The internationally-facing school: a heuristic for reimagining the international school amidst unsettled globalisations?

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper critically examines the evolving landscape of international schooling against a complex backdrop of competing globalisations, one of which is post-globalisation, which we frame in terms of a modality of globalisation. Post-globalisation and the post-global foreground renewed interest in the nation state and the relationship between the nation and the global. In so doing, this paper challenges the conventional use of the adjective ‘international’ and instead proposes the ‘internationally-facing school’ as a more nuanced alternative. The notion of the ‘internationally-facing school’ reflects the unsettled nature of globalisation as encompassing post-global tendencies and elucidates the complex relationship between the global and the national in international school systems. The paper ends by suggesting that the internationally-facing school heuristic has the potential to transcend the context of international schooling and become a mobile concept applicable to various educational contexts. The paper also advocates for further research to explore the practical implications of the ‘internationally-facing school’ and its relevance to both international and non-international school contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• International school
• international education
• globalisation
• post-globalisation
• post-global

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the reviewers and editors for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Soundtrack to this paper: ‘Be Still’ by The Killers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Jin (2022) and Deng et al. (2023) for more on recent reforms to the international school sector in China.