Special Journal Issue

Special Journal Issues - Straddling the Global and National: The Emerging Roles of International Schooling Volume 74, Issue 1, 2022 Educational Review

Theme	The special issue addresses the following key questions: How does the growing provision of and desire for international programmes affect education not only in international schools but also in other types of schools in their local/regional/national/international arenas?; How are schools across diverse contexts engaging with what international programmes represent as a global education for a global future?; How might a focus on “the global” facilitate or undermine engagement with local and national citizenship?; How have public schools and local governments responded to the expansion of international programmes into national education systems?; How are the educational opportunities and experiences of marginalised communities influenced? Eight research articles and a commentary in the special issue deepen our understanding of the changing nature of international schooling and its influence on national education systems.

Issue Co-editors		Prof Miri Yemini Professor of Comparative Education School of Education Tel Aviv University, Israel : miriye@tauex.tau.ac.il	Prof Lee Moosung Centenary Professor University of Canberra, Australia Senior Research Fellow of APCLC The Education University of Hong Kong, China : MooSung.Lee@canberra.edu.au	Dr Ewan Wright Assistant Professor of EPL Department Research Fellow of APCLC The Education University of Hong Kong, China : etmwright@eduhk.hk

Contributors	Prof Miri Yemini Professor of Comparative Education School of Education, Tel Aviv University Israel Prof Lee Moosung Centenary Professor University of Canberra, Australia Senior Research Fellow of APCLC, The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China Dr Ewan Wright Assistant Professor of EPL Department and Research Fellow of APCLC The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China Straddling the global and national: The emerging roles of international schooling https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2030959 Abstract Reflecting the growing spotlight on international schooling over the last three decades, this special issue aims to illuminate how education is straddling complex tensions between global and national forces across various contexts. Taking a comparative perspective, the special issue addresses the following key questions: How does the growing provision of and desire for international programmes affect education not only in international schools but also in other types of schools in their local/regional/national/international arenas?; How are schools across diverse contexts engaging with what international programmes represent as a global education for a global future?; How might a focus on “the global” facilitate or undermine engagement with local and national citizenship?; How have public schools and local governments responded to the expansion of international programmes into national education systems?; How are the educational opportunities and experiences of marginalised communities influenced? Eight research articles and a commentary in the special issue deepen our understanding of the changing nature of international schooling and its influence on national education systems. .
	Prof Adam Howard Charles A. Dana Professor of Education and Chair of Education Department Colby College, USA Globally elite: Four domains of becoming globally-oriented within elite schools https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2020.1805412 Abstract Drawing on a multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools across the world, this article explores how elite schools prepare students for an increasingly interconnected world characterised by difference and competition through global citizenship education. In this exploration, I identify the four domains that give meaning to global citizenship education within elite contexts: cultural, relational, emotional, and material. These domains reveal the ways in which these schools are responding to the challenges of globalisation by providing students opportunities to develop awareness and knowledge of differences, to establish and maintain relationships across differences, to gain a sense of obligation towards others, and to accumulate valuable forms of human and cultural capital. Through globally-oriented practices, students are being prepared to be flexibly mobile, to imagine themselves as leaders within a globalised world and to thrive in the hypercompetitive and unpredictable global knowledge economy. These practices play an important part of elite schools’ larger strategy of making and remaking elites.
	Dr Hadas Flesh Educational Policy and Administration Ramat Aviv Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel Prof Lee Moosung Centenary Professor University of Canberra, Australia Senior Research Fellow of APCLC, The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China Prof Miri Yemini Professor of Comparative Education School of Education, Tel Aviv University Israel *Between the flag and the globe: The national identity of Israeli students at United World Colleges and at local Israeli schools* https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1874309 Abstract This study focuses on the intersection of global and local identity as it pertains to the case of Israeli youth studying at United World Colleges (UWC) versus those studying at local secondary schools. We examine how education at UWC schools shapes the national identity of Israeli high-school seniors, in contradiction with their socio-economically matched peers who studied at local Israeli schools that encourage a distinctly locally oriented identity. Specifically, twenty Israeli youth participated in semi-structured interviews; ten of them had just completed their final year of studies at UWC schools abroad, whereas the other ten had recently graduated from the Israeli public education system. We show that Israeli youth at both UWC schools and Israeli schools were pushed away from a cosmopolitan outlook, each for different reasons. As such, we discuss how complex relations with one’s nation’s political conflicts promote locally oriented identities even for students who were educated with a cosmopolitan ethos and surroundings, such as Israeli students at UWC schools.
	Dr Tristan Bunnell University of Bath UK The crypto-growth of “International Schooling”: emergent issues and implications https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1907316 Abstract The diverse arena of International Schooling concerned with schools delivering a non-local curriculum in English largely outside an English-speaking nation, has grown enormously during the current wave of globalisation. Traditionally, the arena of “International Schools” played an intended ideological and pragmatic role, albeit in a rather discrete and peripheral manner which in practice facilitated an exclusive schooling experience for a limited and already privileged transnational elite clientele. Its growing appeal and access to a wider, localised clientele is now a key source of tension. A period of fast-paced, reactionary policy-making in areas such as China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Qatar, has quickly and rather quietly ushered in a new, diverse provision of private international schooling, supported by a complex global package of commercially-driven support-agencies and backed by private equity. Further, a body of state-backed “Public International Schools” are discretely beginning to appear, offering an entirely new arena of activity. Moreover, there is evidence that much of this is occurring without national debate or awareness, creating a newer and more complex form of “crypto-growth”. The arena of International Schools now competes directly within the national sphere of education, raising both their political profile and critical discussion about their emergent purpose and intentions. The role now seems much more blurred and problematic, and tensions are beginning to appear at a local and national level adding to the sense of insecurity and precarity.
	Ms Wenxi Wu Department of Educational Administration and Policy, Faculty of Education The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China Dr Aaron Koh Department of Educational Administration and Policy, Faculty of Education The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China *Being “international” differently: A comparative study of transnational approaches to international schooling in China* https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1887819 Abstract International schools in China have enjoyed soaring popularity in recent years. Many of these schools adopt curricular forms and/or school brands originating from the US, UK or Canada, and they brand themselves as American-style (meishi), British-style (yingshi) and Sino-Canadian (zhongjia) international schools respectively. Beyond this general observation about the different types of international schools, there is little empirical research done to understand how these different international schools position themselves differently in the national field of international schooling in China. Our study takes a transnational analytic perspective because international schools are models that travel. Our comparative and multiple case study of international schools from three Chinese cities aims to throw light on the idiosyncratic differences of these international schools, highlight commonalities they share, and point out issues and challenges in their transnational practices. We draw from the theory of positional good as our theoretical framing, but update this theory with a discussion about international schools to suit the context of our research. The paper concludes with a call for more governmental efforts to regulate and support the international school sector.
	Dr Quentin Maire Centre for International Research on Education Systems Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia Dr Joel Windle Department of Modern Languages Fluminense Federal University Rio de Janeiro, Brazilina The contribution of the International Baccalaureate Diploma to educational inequalities: Reinventing historical logics of curriculum stratification in a comprehensive system https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1905609 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.
	Dr Paul Tarc Faculty of Education University of Western Ontario London, Canada *Transnational governing for the pedagogical ideals of K-12 international education: Contrasting PISA and IB* https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1965095 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.
	Dr Jung-Won Park Department of Education, Yonsei University Seoul, Korea Dr Won-Pyo Hong Department of Education, Yonsei University Seoul, Korea Internationalisation in action: Exploring the voices of IB DP graduates studying in local universities in South Korea https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1939657 Abstract The IB DP is widely perceived as a globally recognised, outstanding international curriculum by a growing number of education scholars and policymakers in South Korea. Recently, education authorities from certain provinces have taken steps to adopt the IB DP in public high schools, contending that the programme will improve and galvanise teaching practices to be student-centred and inquiry-based. It is important to emphasise, however, that this ambitious belief lacks empirical research evidence. To address such research gaps, this study interviewed 13 Korean graduates who participated in the IB DP from a wide range of international schools and currently attend higher education institutes in Korea. Major findings revealed that, contrary to the dominant perceptions in Korea (and probably elsewhere), the participants had ambivalent feelings about the curriculum and instructions of the IB DP. Findings also demonstrated that the participants’ experiences of the international curriculum were affected by local contextual factors such as school ethos, academic culture and belief systems, not just by the educational philosophy of the IB DP. As findings portrayed gaps between the academic principles of the IB DP and experiences of students, this study contends both Korean policymakers and international scholars to carefully consider the potential implications of enacting the IB DP in local school systems. As curriculum change is nestled within a web of global-local dynamics, more context-specific knowledge is needed to understand how students will participate in the IB DP.
	Dr Jung-Won Park Department of Education, Yonsei University Seoul, Korea Prof Lee Moosung Centenary Professor University of Canberra, Australia Senior Research Fellow of APCLC, The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China Dr Ewan Wright Assistant Professor of EPL Department and Research Fellow of APCLC The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, China The influx of International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes into local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1891023 Abstract This comparative analysis aims to capture the complex roles and positionings of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in conjunction with local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. Our analysis focused on how the IB’s institutional legitimacy is presented in the three societies. We conducted a documentary analysis of texts on the introduction and implementation of IB programmes into local school systems. Our findings suggest that there are commonalities and variations in how the IB is interpreted by key local agents and is positioned into local education systems. Specifically, across the three societies, the IB has expanded continuously. At the same time, its institutionalisation process varies by each society’s socio-historical context and needs: substantive legitimacy as the international curriculum of choice in Hong Kong, a quiet supplement to elite education in Singapore, and instrumental curriculum borrowing for fixing the education system in Korea. We also find that the institutionalisation of the IB is limited at a symbolic level and controlled by the Singaporean government, while the IB is saliently promoted by local education authorities in the context of education reform in Korea. The institutionalisation process of the IB in Hong Kong is primarily swayed by market principles under the existing school choice system.
	Prof Paul Morris Institute of Education, University College London London, UK *Straddling the global and national: the emerging roles of international schooling - An overview* https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2035086 Abstract This Commentary reflects upon the articles in this Special Issue to provide an overview and discussion of their core arguments.