Thoughts on International Education

School’s have long in been in the business of preparing students for ‘life’. Recently, in terms of things like globalization, ‘life’ for many people has got a lot bigger and more complex. In response (or perhaps as a reflection) of such changes, one could argue that international education offers one of the most significant advances to education in the recent memory. Throughout the world, parents and governments are scrabbling to ensure young people are given the tools they need to survive and thrive in our rapidly changing, highly networked world. International education seems to hold much promise for these groups. At its core, an international education changes the parameters of traditional education; it effectively extends the traditional boundaries of student expectations as it requires students to contextualize problems and information beyond their local community and circumstances, while compelling them understand grapple with the complexity of the a global society and develop a sense of ‘international mindedness’ to shape their action.

‘International schools’ have been around in their modern form for almost a century, emerging first in Yokohama and Geneva in part as a response to the perceived need to enhance understanding between nations to avoid another global conflagration like the first world war (of course was referred to as the “Great War” back then). The notion that war is much less likely if people understand each other is not new either, and Lester Pearson’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in the mid-50’s famously echoed this theme.

I see a strong and relatively obvious connection between elements of what we articulate as ‘emotional intelligences’ and an international education. I am reading a great book, “The Roots of Empathy”about a programme in Canada for aimed at building empathy in children. Amazing stuff actually and the results of the programme have been excellent (if the author’s research is to be believed). But the whole time I am reading it, I am thinking to myself that all we need to do is substitute a few words here and there, change the context of the case studies, and we could talking about the aspirations and application of international education. At very fundamental level international education is about empathy. International understanding cannot be separated from this emotional intelligence and I think international education research should turn it eye more to some of the research projects like the “Roots of Empathy” as I strongly suspect many of the findings and research will transcend geography, race and culture. And hey, anything that can transcend those things sounds pretty international to me.

International schools defy categorization. In fact, finding a definition of international school has proved the holy grail of international school educators and researchers. This is perhaps no surprise as there no agreed definition of international education either and title of ‘international school’ can be adopted by organizations without restriction. Having said that Cambridge and Thompson have (in my opinion) summed it up fairly nicely, and since they also regularly use much bigger words that me, so I will quote them here. According to them, international schools serve ‘the educational needs of globally mobile students’ and that ‘this culturally diverse constituency includes the children of diplomats and employees of multinational companies, parastatal bodies and non-governmental organizations’ (2004).

Big words aside for a moment, here is question for you though.

Could an international school exist on the moon?

This questions has been bandied about in international schools for some time and the crux of this question, I think, is whether or not an international school can be defined as an international entity without being reflected against a host country culture and a local society. I think it can, though I know others will disagree with me. I think a true international school could be picked and transplanted to any other viable location on the earth and, with the right tinkering, go on to provide its educational service to an international clientele. After all, if there is not an existing dominant influence on an international school the heart and soul of the school could be geographically moved.

And this really not an entirely hypothetical question. There are plenty of schools cropping up around the world in far flung and remote places. Consider oil workers in remote places. And I think in thse places, even if there aren’t locals around, one could still receive an international school education.

There are few more pressing issues facing education, and humanity in general, than the environment. Us educators are a powerful bunch. We all know this, but when it comes to environmental activism our power manifests itself in an undeniably important way. At my school, well over 1,000 people come and go from campus on a daily basis. We have a serious carbon footprint as an organization. This footprint pales in comparison to the footprint that our students will leave on the world as they grow old. We can safely assume that most of our students will live for another 70 years, consuming and polluting as they go. We can also assume that our students, with the access that they will have to the world’s best universities and the opportunities that will open from there, will have considerable influence over others in days to come. Our environmental education has the effect of compound interest. By making our students good environmental stewards, we can have an exponential affect on shaping the future. Lowering the environmental impact of schools as organizations is critical to this education because it will teach students by example and set standards for the new normal. Any organizational efforts we can make to lower our environmental impact now is essential and any changes we make now will be small change compared to the vast impact education can have on our collective future.

Relationships are the oil that makes the machinery of schools run smoothly. In schools, to put it very crudely, our input is human (little people), almost all processing is human (the various permutations of teacher / student interactions) and the outcome is human (graduates). It is the most human of endeavors: this makes relationships paramount.

To paraphrase educational change guru Michael Fullan (who has the extremely rare distinction of being an internationally renowned intellectual and Canadian at the same time!), any change initiative within schools that does not improve relationships will not be successful in the long term. I have also read recently that researchers have found a correlation between the health / quality of professional relationships on staff and student learning. If true—and I must admit these two statements seem pretty obvious when you think about it—our schools should do everything possible to support the development of high quality professional relationships. International schools bring unique challenges in this regard as it is not uncommon to have over a dozen different nationalities of teachers on staff: all with their own unique experiences, styles and paradigms. Making relationships work in this context can be hard work; but it is essential.

Which brings me around to another reflection on the topic of relationships: email and blogging. Email is a great tool, but my experience has been that as a work tool it is generally relationship neutral (at best). Rarely do I see email interactions within a school improving relationships. Normally they just maintain them. However, I have seen a quite a few occasions where misinterpretation of an email damages relationships. Face-to-face communication on the other hand is often the best way I know of to improve relationships. And if the improvement of relationships is a goal unto itself, then we should be always looking for ways to improve relationships and getting away from our computer screens more often may be a partial answer.

But then there is blogging. I have been impressed to see that some people have actually been reading my blog. I have also received some very nice and interesting comments from people from around the world. This demonstrates first hand the power of Web 2.0 technologies. Through this technology I have been able to do something I could not have done before—connect with other interested professionals around the world and develop a relationship of sorts. This is very ‘cool’ and shows me a very new type of oil.

It has been noted that newborn babies are entirely dependent upon someone else to clothe, feed and change their diapers. And if that baby is lucky enough to live a long life, the same dependencies may again reappear in old age. This, I suppose, is the circle of life.

Like life, I think formal schooling’s approach to learning also completes a circle. A good early learning program will have a very constructivist approach, with an open and negotiated curriculum design. Advanced university degree programmes are also highly constructivist with learners formulating their own research questions and professors only serving as guides to the ‘answers’. In between, formal schooling often has varied degrees of more content-driven, prescribed curriculum framed by standards. In other words, you start with constructivism, and if you are lucky enough to survive formal schooling long enough you go back to it. Perhaps the Greeks had something like this in mind as the original word “curriculum” comes from the Greek word for ‘race track’.

The latest brain research provides another perspective on this observation. From birth to age five, humans experience a major synaptic growth period. Neural pathways are being formed and a constructivist approach to learning can harness these natural processes. But there is second, massive growth period that gets less press.

One of the most significant findings of modern neural research is the high level of synaptic growth that occurs in adolescents between the years of 10-15.  Adolescents go through a massive phase of neural growth at this time, and when you throw in the concurrent (and legendary) hormonal changes into the mix, the challenges of educating this group cannot be under-estimated. Middle school students are not simply short little high school students, nor tall primary students, they form their own distinct cohort and we are only beginning to recognize how different they are.

I would suggest then, that if one were to look at the academic education continuum and map this against neural development, there should be three key phases of strong constructivist emphasis: year 0-5; 10-15; advanced degrees. (The latter is justified not by brain research but instead by the assumption that a learner capable of advanced degree work has been fully readied for the challenges of full-on constructivism.) More prescribed and content driven curriculum should fit around these periods.  Thus, when the brain’s pathways are being developed, we should try to maximize this process.  Outside of these times, we should be aiming more to ‘fill the bucket’ with content knowledge and pushing students to develop their cerebral muscles in the form of higher level thinking skills.  Unlike most other schools around the world who are bound by political mandates and other restrictions, international schools are uniquely positioned to lead in this area.  I hope we do!

Last week our IT Director, Brian Lockwood, communicated his desire to see all of the senior leadership at our school ‘blogging’. My immediate response to this request was, essentially, ‘why?’. After all, with an already busy schedule that never seems to get below 60 hours per week, if something is to added then there needs to be proper justification. But after hearing Brian’s arguments and knowing the passion behind rationale, I thought I would give it go. And here we are.

But perhaps ‘we’ is an overstatement. I would be flattered to think than of more than one person read my blog (I of course include myself in this count). As such, I guess I will follow CS Lewis’s lead who purportedly wrote the Chronicles of Narnia because the stories were ones he wished he could have read as a child.  Please don’t expect any profound or wise insights!

Which brings me to topic #1. ‘Why’ is the quality of schooling important? This week I was reading a summary of research into the affects of the quality of schooling and—get this—there is conflicting research in this area. But various researchers have ‘answers’. So how much of an effect does can a ‘high quality’ school have on student achievement? Here are some of the results:

10% (Coleman, 1966)
10% (Jencks, 1972)
23% (Rosenthal, 1991)

I have two concurrent reactions when I read these numbers. The first is to laugh. We really like our numbers don’t we! This reminds me Douglas Adams reporting in a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the meaning of life is “42”. The influence of a school can be, depending upon the research, between 10-23%. I guess it’s your call.

The second thought is one of admiration for the research. While any exact metric—especially when grappling with a concept like quality—must be impossible to ascertain given the complex sociological soup which contextualizes schools, the research question itself and the chosen methodology have great importance to educators. As we move into the 21^st, it’s generally accepted that schools will need to seriously evolve to meet the needs of today’s (and tomorrow’s) learners. There is probably no better time to look at the quality of schooling and attempt to inch closer to a fuller understanding of influence that school organizations have children and learning. Learning more about how we can influence student development should then translate into ensuring the focus of the schooling processes maximizes its positive influence.