International Schooling

"International schooling has expanded rapidly in recent years, with the number of students educated in international schools projected to reach seven million by 2023. Drawing on the author's extensive experience conducting research in international schools across the globe, this book critically analyses the concept of international schooling and its rapid growth in the twenty-first century. It identifies the forces driving this trend, asking to what extent this is an enterprise that meets the needs of a global elite, and examining its relationship to national systems of education. The author demonstrates how wider social inequalities around socio-economic difference, ethnicity, 'race' and gender are reproduced through international schooling and examines the theory that 'international' curricula are in fact Western curricula. Presenting new research from countries including Russia, Malaysia, the UAE, the UK, and Bahrain, the author explores ways in which international schools adapt to local cultural contexts; and examines the views of parents, students, teachers and school leaders towards the education that they provide. The author argues international schooling offers contradictory potential. On one hand it is a progressive movement to promote internationalism and inter-cultural understanding, and on the other hand it is a system through which structural inequalities are replicated, or even accentuated, by its creation of a new global elite."--