Global Scripts, Local Peace: How IB Primary Schools in Shanghai and Taiwan Translate Traveling Reforms

• In Event: Diversity-Sensitive Practice and Intercultural Sensitivity Development in Daycare and All-Day Primary Schools: Critical Insights from Transnational Research

Proposal

In today’s divided world, education is increasingly recognized as a catalyst for social cohesion and peacebuilding. The CIES 2026 underscores this urgency with its theme, calling for scholarship that critically examines how education mitigates division and fosters inclusion (CIES, 2026). Within this global dialogue, the International Baccalaureate (IB) positions itself as a program committed to cultivating peace, with a mission to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who help create a more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect; its Learner Profile, with attributes such as open-minded, caring, and principled, functions as a global script for fostering peace and citizenship across diverse contexts (IBO, 2023). In Shanghai, educational reform has often balanced global curricular influences with the demands of centralized governance and an exam-driven culture (Tan, 2012). By contrast, in Taiwan, curriculum reform has incorporated global citizenship education, linking international programs such as the IB to democratic values and pluralism (Hung, 2025). These contrasts make Shanghai and Taiwan compelling sites for examining how Primary Years Programme (PYP) coordinators and teachers translate IB’s global values into local classroom practices.

Theoretical Framework&Research Questions
This study is guided by two intersecting frameworks, which are policy transfer theory and scholarship on peace and global citizenship education (GCE). From a policy transfer perspective, reforms rarely move intact across contexts; instead, they are reinterpreted locally. Steiner-Khamsi (2025) describes reforms that morph as they travel, shaped by three-forms of borrowing: discursive, policy, and instrument. She also identifies seven temporalities of reform, including timing, tempo, and lifespan, that explain how reforms are adopted, sequenced, and sustained. These concepts provide analytical leverage for examining how IB values are adapted in Shanghai and Taiwan.
At the same time, this study draws on peace education and GCE. Peace education emphasizes fostering empathy, intercultural understanding, and conflict resolution (Bajaj, 2019; UNESCO, 2016). GCE highlights equipping students with skills for democratic participation, global responsibility, and respect for diversity (Oxley & Morris, 2013). The IB Learner Profile explicitly embeds these ideals, positioning itself as a curriculum for cultivating a better and more peaceful world (IBO, 2023).
Together, these frameworks allow the study to investigate not only how IB values are translated across contexts but also why these translations matter. The study asks:
1. How do PYP coordinators and teachers in Shanghai and Taiwan translate the IB Learner Profile and curriculum documents into classroom practices that promote belonging, intercultural understanding, and global citizenship?
2. In what ways do the timing, tempo, and sequence of IB adoption shape how global ideals are adapted, layered, or resisted in primary schools?
3. Which aspects of the IB Learner Profile are considered adaptable to local discourses and which remain non-negotiable global ideals, and what do these distinctions reveal about the sustainability of peace-oriented practices?

Methods
This study adopts a comparative qualitative case study design to explore how PYP schools in Shanghai and Taiwan translate global scripts into local practices. Four IB World Schools will be purposively selected, two in Shanghai and two in Taiwan, to capture variation across political and cultural contexts while ensuring comparability as accredited PYP institutions.
Document Review. Key school-level documents will be analyzed to understand how IB values are formally articulated, including:
• the Programme of Inquiry (POI), which maps the school-wide transdisciplinary framework;
• selected Units of Inquiry (UOIs), which operationalize global ideals in specific subjects;
• the language policy, which reflects approaches to multilingualism and intercultural communication;
• the mission and vision statements; and
• official school websites, which present public narratives of identity and global positioning.

Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with one PYP coordinator from each school (n=4) and five classroom teachers per school (n=20 total). Coordinators will discuss curriculum mapping and alignment between written and enacted curriculum, while teachers will reflect on UOI implementation, pedagogy, and assessment practices linked to the Learner Profile.
Analysis. Data will be coded through two complementary lenses: (1) Steiner-Khamsi’s policy transfer and temporalities framework (discursive, policy, and instrument borrowing; timing, tempo, and lifespan), and (2) peace and GCE concepts (belonging, intercultural understanding, global responsibility). This dual coding strategy enables examination of both how IB scripts are translated and why these translations matter for peace education.

Findings
Analysis shows that IB values are translated differently in Shanghai and Taiwan, shaped by local cultural discourses and political contexts. In Shanghai, coordinators and teachers tend to align Learner Profile attributes such as caring and principled with the state’s emphasis on harmony, collective duty, and social order, thereby framing global ideals through a Confucian-socialist lens. In Taiwan, the same attributes are often articulated through global citizenship and democratic participation, with teachers emphasizing intercultural understanding and outward-facing belonging.
The study also reveals variation in tempo and sequence of IB adoption. Taiwan schools demonstrate faster uptake and integration of global ideals into UOIs and classroom routines, while Shanghai schools adopt them more selectively and in incremental phases. A further distinction emerges between adaptable Learner Profile traits (e.g., caring, principled, which can be localized) and non-negotiable ideals (e.g., open-mindedness, international-mindedness), which remain anchored in IB’s global script. These dynamics shape the lifespan and sustainability of peace-oriented practices across the two contexts.

Significance and Implications
This study contributes to debates on the role of education in promoting peace by examining how global scripts are locally translated in politically and culturally distinct contexts. By comparing PYP schools in Shanghai and Taiwan, it highlights how discourses of harmony and global citizenship differently shape the enactment of IB values. These findings advance theoretical understandings of policy transfer and temporalities, demonstrating how timing, tempo, and lifespan influence the sustainability of peace-oriented practices.
Practically, the study offers a translation toolkit for educators and policymakers strategies for identifying which IB values can be adapted locally, which should remain globally anchored, and how reforms can be sequenced for durability. Aligned with the CIES 2026 theme, the study shows that peace education is not a static export but an ongoing process of negotiation. It invites scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to strengthen networks across regions to ensure that global ideals are meaningfully enacted in local classrooms.

Author

• Lingyi Zhou, Columbia University, Teachers College