twenty-first century are increasingly arguing that, there are multiple ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism originating from different regions of the world. Among Eastern thinkers, Rabindranath Tagore from colonial British India has been considered by many as one of the most cosmopolitan thinkers. The uniqueness about Tagore’s cosmopolitanism is that, it did not uproot him from his rural Bengali roots and sense of ethnic identity. He was very much a “rooted-cosmopolitan”. In his book, ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers’, Kwame Anthony Appaiah had agued that, a “rooted cosmopolitan” is someone who was rooted in his own cultural context while having an open-mind to feel literally at home in the world. This article draws on archival research at Rabindra Bhawan in Shantiniketan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library archives to further this argument and demonstrates how Tagore’s school and university were built drawing on his “rooted cosmopolitan” ideals and international mindedness. In conclusion, this article highlights some of the challenges of sustaining the reformist educational institutions led by Tagore’s unique personality traits, social and pedagogic reform movements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century colonial British India.

Reconceptualizing international mindedness in and for a posthuman world

This article offers a novel foray into international mindedness and posthuman theory. International mindedness underpins the International Baccalaureate’s aim to achieve a better and more peaceful world. However, in a global context of planetary emergency and widening inequalities, it seems imperative to rethink international mindedness within a posthumanist frame, that is, beyond anthropocentric notions of education that privilege human exceptionalism. The reconceptualization of international mindedness as relational becoming is illuminated through five theoretical propositions which are illustrated empirically using ‘material moments’. Relational becoming rejects mind and body binaries, affirms nonhuman–human assemblages, enables distributed agency, enacts ethics of response-ability and engages with past and present entanglements. ‘Posthumanizing’ international mindedness, through the concept of relational becoming, prompts more nuanced insights into educational privilege, nation-states, globalism and enduring colonialist inheritances.

Teachers Building “Planetary Villages”: Considering International Mindedness in Majority-Muslim Contexts

In an increasingly complex and globally uncertain time, the challenge of preparing students for such a world is a pivotal argument in the navigation of a third space in education with the goal to bridge both transactional and meaningful outcomes for students. Are we approaching global education as a competitive edge that holds value in a neoliberal environment? Are we seeking global interconnectedness as a way to bridge differences and assuage global tensions? And what do we see represented in non-Western, non-white, and non-Judeo-Christian schools in terms of how globalism and international mindedness are present in those contexts? In the U.S., a deeper understanding of how Muslim students experience education is well documented (Ghaffar-Kucher, 2016, Niyozov & Pluim, 2009). But how do Muslim educators understand their role and responsibility in terms of teaching their students what it means to be present in a global world? Using a phenomenological approach, this paper takes a critical approach in representing the voices of teachers from 15 majority-Muslim countries who participated in a global teacher exchange program. Participating in a series of interviews, focus groups, conversations, and surveys, teachers from majority-Muslim countries addressed issues of commitment to both national and international approaches to the understanding of culture, raised light on the hegemony of what is considered global, explored how to foster common ground with their students, and finally presented gaps from their perspective in teacher education on pedagogy and curriculum.

Fostering teachers

Fostering international mindedness in teachers through their preparation and continuing education leads to innovations in teacher education related to exchange programs (Cushner, 2012) and curricular adoptions and adaptations (Tudball, 2012). This in turn supports the development of both teacher educators and teachers as change agents. Yet, without investments of resources to prioritize such work in teacher preparation and professional development programs, there is little impetus to create systemic change to support how teachers

Australian Universities, Expertise and Internationalism After World War I

ABSTRACTThis article explores the impact of World War I on Australian university communities, its contribution to innovations and knowledge in some of the traditional professions, and influence on the interwar growth of national associations that regulated professional groups and sought to extend their influence. The experiences of World War I advanced professional expertise and vocational training, including through the AIF Education Scheme, and strengthened and initiated international networks for individuals and professional groups. This was to have an impact on the national development of traditional and modern professions, and on the role of universities. We discuss how these changes occurred in the context of a new sense of nationalism that was highly internationalist in outlook, as seen in relation to the support for the ideals of the League of Nations within university communities. In the interwar decades, Australian universities were essential in establishing new disciplines and qualifications, providing accreditation, transmitting advances in professional knowledge and supporting new forms of international mindedness for their students and the wider public.

Developing and institutionalising the ‘Internationally-Minded School’: The role of the ‘Numerous Fs’

The concept and theory of ‘international-mindedness’ has been much discussed and debated in recent years. The conceptualising of the character of ‘international-mindedness’ as practised by schools has begun to attract some scholarly attention, but one especially under-theorised aspect involves the often-derided ‘Several Fs’, or sometimes ‘Five Fs’ (flags, festivals, food etc.). This paper aims to give credibility and importance to the day-to-day aspects of the ‘Several Fs’, and draws attention to the broader range of activity, identifying upwards of 15 ‘Fs’ in practice. The broader framework of these ‘Numerous Fs’ is then placed at the centre of identifying the nature and form of the school, as a deliverer of ‘international mindedness’. In a ‘low-culture context’, where collective identity is undermined by transient and relatively distanced stakeholders, the ‘Numerous Fs’ can be viewed as acting as significant ‘purveyors of organisational identity’. At another level, the ‘Numerous Fs’ give considerable legitimacy to a school’s claim to be ‘internationally-minded’, acting as ‘carriers of institutionalisation’. Put simply, they give the school a distinct set of norms, activities, artefacts and routines, characterising it as a specific type of educational institution. As well as acting as practical everyday tools for developing the ‘internationally-minded school’, they arguably help to give the school a considerable degree of legitimacy both as an organisation, and as an institution.

International Mindedness in Education

International Mindedness in Education

Third culture kids’ sense of international mindedness: Case studies of students in two International Baccalaureate schools

This paper uses part of the data from a larger qualitative inquiry in two International Baccalaureate schools, one in Australia and one in an Indian Ocean Island Nation (a pseudonym), to identify the factors and forces that contribute to the sense of self and understanding of and engagement with the notion of international mindedness in two ‘third culture kids’. Socio-cultural theory is used as a conceptual framework to explore cross-cultural differences and similarities between the students and the schooling contexts. Analysing the students’ perspectives about their understandings of international mindedness through grounded theory methods, the paper also develops hypotheses on the notions of being, belonging and becoming.

“Walking the Talk”: A Conceptualization of International Mindedness to Inform Leadership in International Schools

In many of the most highly regarded international schools, international mindedness (IM) represents an overarching value orientation and a “mindset” to be developed in students. Over the last 2 decades, there has been increasing attention to both understanding and supporting IM in the explicit and formal curriculum in international schools; however, the theorization of the more implicit or hidden curriculum of international schools has been much less engaged. This article presents a broad conceptualization of IM from a synthesis of the most recent IM literature and, more specifically, digs deeper into the implicit forms of learning and subjectivity via a “post-informed” analysis of a critical anecdote of international school teaching. The article seeks to inform leaders of how they might more robustly understand IM and work to walk the talk of IM through a more open embrace of human difference and cultural conflict under complex, power-laden, and sometimes fraught social relations.

The International Demonstration School (IDS) Model

This International Demonstration School (IDS) Model was created by the author as an output of his dissertation. It is a guide reference to universities that plan to establish this new educational system, and it can be used as an analysis framework to researchers who study international education, international schools, and systems and procedures. It focuses on seven areas: governance, curriculum, teacher recruitment, student admission, collaboration, international mindedness, and accreditation.

International Mindedness and Intercultural Competence: Perceptions of Pakistani Higher Education Faculty

<p><em>This qualitative study endeavored to examine higher education faculty members’ understanding of international mindedness and intercultural competence and sought their views on professional development programs competency in evolving an internationally minded stance. The focus of this study was on international mindedness because in the current era of globalization, it has become imperative to inculcate world mindedness in students and to prepare them for global citizenship. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews held with eight faculty members teaching at two higher education institutions in Karachi, Pakistan. Dominant findings demonstrated that most participants had limited insight regarding the concepts and that these were applied minimally in their current teaching practices. Although, lauding an international minded approach, most participants considered understanding of local cultures more relevant before moving on to international visions. Participating faculty also reflected that there was lack of professional development and that for understanding local and international dynamics, specialized education programs were an important factor. The study concluded with implications for professional growth platforms to foster global mindedness in educators in order for them to promote international mindedness in students.</em></p><p> </p>

International Mindedness in Practice: The Evidence from International Baccalaureate Schools

International Mindedness is an overarching construct related to multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement (Hill, 2012). The concept is central to the International Baccalaureate (IB) and sits at the heart of its education policies and programmes. The aim of this research study was to examine systematically how schools offering International Baccalaureate programmes (so-called IB World Schools) conceptualise, develop, assess and evaluate International Mindedness (IM), and to understand related challenges and problems, with a view to improving practice in schools. Nine case study schools, identified as being strongly engaged with IM, were selected for in-depth scrutiny of their practice and thinking related to IM. Conclusions from this study will also inform on-going debate on other similar global initiatives.