[This is a teacher-learner’s reflection on a term “international-mindedness” and some epistemological engagement with an assigned reading for completing her IB educator certification course]
In my initial exploration of the IB education, I illustrated my working understanding of “international-mindedness” (IM) with classroom experiences. I highlighted the importance of motivating students to learn foreign languages and approach diverse subject areas conceptually. I expected myself to design globally contextualized unit plans and bring global awareness into teaching practices.
Now I would engage with Dr. Steve R. Hreha’s essay “Approaches to International Mindedness in IB World Schools” in order to elaborate more on the conceptual and practical sides of IM. I would also reflect on my ongoing learning and transformation in taking this course.
The fact that IM is a contested and open-to-interpretation concept help the readers, the IB teachers and students to unpack this concept and other related concepts more critically, as Hreha indicates in the introduction of this essay. IM is usually compared to internationalism and cosmopolitanism, which have been studied, debated and applied inside and outside the academia.
Before reading this essay, I usually used global mindedness, for being aware of the limited connotations of internationalism (politically and economically speaking) and the overly broad as well as ambiguous definition of cosmopolitanism. Global mindedness (GM), to me, resonates with the ongoing globalization and may function to remind one of human interconnectivity. I would be interested in exploring further about GM and IM.
Interestingly and importantly, Hreha underscores the connotations of “minded”–focused, developed towards and personally engaged. It thus foregrounds an IB value in teaching and learning–students develop their intercultural understanding not through knowing cultural phenomena or symbols (such as national flags and anthems), as well as current global events (such as Brexit, APEC Summit), superficially but through deeply understanding the meanings sustaining traditions and practices in diverse cultural contexts.
Investigating histories, contexts, discrepancies, artistic expressions, and future orientations thus becomes the key in the IB education. Hreha also emphasizes on a practical teaching approach–instead of teaching students to “understand” and fully agree with certain cultural values, students are given opportunities to debate, provoke and judge reasonably about what to accept. This emphasis corresponds with another IB value–making reasoned and ethical decisions as an IB learner.
What is an effective international educational experience? This question has been staying with me since I started training myself as an international-minded learner and later a teacher. My academic background lies in English Literary Studies, which might seem canonical and restrictive to many people, but my research interests in Asian North American histories and literatures, World Literature in English, and socio-political (plus anthropological–sometimes though) theoretical approaches to literary texts have been enriching my understanding of this field and inspiring me to examine literature multi-facetedly.
Earlier in my teaching, the biggest challenge for me, as a conceptual reader of literature, was to transform literary concepts into daily practices, in order to bring students closer to the seemingly boring and outmoded literary world. Hreha’s proposal that an IM-based education should equip students not only with “cognitive understanding” but also “affective and action-oriented learning.” While successfully facilitating affective learning requires IB teachers to implement the “Inquiry-Action-Reflection” model and ATL skills carefully in everyday classrooms, creating action-oriented learning environments requires the involvement of other stakeholders–such as the IB schools, parents, and school-located communities. I would argue that this is why the IB education is holistic, rather than for college or career preparation.
An IM-based education, according to Hreha, is also experiential, which is closely tied to the IB Learner Profile and a pedagogy of formation. Such a pedagogical approach is built on constructivism and prompts educators to help individual students cultivate habits of critical and creative thinking, feeling, reflecting and acting. This value is aligned with my belief in individualizing and differentiating instructional strategies. While differentiation may be demanding for DP teachers, as I reflected elsewhere and many IB teachers have mentioned, I think this is still worth a try in different IB programmes for its potential in shaping lifelong curious learners. A practical approach is to set up different expectations for the DP students, explicitly explaining to them the outcomes of meeting or failing to meet these expectations.
“Language embodies a form of life,” as Hreha smartly quotes from the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. I think the implementation of a feasible language policy is the foundation of sustaining an IB World school, because it affects how teachers convey knowledge in the classrooms, how students grasp abstruse concepts with the help of their mother tongues and other later acquired languages, and even how school cultures are formed. Hreha further discusses the difficulties of addressing religious beliefs and associating them with one’s spiritual well-being as well as general human experiences. My take on this is that teaching various religious beliefs can be totally acceptable in certain countries, and vice versa. Since the IB education gives individual IB schools much freedom in creating their own curricula, I think this issue should be open-to-discussions.
Similar to addressing religious beliefs, initiating conversations on global issues and problems can also be complex and open-to-debates. An IM-based education aims at training students to delve into its complexity with critical and creative thinking tools, and to understand how their actions might have impacts upon the status quo and the futures of others. Cross-disciplinary teaching can benefit both teachers and students, and CAS (or community projects at the MYP level) can connect students’ understanding to actions–even though the impacts they create might be limited. This process can still be affectively meaningful to teenage learners.