K-12 and higher education in both public and private sectors are racing to globalise. Educational hubs, school districts, and individual schools all seek ways to expand offerings, promising a high-quality education promoting global citizenry. Initially monikered as international mindedness, the concept gave nascence to the international schooling movement (Stroud Stasel, 2021). International schools (ISs) have seen unprecedented growth in the past decade (Brummitt & Keeling, 2013); ISC Research, 2018, 2023b), creating an enormous demand for teachers (UNESCO, 2016). How does this growth affect the Canadian educational landscape? First, teachers trained in Canada enjoy a favourable reputation globally and are eagerly recruited by ISs. Both IS teachers and recruiters have reported leadership and advancement opportunities occur quickly and generously upon joining an IS (personal communications, ongoing; Stroud Stasel, 2022). Second, many IS graduates pursue higher education in one of: the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, requiring that higher education in Canada develop culturally responsive approaches to inclusive education. Informal conversations with IS leaders and teacher recruiters have indicated that Canadian teachers are flexible, good team players, and well-trained (personal communications, ongoing). However, the demand became dire a decade ago, evidenced by Brummitt and Keeling’s (2013) claim that “the [IS] candidate pool isn’t expanding quickly enough” (p. 33). In the past decade, the number of IS students served and the IS workforce has increased by over 50% (ISC Research, 2018, 2023a, 2023b), which has significant implications for IS sustainability. If trends continue, workforce migration could implicate a teacher precariat that would impact both public and private systems and likely affect countries from the global south most severely since remuneration is a motivating factor for relocation choice.
Many of the terms that I use are contested, including international school (IS) and special education. A simple IS definition is an English-medium school in a country with a primary language other than English and that adopts externally accredited curricula (e.g., Cambridge, IB, Ontario). Special education refers to programs including the acquisition of physical resources, professional training and practices, and human resource allocations, to support students with known or probable learning disabilities. This term has been critiqued for its deficit lens with some scholars advocating for the use of inclusive education instead.
My study on the experiences of expatriate educators while working at ISs overseas engaged educators comprising three cohorts: teachers, school counselors, and school leaders. The study focused upon educators’ lived experiences with acculturation, a process that includes embodied personal and professional adjustments that one must make while sojourning abroad to thrive in a host country on a prolonged, temporary basis. I theorized that the IS is a policyscape-rich environment on account of the transnational and transcultural nature of the policymakers and staffed educators, and frequently similar cultural diversity among its students. The policyscape is a metaphorical landscape where policies from differing origins, replete with diverse ideologies and politics, collide and cause policy contradictions or gaps. Such collisions can create novel and improved ways of doing things at the school. The 17 participants spoke of four policyscape manifestations, of which I focus here on one: the policyscape of special education at an IS. This was the most discussed policyscape experience, and also one that exacerbated acculturative stress (Berry, 2006) significantly, especially among the teacher cohort.
All participants who shared their experiences noted cultural pushback to the westernized concept of special education, with reports from the educators that many of the parents and guardians did not share the values or the methods that the educators subscribed to…
This policyscape manifestation included participants’ encounters with supporting students with known or probable special needs. While 4 of 17 educators identified as non-western, all of them had completed their higher education training at anglo-western universities. Furthermore, the externally accredited curricula followed at the 11 ISs where the 17 educators worked all included an anglo-western orientation. This contrasts with the students, the vast majority whose cultural identities were from countries in the Middle East, Southeast and East Asia. All participants who shared their experiences noted cultural pushback to the westernized concept of special education, with reports from the educators that many of the parents and guardians did not share the values or the methods that the educators subscribed to, as a matter of policy or as a matter of professional opinion.
These findings therefore demonstrate a need to engage broader stakeholder groups when examining the needs of learners who are enrolled at international schools. A cleavage in perspectives was noted between the teacher cohort and the leader cohort. While all three cohorts experienced heightened acculturative stress, the counselors experienced the most anxiety pertaining to hypothetical situations involving a fear of dire impacts to the students in face of the lack of or inappropriate supports. One counselor enacted a midnight run – a term for expatriate failure that results in the individual’s secretive and sudden departure from school and host country – which she attributed to this issue. The teachers feared professional reprisal should they deviate from their school’s policy, or, in absence of leadership direction, should they draw from their anglo-western professional training. The leaders experienced the least amount of acculturative stress, noting they had access to supports that teachers didn’t, such as access to local mentorship at high levels of school leadership that could help them appreciate and understand local ideological, political, and personal influences and desires. This led the leaders to enact courageous principled action (Worline & Quinn, 2003), or transformative leadership (Shields, 2019) whereby ethics guide a leader’s actions even if it means deviating from policy. The leaders here chose professional judgment that deviated from formal policy to meet an individual student’s needs as they best saw fit. Yet, the teachers and counselors lacked the agency and guidance for ethically transgressing policy to support a student, fearing reprisal, including contract termination.
What comes next? My next study will investigate how special education policies are framed, articulated, and enacted at international schools. Research and practices to develop culturally responsive inclusive education in ISs, public schools, and higher education in Canada are needed to learn about diverging experiences and philosophical dissonances. It will be important to learn how students, their parents, and guardians’ beliefs about inclusive education can be enacted with student flourishing in mind.
REFERENCES
Berry, J. W. (2006). Acculturative stress. In P. T. P. Wong & L. C. J. Wong (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural perspectives on stress and coping (pp. 287-298). Springer.
Brummitt, N., & Keeling, A. (2013). Charting the growth of international schools. In R. Pearce (Ed.), International education and schools: Moving beyond the first 40 years (pp. 25-36). Bloomsbury Academic.
ISC Research. (2018, February 23). Data.
ISC Research. (2023a, March 23). Recruitment challenges hit international schools. http://www.iscresearch.com/
ISC Research. (2023b, December 5). Data: International schools market growth – 10 year comparison.
Shields, C. M. (2019). Becoming a transformative leader: A guide to creating equitable schools. Routledge.
Stroud Stasel, R. (2021). Educator acculturation while living and working overseas: Stories from seventeen sojourning teachers and school leaders at international schools [Doctoral dissertation, Queen’s University]. Kingston, ON.
Stroud Stasel, R. (2022). The experiences of four women providing leadership at international schools in Southeast Asia. In H. S. Kim (Ed.), Rethinking Asia: Women’s leadership retold (pp. 121-141). Acumen.
UNESCO. (2016). The world needs almost 69 million new teachers to reach the 2030 education goals. UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Worline, M. C., & Quinn, R. W. (2003). Courageous principled action. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline (pp. 138-157) Berrett-Koehler
Rebecca Stroud, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow, a certified K-12 teacher, a researcher of educational policy, leadership, and comparative and international education, and an adjunct assistant professor at Queen’s University. Her postdoc work involves four comparative and international studies: two focusing on policies and programs to prevent youth homelessness, and tw xo focusing on phenomena at international schools including the policyscape of ‘special education’ and how service learning is understood and enacted. Rebecca’s past research projects included: programs for at-risk youth, factors for new teacher induction and mentoring, early-career teaching, school leadership, and educator acculturation while living and working overseas. Rebecca writes poetry and short works of fiction, and she enjoys spending time outdoors and traveling.