Logic hybridity within the International Baccalaureate: the case of a state school in Poland

Abstract

This article takes a ‘vertical’ comparative case study approach to the study of the human rights logic of the International Baccalaureate. It explores how the global human rights logic is experienced and adhered to by students taking the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in one state school in Poland. As part of a larger study the article uses the data scores from the Human Rights Competence Development Survey (Parish, 2018) as a measure of the level to which students adhere to the human rights logic of the International Baccalaureate. Semi-structured interviews with a small sample of students and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Coordinator were conducted to explore how those students experience the International Baccalaureate human rights logic in an attempt to understand why they have or have not developed high levels of adherence. The findings indicate that adherence to the human rights logic varies depending on factors both within and beyond the school learning community. What also becomes clear is that there is logic hybridity as the human-rights-promoting logic competes with the more pragmatic concerns of examination success and university ambitions.

An embedded human rights logic? A comparative study of International Baccalaureate schools in different contexts

“…The author proposes that the human rights ideals of the IB form an institutional logic that has become embedded in the core of the IB (Parish 2018(Parish , 2019bTarc 2009a). However, the author questions the extent to which this filters down to individual school organizations, and in particular to students.…”

A theoretical approach to understanding the global/local nex-us: the adoption of an institutional logics framework.

“…Fundamental to this framework is the way in which the global logic of human rights has become incorporated by the IB into its mission aims. The development of the IB runs parallel to the emerging logic of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century (Parish, 2018;Tarc, 2009). However, the incorporation of the human rights logic and how it is both symbolically and materially embedded in the IB historically sheds light on the degree to which there is homogeneity even at the global (macro) level (Ramirez et al, 2007).…”

“…However, the incorporation of the human rights logic and how it is both symbolically and materially embedded in the IB historically sheds light on the degree to which there is homogeneity even at the global (macro) level (Ramirez et al, 2007). By drawing on the work of scholars within the field of international schooling it can be argued that the global human rights logic is historically embedded in the IB at a global level albeit in tension with a more pragmatic logic (Parish, 2018;Tarc, 2009). A review of the literature and policy documents of the IB reveal that at the macro level of investigation the human rights logic has become embedded within the IB as a global organisation.…”

“…This embeddedness is found both in the historical construction of the IB and in current IB documents (Parish, 2018, p. 52). However, at the same time tensions exist within the IB as a global organisation between the human rights logic and more pragmatic concerns (Parish, 2018).…”

“…Findings indicated that within SLCs the responses of the individual students to the IB human rights logic varies depending on the academic subjects that they take within the IB programme and the degree to which they commit to the Creativity Action Service programme of the programme (IBO, 2008). Other factors include the experiences that they have beyond the SLC for example, family, media, travel experience and community (Parish, 2018). In a comparison between the two schools, differences in student levels of adherence were attributed to the level of diversity within the SLC.…”