This paper traces cosmopolitan nationalism (CN) in educative global action. By studying two International Baccalaureate (IB) school approaches to student agency, I pinpoint CN signifiers and analyze them through Papastephanou's (2023) stereoscopic justice and Foucault's (2002) critique of superficial knowledge systems. The analysis reveals CN as a…

This article investigates how the International Baccalaureate's 'global dream' for education interacts with the national priorities of governments. In mainland China, a thriving international school market has been met with tightened government control. We draw on the analytical lens of 'cosmopolitan nationalism' to demonstrate how a cosmopolitan…

Purpose: Government primary schools in Australia increasingly take up the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) to supplement government-mandated curriculum and governance expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers navigate and contest dual policy-practice expectations in the Victorian Government…

Purpose: In the wake of interlocking pandemics, educational systems are resetting in important ways, pursuing aims that are not exclusively instructional (e.g., social justice, well-being). As systems (re)build, they may vary in how they manage their institutional and policy environments, which may or may not be reorienting toward these same…

The growth of the International Baccalaureate (IB) worldwide is part of a global trend towards the internationalisation of education (IE). Its implementation, nonetheless, takes different forms depending on national and local contexts. This paper examines the recent expansion of the IB in Madrid, drawing upon the sociology of education policy…

Millions of high school students who take an Advanced Placement (AP) course in one of over 30 subjects can earn college credit by performing well on the corresponding AP exam. Using data from four metro-Atlanta public school districts, we find that 15 percent of students' AP courses do not result in an AP exam. We predict that up to 32 percent of…

This paper offers a critical reconceptualisation of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and International A-Levels (IAL) as forms of English-medium instruction (EMI). Despite their global implementation in international schools, these curricula are rarely analysed through an EMI lens, even though they serve increasingly…

In 2012, Ecuador signed an agreement to introduce the International Baccalaureate into the country's public-schools. Once considered an emblematic policy of former president Correa's administration, the initiative is now questioned and its future uncertain. This ethnographic study strives to write against the commonly invoked deficit narratives…

Automatic enrollment is a straightforward education reform that facilitates both educational excellence and equity in K-12 schools. By automatically placing highly qualified students in advanced coursework, this low-cost, bi-partisan strategy creates opportunities for high achievement for all students, with low-income, rural and small town, and…

With the global expansion of International Baccalaureate (IB), tensions have emerged between IB and the national education systems. This poses challenges to international education governance in many countries. In mainland China, IB programmes have rapidly become more prevalent since their introduction in 1991. However, new policies have imposed…

Low participation in language learning in secondary education is a topic which continues to exercise education policy-makers in England and other anglophone contexts. One instance of an attempt to increase take-up can be found in the introduction of the EBacc, a performance measure which requires the majority of young people to study a language as…

This comparative analysis aims to capture the complex roles and positionings of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in conjunction with local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. Our analysis focused on how the IB's institutional legitimacy is presented in the three societies. We conducted a documentary analysis of texts on…

National curriculum standards for different countries mean some International Baccalaureate (IB) schools must often balance IB and national standards. Literature on how schools find this balance is limited. Using a qualitative case study design, we examined the perspectives of teachers of English in a Chinese IB school that recently employed a…

Conservativism has gained significant influence on education-policy making and debates about education in many Anglophone countries. While conservative educational governments have advanced some neoliberal governance trends, they have also introduced characteristic neoconservative education elements, notably in the area of curricular content. This…

This study has a dual purpose: (1) to show how computer-assisted discourse analysis of a 1.5-million-word specialized corpus can uncover patterns of language use that provide insights into the beliefs and values of a particular social group, making possible a "new way of looking at old puzzles" (Stubbs, 2010); and (2) to examine how the…