Re-Imagining Education from the Bhutanese Perspective: The Bhutan Baccalaureate Program in International Education

• In Event: The Discourse of Education Innovation, Global Learning and Teaching, and ICTs

Proposal

Bhutan, a Kingdom in the Himalaya bordered by India and China, is the only democratic, mixed-market country in the world that is rooted constitutionally and culturally in Mahayana Buddhist principles and ethics (Long, 2019). Its system of beliefs and values have remained relatively stable for 1300 years, and its political and economic structures are uniquely anchored in a Buddhist social paradigm. Bhutan has never been colonized; it has enshrined environmental conservation and protections in its constitution; and it has engaged with global markets in ways that are consistent with Gross National Happiness, its holistic framework for social and economic development. Over the past decade, members of the Druk Gyalpo’s Institute (DGI) have developed the Bhutan Baccalaureate, an education program rooted in Bhutanese values and conceptions of knowledge and causality. DGI supports the nation’s democratization through educational research and innovation and has helped secondary schools across Bhutan to operationalize the Bhutan Baccalaureate as a curriculum and a method of schooling. DGI has recently designed a graduate-level curriculum for international students which reflects the principles and values of the Bhutan Baccalaureate. This year DGI is partnering with the Royal University of Bhutan to launch a groundbreaking 6-week program in international education for graduate students worldwide.

The Bhutan Baccalaureate encourages students to engage constructively with societal changes and the globalizing economy in ways that are thoughtful, creative, and ethical, drawing upon Bhutanese modes of interpreting the human condition and its relationship to the environment. The Bhutan Baccalaureate is rooted in Buddhist beliefs and therefore sees education as a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon, concerned not only with the acquisition of knowledge and skills but also with a person’s physical, emotional, spiritual, and social development (Rizvi, 2023). It understands happiness to be a collective experience, and thus cultivates in learners the skills of mindfulness and the capacities required for developing ethical relationships. The Bhutan Baccalaureate program in international education will immerse foreign students in Bhutanese understandings of environmental ethics, public policy, school transformation, cultural sustainability, and spirituality, connecting these topics to current trends in education. The program will also generate dialogues amongst international and Bhutanese students such that they develop a global and environmental consciousness, multiple perspectives on multiscalar changes in education, and a collective ability to bring positive changes to education in their own contexts.

The Bhutan Baccalaureate program in international education represents a unique and important contribution to the field and industry of international education. As societies have become increasingly interconnected and global crises have laid bare our interdependence, educators worldwide are reimagining the purposes and demands of education in order to prepare students to interpret and engage with global processes. Numerous programs in international education have been developed, but the majority have emerged from the Global North and promote predominantly Western interpretations of and visions for global interconnectivity and wellbeing. Especially in the last 30 years, Western progressive ideals of internationalism and cosmopolitanism have been shaped by a neoliberal-inflected global education industry, creating a hegemonic form and conception of international education. Aspirations for educating the whole person, developing international values and understanding, and fostering intercultural learning are materialized within the practical and financial constraints, instrumental logics, and economic drivers that characterize the global market for education. Very few programs have emerged from Global South, and fewer imagine the potential of globalized futures through alternative paradigms. The Bhutan Baccalaureate program in international education provides students and scholars of education with a perspective from which they can radically reimagine educational futures and ethical relations with all beings.

This paper draws upon ethnographic data and writing produced between 2018 and 2021 while the author was working as an education researcher at The Education Research Center at The Royal Academy (which became the Druk Gyalpo's Institute in 2022), as well as data from interviews conducted with colleagues at the Druk Gyalpo's Institute as they developed the Bhutan Baccalaureate program in international education. The paper analyzes the design of the program in international education and shows how it expresses Bhutanese conceptions of interdependence and education, and enacts a distinctively Bhutanese understanding and approach to internationalization. Building upon critiques of the neoliberal imaginary of globalization and corresponding shifts in global education policy (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010 and Ball, 2012, among others) the author argues that this program challenges the predominant conception of international education that has emerged from the hegemonic logic and mores of neoliberalism. Within the growing body of literature on Bhutanese social and political theory (Kinga, 2020, Phuntsho, 2018, and Long, 2018, among others), this paper brings a needed focus on education. The author aims to bring Bhutanese perspectives into the center of moral and political discourse around educational development and internationalization, calls for our community of international education scholars and practitioners to take seriously Bhutan’s alternative propositions for education in a globally interconnected world.

Author

• Susannah Reed Poland, The University of Massachusetts Amherst