Introduction
Universally, the literature consistently states that culture & context are inextricably linked to leadership (Groysberg et al., 2018). However, when referring to the IB® world, these two elements play an even more pivotal role as core drivers in achieving the IB® mission, which is implemented through competent IB® leaders. As a matter of fact, the IB® mission statement, the IB World Schools’ trans-national and multicultural settings (Calnin et al., 2018), along with the essential requirements collected in the IB® Programme Standard and Practices (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2020) that will be analyzed, show to which higher extent culture & context impact IB Leadership.
Body
The IB mission statement highlights that “intercultural understanding and respect” are the keys to the creation of “a better and more peaceful world,” and understanding and respecting people “with their differences” is a core virtue that the IB® requires to its leaders in the first place (Sing and Qi, 2013). None of this is achievable without the predisposition to International Mindedness, intended as an attitude of openness to diverse cultures. Specifically, “IM is relational,” (Hacking et al., 2016), which means reaching out and interacting with people who hold disparate perspectives and learning to live in other cultural contexts with respect, even within ideological disagreement. Integral to IM are multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement. As language is one of the most tangible manifestations of culture, it is worth showing how multilingualism (Table 1), hence the access to different cultures, is essentially linked to IB® leadership practices and its scope.
The trans-national and multicultural settings of the IB® World Schools throughout the globe imply that IB® leaders are continually interacting with people, institutions, ideas, and values from different cultural traditions (Calnin et al., 2018). In this regard, a senior leader of an international school, interviewed for a study on the cultural dissonance in Saudi Arabia, stated that compared to other schools, leading international institutions is equal to acting at a higher level. This is because of a more open cultural system composed of staff and students from different nationalities (Hammad and Shah, 2018). The environment within which school heads work is the other crucial element to successful leadership, which, in fact, according to Day et al. (as mentioned in Calnin et al., 2018), is “context-sensitive”. Additionally, as communication in high-cultural contexts is very often based on contrasting cultural assumptions, understanding the context, specific to the utterance, is essential to realizing the related meaning (Crowne, Phatak and Salunkhe, 2009).
Within their duties, creating the school culture is one of the most challenging tasks an IB® leader has to face as it is the intangible foundation that has to harmoniously combine the local and the school community’s values, assumptions, convictions (van der Westhuizen, 2005), and the IB® principles. To do that, the heads must develop cultural and contextual awareness (Calnin et al., 2018) to successfully deal with everyday problems linked to the international world of education. In essence, as defined by Gruenert and Whitaker (cited in Newton-Woods, 2018), IB® leaders have to consider school culture as “both a survival mechanism and a framework for solving problems,”.
More deeply, culture & context are interdependent and intrinsic to the IB® world as identified by the workshop leaders who, from 2013 to 2016, conceived specific professional development courses comprised in “The Essentials of International Leadership” series. Related to culture & context, they agreed upon the following requirements that school heads must hold (Fisher, 2019):
- Respond to the complex and interdependent nature of the environment they exercise leadership
- Deliver practices that are partly moulded around the diverse set of political, economic, pedagogical, and cultural factors that can, directly and indirectly, impact the school community
- Adequately react to complexity, uncertainty, and ongoing changes
- Are able to carry out culturally appropriate strategies that are relevant and adaptable for the related context
Lastly, clear indications about the essential relationship between culture & context and IB® leadership are collected in the latest guideline, “Programme Standards and Practices” (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2020), that provides an overall framework that integrates the IB philosophy within the schools’ unique context. Visually, this framework is represented as shown in Figure 1, where the environment serves as the context in which learning occurs, as well as the setting that the school creates to improve students’ learning experiences. Culture, instead, refers to the formalized policies and unwritten rules that outline how a school functions. Personal and collective well-being, efficient use of physical and human resources, and the degree to which a school recognizes and embraces diversity are all included in the meaning of culture (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2020).
To be more specific, the most culture & context- related standards and practices are:
- “Culture 4: The school implements, communicates and regularly reviews a language policy that helps to foster intercultural understanding through communicating in a variety of ways in more than one language. (0301-04)
- Culture 6.6: The school considers international-mindedness in all of its IB-mandated policies. (0301-06-0600)
- Coherent curriculum 1.6: The school demonstrates that the curriculum is influenced by an understanding of students’ prior knowledge, identities, backgrounds, needs and contexts. (0401-01-0600)
- Approaches to teaching 3.1: Teachers ensure that there are clear examples of connections to local and global contexts in the curriculum. (0403-03-0100)” (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2020)
Conclusions
The above review has accurately illustrated the intrinsic liaison between culture & context and the IB leadership, exploring the IB® overall nature and pedagogical structure. The embodiment of all these aspects makes, therefore, IB® leaders essentially cosmopolitan. From Greek kosmopolitês, the term cosmopolitan means “citizen of the world”; explicitly, someone who belongs to the whole world holds no bounds to local or national prejudices and finds home in all countries. Three main attitudes characterize cosmopolitan leaders: firstly, they hold an inclusive perception of human beings as people belonging to one world community, regardless of their origin and culture. Second, they display a low level of ethnocentrism, seeing the value in each culture. Lastly, they privilege their role and mission, facilitating intercultural understanding rather than a place or an organization (W&M ScholarWorks, 2008). Ultimately, it can be said that, through a deep understanding of culture & context, IB® leaders wisely orchestrate the inevitable conflicts derived from multicultural settings (Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow, 2009). Eventually, they do not opt for “sanitized solutions” dictated by the conveniently airbrushed use of culture, as critically rejected by Zhao (as quoted in Calnin, 2015 workshop).
References
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van der Westhuizen, P. C., Mosoge, M. J., Swanepoe, L. H. and Coetsee, L. D. (2005) ‘Organizational Culture and Academic Achievement in Secondary Schools’, Education and Urban Society, 38(1), pp. 89–109.
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