From Elitism to Equity? : Teachers’ Perspectives on Localizing the International Baccalaureate (IB) in South Korea’s Public Education

• In Event: Teacher Education in Comparative Perspective: Instructional Understanding, Relational Agency, and Equity

Proposal

Introduction
Over the past decade, South Korea has embarked on a bold experiment to localize the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum within its public education system. Unlike neighboring East Asian contexts such as Hong Kong and Singapore, where the IB has often been associated with elite international schools and socioeconomic privilege, Korea has sought to reframe the IB as a state-led reform aimed at enhancing equity, revitalizing public education, and overcoming the limitations of its exam-driven culture. Since 2019, the Ministry of Education, in partnership with regional offices such as Jeju, Gyeonggi, and Daegu, has piloted a Korean-language version of the IB (K-IB). This initiative reflects broader efforts to decentralize curriculum governance, introduce inquiry-based pedagogy, and expand educational opportunities for marginalized students.
Despite rapid policy development, relatively little is known about how the IB is interpreted and enacted by the educators at the center of implementation. Teachers and principals play a decisive role in mediating global reforms in local contexts, yet their voices are often underexamined in studies of curriculum transfer. This paper seeks to fill that gap by exploring Korean teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of the challenges and potentials of IB implementation. It argues that their experiences not only illuminate the structural tensions of state-led educational change but also reveal the possibilities for reimagining public schooling through global-local curricular interplay.

Theoretical Frameworks
The study draws on Steiner-Khamsi’s (2004, 2016) framework of policy borrowing and recontextualization, which emphasizes that global policies are never imported wholesale but are selectively adapted to serve domestic agendas. Policy borrowing is often driven by legitimacy crises, where policymakers invoke foreign models as symbolic resources to justify contested reforms. In the Korean case, the IB has been framed as an external and seemingly objective solution to entrenched challenges: inequality between regions, reliance on rote memorization, and waning public confidence in schools. At the same time, Fullan’s model of educational change (2007) highlights how reforms succeed only when teachers perceive relevance, value, and support. These frameworks situate Korea’s IB adoption as a form of instrumental localization—leveraging global frameworks for national reform purposes while navigating systemic constraints.

Data & Methodology
This research is based on qualitative interviews with 27 teachers and 9 principals across ten IB pilot schools in Korea, conducted between 2021 and 2024. Semi-structured interviews explored perceptions of IB’s purpose, its alignment with existing curricula, professional demands, and impacts on students. Interview transcripts were analyzed through deductive thematic coding using five categories derived from reform literature: perceived benefits, changes in practice, curriculum alignment, professional development, and challenges.

Findings
Findings reveal that teachers frequently described IB as being layered on top of multiple existing reforms, such as the high school credit system and achievement standards. This “Christmas tree” problem—an overload of initiatives piled onto schools—generated fears that IB’s original intent would be diluted, reducing implementation to symbolic rhetoric rather than meaningful practice. Many also raised concerns about disproportionate workloads. Teachers reported late nights revising student work due to IB’s formative assessment model, with some expressing fears of burnout, especially among newcomers. Unlike EdTech projects, IB received little financial or structural support, leaving teachers without incentives or compensation. This absence of reward undermined morale and cast doubt on sustainability.
Educators also voiced ambivalence about IB’s intellectual distinctiveness. Some valued the coherent framework, yet others questioned whether IB truly offered something new compared to Korea’s national curriculum. They noted overlaps in goals and suggested that perceived gains may reflect the extraordinary commitment of teachers rather than IB itself. More fundamentally, the greatest structural barrier identified was the misalignment between IB’s inquiry-driven pedagogy and Korea’s high-stakes university entrance system. Unless admissions policies adapt, educators feared IB would remain marginal, functioning as an “add-on” rather than transformative reform.
Despite these challenges, the study also highlights significant potentials. Teachers consistently emphasized the enhanced collaboration fostered by IB. Unlike traditional individualistic teaching cultures, IB encouraged co-planning, joint assessment, and collective reflection. Many saw this collegiality as one of IB’s greatest strengths. Teachers also reported greater professional efficacy and autonomy, describing IB as an opportunity to design lessons more purposefully, articulate learning goals, and scaffold inquiry-based learning. Compared to Korea’s fragmented curriculum, IB provided coherence and alignment between goals and classroom practices.
Student outcomes represented perhaps the most visible gains. Teachers observed improvements in communication skills, inquiry habits, confidence, and active participation. Students developed a sense of agency and even pride in being part of an “IB school.” Importantly, educators noted that marginalized students—those disadvantaged in traditional exam-driven contexts—showed unexpected growth, suggesting IB’s potential to broaden educational access.

Conclusions & Discussion
The findings underscore the dual nature of Korea’s IB localization. On one hand, IB revitalized schools, fostered teacher collaboration, and improved student learning. On the other, systemic misalignments, excessive teacher burdens, and weak institutional support undermined its promise. This tension reinforces the importance of teacher agency. As Fullan (2007) emphasizes, reforms cannot succeed on design alone; educators must perceive both relevance and feasibility. In Korea, many embraced IB’s philosophy yet simultaneously expressed frustration with institutional constraints. Without addressing these concerns, IB risks becoming symbolic rather than substantive.
Korea’s experiment illustrates that global curricula are not transplanted wholesale but reinterpreted through domestic policy logics. By framing IB as equity-driven, Korea distinguished itself from other East Asian contexts where IB reinforces elitism. Yet the very qualities that make IB attractive—inquiry learning, assessment for learning, and teacher autonomy—expose structural weaknesses in Korea’s exam-oriented system. For IB to fulfill its potential, alignment with university admissions, sustainable teacher support, and reduced reform overload are essential. More broadly, Korea’s case shows how East Asian systems can exercise curricular agency by repurposing global models for local needs, while also warning of the risks of symbolic borrowing without systemic change. Ultimately, teachers’ and principals’ voices reveal the paradox of reform: it is simultaneously burdensome and hopeful, fragile yet full of possibility. The future of IB in Korea depends not only on policy mandates but on whether educators’ professional capacities and moral purposes are meaningfully supported.

Author

• HYUNGRYEOL KIM, Seoul National University