The hard work of making it work: The Japanese International Baccalaureate 200 School Project and the dynamics of implementation

• In Event: The plan to introduce a dual-language International Baccalaureate diploma into 200 Japanese schools: Analysis of the context of educational transfer

Abstract

The announcement that Japan would create 200 International Baccalaureate Schools in 2012 caught many people by surprise, even some working in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The media soon picked up on the newsworthiness of the topic and the humour that could be milked from getting unsuspecting punters to innocently ask the question, on camera, ‘international baka…baka?’ in response to inquiries about what they knew about the International Baccalaureate. The word baka in Japanese means ‘idiot’. So one of the earliest steps in the process of education transfer was to find a way of pronouncing the soon-to-be-borrowed term; what was already in the process of becoming was the Japanese kokusai (international) bakarorea.
The focus of this paper is the process of borrowing, particularly the initial implementation part of the transfer cycle (Phillip and Ochs, 2003, 2004; Rappleye, 2006). The data is based on interviews with key agents of the transfer and implementation, and participant observation of countless forums, committees and informal meetings around the IB, its curriculums, learner profile etc., and the hoped-for impact. Four key areas of implementation and concomitant localization will be discussed: the launch of a dual-language diploma; the alignment of the IBDP with the national curriculum; the readying of the school environment to meet IB requirements; and the IB authorization process. We will see that the dynamics of adaptation and transfer are not mono-directional; with the IBO and not just the Japanese having to be flexible.

Author

• Beverley Anne Yamamoto, Osaka University