Overseas thematic exposure trips are powerful, eye-opening, and engaging learning opportunities for secondary school students. They encourage young minds to realize and to understand that knowledge is readily available outside the confines of the classrooms and beyond the printed text. The experience these students gain while travelling abroad and being fully immersed in a foreign culture will inevitably change the way they see the world in the present time, as well as their individual lives in the future. One of the core educational values of these enriching overseas thematic exposure trips is the promotion of global citizenship through active engagement in service-learning opportunities for secondary school students. This dissertation is a case study with a quantitative approach from analyzing the results collected from survey questionnaires, as well as with a qualitative approach from several interviews to understand and discover whether the current model in delivering these particular overseas thematic exposure trips (i.e. CAS Week) in an international school in Hong Kong is serving the educational needs to promote global citizenship and to nurture responsible global citizens. The results of the survey questionnaires and the comments collected from the interviews have revealed that the existing programme is a valuable experience for the students at the school. However, the effect of the experience gained from the trips does not necessarily translate into other related long-term service-learning activities to heighten the importance of global citizenship in the school. One of the findings in this case study is the apparent absence of critical and guided reflections to enable the students to understand the value and the meaning in their actions. The students, the teachers, and the alumni at the school do not fully understand the true essence of global citizenship. Hence, prior to designing these particular overseas thematic exposure trips so to educate students about global citizenships as well as maximize their potentials, it is more critical and important for the school to implement all necessary measures, including workshops, professional development opportunities, and training, in order to ensure that all teachers understand the core values in educating global citizenship. Likewise, in addition to these annual trips and other existing regularly held school activities and events, the school must consider allowing additional formal instructional time where students are to engage in dialogues and discussions which allow them to become fully aware of their individual responsibilities in maximizing their own potentials and becoming global citizens. Finally, similar to the recognition given for the achievement in competitive sports and in the arts, there needs to be a fundamental change in the pedagogical understanding to celebrate global citizenship in the school.

Within global citizenship education (GCE) theory, policy and practice there is much emphasis upon the ‘critical’. However, existing research shows that a critical approach is limited within schools (Bourn and Hunt 2011; Bryan and Bracken 2011; Hunt 2012; Mundy and Manion 2008). This research seeks to explore this perceived ‘reality gap’ through an in-depth ethnographic study at one English secondary school, drawing on the perspectives of teachers, students and parents. It is guided by two open questions: how is GCE understood and practised in one secondary school? What are the challenges and opportunities for a critical global citizenship education (CGCE)? Drawing on critical pedagogy and postcolonial theory, two areas of critical theory that have contributed to GCE, this thesis proposes a framework of CGCE. As an ideal, CGCE critically examines knowledge, promotes dialogue across difference, encourages self-reflection, and leads to informed responsible being and action. In order to understand how GCE plays out in practice, this research reports a detailed ethnographic study of GCE at one English secondary school with a strong reputation for GCE, using a combination of participant observation, interviews, discussion groups and document analysis, to explore the perceptions of teachers, students and parents. Using thick description, this thesis illustrates opportunities for CGCE within a formal school context. Although the relationship between GCE and the curriculum is ambiguous, it argues that there are potentially more opportunities for CGCE within the formal curriculum than within informal whole-school initiatives. However, instrumental economic, moral and cultural agendas within the school limit the opportunities for CGCE, posing tensions between critical engagement and the school’s need to achieve good examination results, produce well-rounded people, protect the school reputation and empower students. Practising CGCE can also pose practical and ethical challenges pertaining to cultural relativism and moral universalism, managing uncertainty and complexity, and managing uncomfortable emotional reactions. In conclusion, this thesis calls for greater practical support for schools in practising CGCE, as well as more research to provide further theoretical tools, better understanding of CGCE in relation to curriculum-making, and insight into how students and teachers deal with complexity, uncertainty and emotional discomfort.

No description available.

Research across different international contexts has identified how social, physical and pedagogical changes influence children’s early educational transition experiences. Concerns have been raised regarding children not being ready for these changes and thus undergoing a negative transition experience, which can impact on future learning and well-being. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of children’s perspectives of the educational transition they make from a Foundation Stage setting to Primary School (Year 1), in an English section of a European school in Brussels. I employed a case study approach, utilising the following multiple-methods, interviews, drawings, photographs, small world play and tours to enable the six child participants to recall and explain their transition experiences. I again used interviews to gain the perspectives of the children’s parents and the teaching staff who were involved in this transition. Findings indicated that whilst the children talked positively about this transition they expressed negative feelings towards changes related to discontinuity in pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning, and towards the rules governing their new environment which influenced their perception of classroom ethos. The children related identified changes to their responsibility to adapt, and the negative feelings were strongly associated with the desire to belong; in other words they wanted to belong and were aware that in order to do so they must adapt to meet the demands of these significant changes. The conclusion revealed that current policy privileges a ‘child ready’ approach to transitions; that is, it is the children’s responsibility to adapt in order to be ready. Whilst the children did manage to adapt and conform they still desired more continuity of familiar experiences and expressed concerns associated with changing demands. The recommendation was thus made that policy makers and educators should search for solutions to minimise challenging changes by considering how schools can adapt to be ready for children.

This thesis explores the ‘global imaginary’ of an international school community located in Germany. It examines how globally-oriented social imaginaries are constructed, negotiated and contested within such gated communities comprised of both expatriates and host country nationals. It highlights the role of the international school market and the role of the ‘local’ in the production of these ‘global’ imaginaries that not only impact community membership, but also its members’ residential life in Germany. International schools have developed into a thriving, lucrative educational network –offering an English-medium, ‘international’ education to facilitate internationally-mobile families as they move from country to country. Not only are international schools educational facilities, they are also strong ‘international’ communities comprised of both expats and host country nationals. Where international school literature is typically focused on the educational experience of expats (or ‘Third Culture Kids’) attending international schools, little has been written on the extent to which membership impacts residential life, not only for expats, but also for host country nationals. Moreover, the role of the ‘local’ in the construction of ‘global’ imaginaries and international school community membership has not been thoroughly investigated. It is argued in this thesis that while international schools place a particular emphasis on the distant local to uphold institutional globally-oriented principles and branding, the immediate local is not only eclipsed, but this overshadowing plays a role in the construction of the ‘global’ orientation. There is also a gap in literature concerning large-scale ethnographic projects looking into international schools located in Europe – a gap which this thesis aims to fill through the use of participant observations, semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions that took place in Germany between 2012 and 2015.

This exploratory study investigates how national identity is possibly (re)constructed, negotiated, and expanded during sojourners’ study-abroad experience, focusing on the student sojourners from Taiwan in the United Kingdom. Situated within the framework of social constructionism, the study is based on an interdisciplinary foundation which draws on the fields of identities, nationalism, intercultural communication, study-abroad, education and cosmopolitanism. It involves 20 international students from Taiwan in qualitative interviews and thematic analysis guides the data analysis process. The findings revealed a number of important points. First, the factors of homeland Taiwan and its cultures, schooling, family education, family history and the study-abroad experience are found to be integral to the national identities (i.e., Taiwanese and Chinese, ROC, identities) of the sojourners from Taiwan. Secondly, in terms of identity conflict management, especially with the mainland Chinese (PRC) peers, the dominating style as a way of defending the self-face and Taiwanese identity, and the avoiding tendency (i.e., avoiding arguments over the Taiwan-China political dispute) have been reported. Overall, the boundaries of being Taiwanese are drawn and re-drawn in accordance with the on-going process of communication with Chinese (PRC) and non-Chinese (PRC) in the study-abroad context in the UK. Last, whereas Taiwanese identity becomes particularly salient, cosmopolitan belonging is also found to be strong among many participants due to the cultural diversity of the study-abroad environment, although it is also contested for some. The study contributes to the study-abroad literature in its discussion of national identities. Also, the findings offer insights for international educators to better understand the experience of students from Taiwan in the UK and for educators in Taiwan who handle pre-sojourn courses and/or training.

This thesis investigates the educational sections of the great international exhibitions of the latter half of the nineteenth century. This thesis takes into account the participation of actors from France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Focusing on education experts, this thesis is a contribution to a sociocultural history of an intellectual and administrative elite in an age of early globalisation. World exhibitions were one of the major media for the transnational circulation of educational knowledge. The central question is why education experts from these four countries invested so many resources in order to prepare and visit world exhibitions. Why did they go transnational? The thesis proposes two answers. First, education experts used world exhibitions in order to appropriate the most advanced pedagogical models for their own institutional contexts. The concept of cultural transfers is a useful tool to analyse these appropriations. Knowledge circulation at world exhibitions made a crucial contribution to the institutionalisation of primary education and technical education. Second, education experts used world exhibitions to stage their own institutions on an international stage. The proud representation of the educational achievements of one’s own context was the final phase of successful cultural transfers. Educational displays became increasingly embedded in nationalist discourses. During the 1870s pedagogical know-how circulated relatively easily. Towards the turn of the century the self-representation of institutions became predominant. This original approach aims at furthering the understanding of globalisation in the nineteenth century. Still, the thesis argues that world exhibitions were in a large measure media for transnational professional discourses in many fields, including education.

The purpose of this study is to explore how young people learn about global poverty and development. Its focus is on the process of learning, understood here as the way in which individuals respond to opportunities to learn about global poverty and development (e.g. in terms of emotion, cognition and behaviour) and the way these responses interrelate in the construction of understandings. The empirical element of this qualitative, constructivist research focuses on nine 12–15 year-olds living in the South and South East of England. Their perceptions of learning about global poverty and development, across a range of contexts, were explored through semi-structured interviews. This data was analysed using a model of learning developed by Jarvis (2006). This model was selected because of its resonance with themes within the empirical data and also within literature and research relating to global education, the academic and personal context of this research. The study proposes a slightly adapted version of Jarvis’ model which better reflects the way in which young people in this study learn about global poverty and development. This adapted model emphasises the role of young people’s emotional response to learning about global poverty, the relationship of this response to a behavioural or action response, and the significance of young people’s reflection on themselves in relation to global poverty and development. This research is unique in two ways: in applying learning theory directly to empirical evidence of young people’s learning about global poverty and development; and in applying Jarvis’ theory of learning to young people. In doing so it highlights the merits of drawing on the rich body of learning theory that exists to explore how young people learn about global challenges and contributes to wider debate about the ways young people learn and become themselves in today’s world.

Managerialism in international schools: a critical enquiry into the professional identity work of head teachers With prior research suggesting that educational leaders in Western contexts are discomforted by managerialism, this thesis considers why, despite benign market forces and regulatory freedoms, international school Heads might find appeal in managerial identifications. The international school context, and the managers within, thereby offer a unique and important site of new theorisation. Contrasting with studies which see education and managerialism as opposed, a reprofessionalisation of Headship is proposed, not as old or new, but as something newer still – as hybridic. Theories of identity, professionalism and institutional work provide means of exploring how international school Heads separate and/or harmonise educational and managerial identities and to what potential ends. An industry analysis, online survey and recruitment documentation review bracket out formal and/or technical coercion towards managerial identifications. With those influences set aside, a critical discourse analysis of twenty-five faceto-face interviews gives attention to managerialism as resulting from the legitimacy of management identifications – managerialism, for some Heads, is as empowering and affirming as education. It is shown that i) educational and managerial identifications are resisted and/or adopted because Heads find benefit in both; and ii) that managerialism is moderated in ways which construct both schools and Headship (institutional work) and in ways which also construct individual Heads (identity work). The work Heads do on and for their selves connects, in a circulatory manner, with the work done on and for their schools. Relevant internationally and nationally, it is concluded that hybridity allows Heads to successfully accomplish management without abandoning educational identifications. While some Heads resist managerialism and others more readily embrace it, most seem to find an occupational and/or ontological balance. This study’s findings are important, therefore, to serving and aspiring Heads, to school recruitment panels, to policy makers developing Headship qualifications and to academics researching manager-hybrids in this and other professional contexts.

This inquiry was prompted by a desire to understand ‘partnership working’ (DfE, 2012, p.3) with the diverse parental body of a British International School Pre-Nursery based in Bangkok. It was hypothesised that this necessitated the co-construction of a shared understanding between home and school about a child’s learning. Nonetheless, the manner in which this could be achieved was unclear. Consequently, an explorative case study was instigated to gain a greater understanding of home-school interactions within this context. Influenced by Early Years policy and literature, as well as concepts of dialogue and interculturalism, it was hypothesised that involving parents within the redevelopment of a reporting and assessment tool may support the co-construction of a shared understanding about the child as a learner. Accordingly, a series of parental meetings were organised to elicit parental views. The parental meetings were illuminating and prompted the adaptation of a range of tools and artefacts to scaffold parents into a greater understanding of Pre-Nursery pedagogy and to engage them in a learning dialogue with school. At the completion of the study, evidence indicated that the development of a shared understanding between home and school had been achieved. This suggested that integrating conceptions of scaffolding and co-construction within home-school communication enhanced the potential for partnership working. Nonetheless, the complexities of engaging with the diverse parental body found within international education were also highlighted. In addition, the inquiry highlighted the difficulties of sustaining and extending practice innovations. It was concluded that further research may be necessary to fully understand partnership working within this context and to develop the consistent whole school approach deemed necessary to support its implementation.