What is it about?
Hard to believe that in this sector where everything is about internationalism, that senior leaders and policy makers are actually more Christian than you might think. That actually, they lead and form the international school from a 'higher loyalty' to what emerges in analysis as a Christian outlook. Such things as the IB learner profile are considered to be helpful (for the kids), but relatively banal for leadership.
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Why is it important?
No research has been done on senior leadership in this area before. Most research in this area uses generalisations, and looks at large data, and from a distance. This study gets closer, runs over two years of contact with school directors, and shows how these schools are actually led.
Perspectives
I think these findings are remarkable. They show how fundamentally 'transnational' these schools are. How they actually continue on an implicit colonisation process. The Anglo-Christian leaders may talk a good talk, but what they actually do is embrace cosmopolitanism, in its more banal and materialistic form, whilst selling it as Global Citizenship Education. This is also reflected in their leadership, which wants to be collegial, but all to often is described as rigid, as transactional. All in all, the market pressures (and freedom) inherent in this type of school put a lot of pressure on leaders to reify themselves and their values in order to be successful. At the end of the day, they draw upon their Christian values and experiences over the IBLP.
Dr Alexander Gardner-McTaggart
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: International schools’ leadership and Christianity, Globalisation Societies and Education, December 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2018.1558047.
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