International education dynamics: Addressing key issues and exploring improvement strategies

• In Event: International Education: Dynamics, Issues and Explorations

Proposal

International education, once solely associated with international schools that host students and teachers from various nationalities, has now been widely accepted as an umbrella term encompassing multiple approaches to curriculum implementation (Hayden, 2006). Notably, recent growth of international education has occurred within national education systems and schools, often with few, if any, foreign students. This trend has become increasingly evident in the Turkish education system, which began incorporating international curricula in the 1990s and has gained significant momentum over the last decade.

Cambridge International Education, one of the most widely implemented international curricula globally, has tripled in the last decade, growing from 14 to 46 schools in Türkiye (Sagun and Corlu, 2014; Cambridge International Education, 2024). However, this rapid expansion of schools being accredited by an international organization to offer internationally recognized credentials lacks a strong research foundation. Limited research exists on how schools are implementing, coping with, and adapting to this curriculum in Türkiye (Author, 2021; Ersoy, 2021; Tüzün, 2016). This gap in the literature motivates this research, which aims to explore how school practitioners are implementing the international curriculum and addressing the challenges of integrating it into their existing school programs. Therefore, this study seeks to answer the following questions:
--What are the challenges in implementing an international curriculum such as Cambridge International Education?
--How can these challenges be addressed, and how can educational practices be improved?

This paper employs a qualitative case study approach to investigate in detail the unit of analysis (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016; Yin, 2018), specifically how teachers and coordinators experience the international curriculum. I used semi-structured interviews and an open-ended questionnaire to explore the research objectives. The study includes 11 purposefully selected international education coordinators and 22 teachers. An open-ended questionnaire consisting of four questions was administered to 94 international education teachers from K-12 private and state schools across Türkiye. Data analysis was conducted using a traditional coding scheme (Yin, 2015). The themes were classified under two headings: challenges and ways of improvement. The challenges were categorized into the teaching and learning process, teacher recruitment, structural and organizational issues, interaction with Cambridge International Education, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The 'ways of improvement' theme consists of improvable school practices, country practices, and Cambridge practices.

The findings of this research revealed that school practitioners face significant challenges, including the integration of an international curriculum into the school program. The lack of legislation exacerbates the difficulties coordinators face in adapting to this new system. Inadequate support from authorities and the school network was also cited as a major challenge. The rapid expansion and accreditation of the Cambridge curriculum have been linked to issues with textbooks, which widely recognized by teachers as problematic. These textbooks, produced by large international publishing companies, are considered expensive by parents, creating additional challenges for schools and teachers. Another notable finding is teachers' admission that, particularly in high school programs, they tend to “teach to the test”. They often ignore constructive, student-centered approaches and activities, focusing instead on past exam papers to ensure students are prepared for possible exam questions. This approach compromises genuine learning. These results suggest a potential risk of the commercialization of international education within the national education system, raising new concerns at the intersection between the internationalization needs of parents and students, and the role of national schools.

Among the improvement strategies suggested by school practitioners is the implementation of the international curriculum independently, rather than alongside the national curriculum, which can create curricular discord. This discord forces both teachers and students to focus on test preparation within the limited course hours. Additionally, school practitioners recommend the development of a stronger school networking system among national schools offering international curricula, and call for a more accountable system to be established by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in cooperation with Cambridge International Education.
This paper includes a portion of the findings from the author’s dissertation study, which was completed in January 2024. As the number of schools implementing international curricula increases each year, schools are facing challenges depending on the context of the school and the education system. Therefore, this presentation is expected to contribute to discussions on the internationalization of K-12 state and private schools, not only in Türkiye but also in the U.S. and around the world.

Author

• Gulbahar Yilmaz, Michigan State University, College of Education