Public schools as agents of transnationalization in education? Everyday practices as the missing link in researching transnational education spaces

• In Event: Globalization and Education: Practices, Insights and Varied Analyses

Proposal

Current scholarship on globalization in and of schooling agrees that it is wide-spread and deep-reaching, transnational processes that both lead to, and are reflected in, the seemingly disparate practices of mobility and migration in relation to schooling today (Hinrichsen & Hummrich 2021; Pfaff 2018). Drawing on five years of research on transnationalization and schooling in various types of schools i.e. German schools abroad, Schola Europaea and a school with a Europaschule-profile in Germany, and utilizing a mix of methods of data generation and analysis (qualitative curriculum analysis, interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations, ethnographic vignettes), I aim at opening novel conceptual, methodological, and empirical pathways for studying transnational dynamics in the context formal schooling. More specifically, I revisit and rework a key concept in the field, that of “Transnational Educational Spaces” (Adick 2005; Hornberg 2010). Particularly, I: (a) reveal what I consider to be its limits and (b) propose a new version, Transnational Educational Spaces 2.0 (t.e.s. 2.0), that takes everyday aspects of schooling into account in addition to organisational-structural, individual-biographical, and school cultural aspects addressed in prior scholarship (e.g. Hornberg 2010; Schippling & Abrantes 2022; Hinrichsen & Paz Matute 2018).
Based on empirical examples from my research in one public school, I show how 't.e.s. 2.0' reveals the complexity of transnational phenomena in schooling today by building on the complementary strengths of existing approaches. Finally, I argue that public schools following a regular curriculum can also be thought of as agents of transnationalization, depending on how one conceptualises the different actors and levels involved.

References
Adick, C. (2005). Transnationalisierung als Herausforderung für die international und interkulturell vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft. Tertium Comparationis, 11(2), 243–269.
Hinrichsen, M., & Hummrich, M. (2021). Schulentwicklung (trans)national. Schulkulturtheoretische Perspektiven. In A. Moldenhauer, B. Asbrand, M. Hummrich, & T.-S. Idel (Eds.), Schulentwicklung als Theorieprojekt. Forschungsperspektiven auf Veränderungsprozesse von Schule (pp. 37–63). Springer.
Hinrichsen, M., & Paz Matute, P. (2018). "Den Horizont erweitern?" - Schulische Internationalisierung und die Konstruktion (trans-)nationaler Bildungsräume. Tertium Comparationis, 24(2), 190–205.
Hornberg, S. (2010). Schule im Prozess der Internationalisierung von Bildung. Waxmann.
Hummrich, M., & Pfaff, N. (2023). Schule und Transnationalisierung – Forschungsperspektiven auf Strukturen der (De-)Privilegierung. In M. Hinrichsen & M. Hummrich (Eds.), Schule und Transnationalisierung. Erziehungswissenschaftliche Verhältnisbestimmungen (pp. 13–32). Springer VS.
Pfaff, N. (2018). Erziehungswissenschaftliche Transnationalismusforschung im Gegenstandsbereich der Schule - Zwischen Struktur und Lebenswelt. Tertium Comparationis, 24(2), 151–170.
Schippling, A., & Abrantes, P. (2022). Analysing biographies in transnational educational spaces: Transitions to higher education of alumni from an IB school in Lisbon. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(1), 1–12.

Author

• Simona Szakács-Behling, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität