No abstract

The industry of modern schooling leads to surface learning of exaggeratedly voluminous curricula and excessively high-stakes assessments that instrumentalize the pursuit of knowledge. In order to return to a more mindful, authentic, and humanly paced approach, disruption from the present model is needed. Paradoxically, the COVID-19 pandemic might be the catalyst that will bring this about.

This article analyses the construct validity of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme's Theory of Knowledge course in the light of claims that it is a course in critical thinking. After discussion around critical thinking -what it is and why it is valuable educationally -the article analyses the extent to which the course aims, assessment objectives and assessment instruments emphasise critical thinking. The article concludes with suggestions for improvement in the writing of the Theory of Knowledge guide so that it might place more emphasis on certain strands of critical thinking that are currently not developed in its structure.

This article aims to look at the concepts of internationalism and international education through the lens of postcolonial theory, arguing that the fundamental aims of international education are obstructed as it remains a concept locked in the idea of the nation state that has not evolved with the ideas of major postcolonial theorists. However, through careful curricular choices within the International Baccalaureate (IB) academic programmes, international education in practice can transcend its theoretical limitations.

This article explores the relationship between violence and education. It does this by referring to some of the literature in critical pedagogy that investigates how the structure and outcome of education as a social force can be violent in a number of ways. Having discussed how schools are violent in modes that are symbolic, structural, and physical, the article concludes with some of the pathways that twenty-first-century education could be taking to ensure that schools help build the foundation for as peaceful and as inclusive a world as possible.