Forms of support and challenges to developing international-mindedness: a comparative case study within a national and an international school in Turkey

Abstract

This paper uses mixed methods to explore perceptions of international-mindedness within two case study schools in Istanbul, Turkey: a national school with mostly Turkish students and an international school with students from many nationalities. Using a conceptual framework developed by an international education programme, the authors critically analyse pillars of internationalmindedness: multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement. Findings reveal that the national school was striving to overcome limitations of homogeneity, while the international school struggled to address its assumptions that a heterogeneous population alone would be enough to encourage intercultural understanding. Neither school had developed clear conceptual links among multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement. Thus, deliberate efforts are needed to provide students with experiences that foster international-mindedness. Other researchers and educators can use this framework and associated methods to examine how international-mindedness is implemented in different schools in other regions of the world.

International Mindedness: A Revised Conceptual Framework

“…Jackson (2015) found that ‘education abroad’ students did not benefit from their stay in the host environment and experienced few if any gains in intercultural sensitivity. Metli, Martin and Lane (2019) have argued that the development of international mindedness in schools cannot be taken for granted. Similarly, Cause (2009) points out that teachers need to understand that international mindedness will not be developed simply by putting children of different nationalities in the same classroom.…”

“…Statistical analysis of the results revealed no significant difference between students from the two participating schools. Similarly, the study by Metli (2018) compared national school students to international school students in terms of their development of international mindedness. As with Beek’s findings, there was no statistically significant difference between students enrolled in the national school and international school in terms of their levels of intercultural understanding and global engagement.…”

“…The current study proposes a revised framework that may be used as a guide for defining, monitoring and assessing international mindedness. Its creation arose from research conducted by the lead author and is described by Metli, Martin and Lane (2019), where Metli (2018) explored perceptions of forms of support for and challenges to international mindedness. Lane, the second author of the current paper, served along with Martin as consultants for Metli’s study.…”

“…As described above, the framework of Singh and Qi comprises the pillars of global engagement, intercultural understanding, and multilingualism. Following the recommendations of Singh and Qi (2013) for the optimal assessment of international mindedness, Metli (2018) identified a combination of instruments that addressed each of the pillars. For global engagement, participants completed the Global Citizenship Scale (GCS; Morais and Ogden, 2010) and for intercultural understanding they provided responses to the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI; Hammer et al, 2003).…”

“…Included in this review is consideration of frameworks that have been used to define and assess international mindedness, including that presented by Singh and Qi. This framework was used in a previous study conducted by Metli, Martin and Lane (2019) to investigate international mindedness in two schools. The original purpose of the previous study was not to revise the framework; this grew out of the investigation during the data analysis.…”