What is it about?
This research explores the character of directors of IB international schools. Is shows how their background and upbringing form who they are, and how they act as international leaders.
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Why is it important?
This is the first research of its kind to look in detail at IB directors. It is important because these directors form the school and the school forms the pupils. Directors have a great deal of power, and are largely unregulated by other 'specialists' in education, or education policy. They work outside most national and governmental regulations, and can dictate terms. International schools have a hand in producing the leaders, elites and transnational classes of the future, but how they become these ‘internationals’ may be largely misunderstood. What emerges is that internationalism and global mindedness in this context has a lot more to do with being British/American ‘English’, than it does with being international. Service is a central concept of leadership in this context, and this article goes some way to explore how service is understood, and operationalised.
Perspectives
For me, this is about how patterns of inequality and domination are replicated quite obviously and openly beneath the expected politically correct veneer of 'we are all really fair and concerned with helping'. What emerges is how leaders here succeed at reaching the apex of the international schools profession because of their background. They are successful because they are white, middle class, (to a good extent Christian) and represent ‘Englishness’ by being from the UK, US, or other white-English countries. The IB on the other hand purports to be balanced, fair and truly international, yet the private schools that use it as a quality measure, may not be quite the same.
Dr Alexander Gardner-McTaggart
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Birds of a Feather: Senior International Baccalaureate International Schools Leadership in Service, Journal of Research in International Education, April 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1475240918768295.
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