Planning mobile futures: the border artistry of International Baccalaureate Diploma choosers

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of students choosing the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma over state-based curricula in Australian schools. The IB Diploma was initially designed as a matriculation certificate to facilitate international mobility. While first envisaged as a lifestyle agenda for cultural elites, such mobility is now widespread with more people living 'beyond the nation' through choice or circumstance. Beck and others highlight how the capacity to cross national borders offers a competitive edge with which to strategically pursue economic and cultural capital. Beck's 'border artistes' are those who use national borders to their individual advantage through reflexive strategy. The study explored the rationales and strategy behind the choice of the IB Diploma curriculum expressed by students in a focus group interview and an online survey. This paper reports on their imagined transnational routes and mobile orientations, and how a localised curriculum limits their imagined mobile futures.

The International Baccalaureate and ‘growth scepticism’: a ‘social limits’ framework

“…This revealed that 7% said their socioeconomic status was 'high' whilst 80% were 'middle income'. It has been asserted in an Australian context (Doherty, Mu, and Shield 2009) that IB graduates there are utilizing their capacity to cross national borders (termed 'border artistry') and how the IB offers them a competitive edge with which to strategically pursue economic and cultural capital. Congleton (1989) remarked on such 'artistry' as 'status-seeking games', where an individual's utility is determined by his/ her relative expenditure on status-seeking activities rather than by absolute consumption.…”

Unequal Access to Rigorous High School Curricula

“…Along the same lines, scholars outside of the United States have critiqued IB for primarily serving elite student populations, arguing that schools, parents, and children use IB as a means for gaining and reproducing advantage in unequal educational settings (Bunnell, 2008;Doherty, 2012;Doherty, Mu, & Shield, 2009;Tarc, 2009).…”

Teachers’ Work in Curricular Markets: Conditions of Design and Relations Between the International Baccalaureate Diploma and the Local Curriculum

“…There is a small but growing literature documenting IB programs from a variety of theoretical orientations, both celebratory and critical. It considers the origins, philosophy and orientations of its internationalised curriculum (Cambridge, 2010; Conner, 2009; Hill, 2002; Van Oord, 2007); its global distribution (Bagnall, 2005; Bunnell, 2008; Halicioglu, 2008; Poonoosamy, 2010); the student experience (Payne, 2005); the dispositional outcomes for students (Doherty, Mu, & Shield, 2009; Hayden & Wong, 1997; Heyward, 2002; Resnick, 2009); assessment practices (Allen & Readman, 2009; Lowe, 2000); its marketing (Doherty, 2009; MacDonald, 2006); and choice rationales (MacKenzie, Hayden, & Thompson, 2003; Paris, 2003).…”