Methodizing Morality: On the Changing Practices of “International Mindedness” in International Curriculum

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Cultural Inquiries Into the Curricular and Narrativized Self (Table 11)

Abstract

This article examines what makes possible scientific methods the foundation for cultivating morality in international education and how pedagogical practices that adopt these methods shape students’ subjectivities. The first case study historicizes how “international mindedness” as the educational goal of the International School Association and IB curriculum turned from a cosmopolitan value into a scientific method that works as a transnational “currency” that is also named “competency”. Thoughts of Kant, Dewey, and Piaget are explored as the epistemic conditions that make such a change possible. The second case provides an ethnographic study of a summa cum laude graduate from an international high school in China. The article concludes by reflecting on the relativist and utilitarian values behind methodizing international-mindedness.

Author

• Lei Zheng, Peking University