Arendt, IB Leadership, and Global Citizenship Education

Abstract

This chapter explores how the IB operationalises a critical education through its senior school leadership against a backdrop of privilege. It draws upon original interview and observation of six directors in world leading schools. It finds that leadership understands itself as a powerful catalyst for an IB Global Citizenship Education (GCE). However, IB international schools emerge as strongholds of white Anglo-Europeanism with endemic issues of inequity in staffing and thinking which privilege white expatriate staff and continue to reinforce Anglo superiority through an uncritical cosmopolitan education. By deploying the theory of Arendt, this chapter finds the schools struggle to initiate progressive action worthy of their IB mission due to a focus on words over action by appeasing wealth over challenging injustice. The chapter suggests more modelling and less talk of IB and Eastern values and recommends international educators should begin by tackling the injustices and inequities of the international schools themselves, thereby modelling critical thinking in action.