Comparison as translation: Internationalisation in the International Baccalaureate and Taiwanese schooling

Abstract

Concomitant with globalisation, there has been a revival of research about international education.International education or educational internationalisation can no longer be simply deciphered as education that is implemented in international schools exclusively for expatriate students or as education with a special focus on knowledge of other nations. Not only have the constitution of student populations and education content changed, there are also some international inter-and non-governmental agents that have become influential in formal education, a realm conventionally restricted and ceded to nation states. The multidirectional global flows of people, media, technology, capital, and ideas (Appadurai, 1996) and the superdiversity observed in nation states (Vertovec, 2007) also challenge our conception of international education.This research responds to this challenge by seeking to answer two interrelated questions: 1) How can we appropriately compare entities that are diverse in terms of social, cultural, historical, and institutional aspects; and 2) How does international education, based on the cases of the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the internationalisation of schooling in Taiwan, make itself intelligible in contemporary globalisation? The first question is methodological and functional, which attempts to explore and elucidate how different education systems can be compared without presuming commensurability between them. In addressing this first question, this research proposes a methodological approach, which is referred as comparison as translation. Using this approach, the second question empirically aims at understanding international education from the two cases.This research compares international education as employed in the IB and in the internationalisation of schooling in Taiwan. The former is an international non-governmental organisation proclaiming to provide quality primary and secondary programs around the world and to cultivate "international-mindedness", while the latter is a national education system in a post-colonial society, located in entangled and complex geopolitics and under a process of citizenship reconstruction. To properly compare the two cases, which are diverse in many ways, for example, in respect of their cultures, histories, institutions, and geopolitical positionings, this research inter alia seeks to critically reflect on the colonial roots embedded in comparative education research (Sobe, 2017), including various presuppositions such as methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick-Schiller, 2002), and the so-called "northerness" of globalisation theory (Connell, 2007). Utilising the theorisation offered by Jullien (2013), Sakai (2006), and other theorists (Mignolo, 2012;Spivak, 2000;Stengers, 2011), the research proposes and exercises a comparative approach that resembles the process of translation and in which the researcher acts ii as the translator. It is argued that similarities and dissimilarities of the two cases are not innate, but iii