ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the introduction of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) in state schools across Peru, Costa Rica and the city of Buenos Aires. We analyze the interaction between the IBDP, a global model, and local cultures, looking at two key processes: the rationales for introducing the IBDP and the infrastructures designed to support schools and manage the programme. The analysis draws on a research project that examined the trajectories of the introduction of the IBDP across public schools in these three educational systems. Data was collected through interviews with high-ranked officials at the ministries of education and in the International Baccalaureate Organization, school principals, and teachers; focus groups with students; document analysis; and observations of classes in three schools in each educational system.
We argue that the international dimensions of the IBDP have been appropriated differently in each of these three educational systems, depending on the type of actors that were involved, the ways in which the IBDP was combined with other educational policies, the idiosyncratic characteristics of each educational system, and the kind of issues that the IBDP was set to address in each context. The empirical analysis of the idiosyncratic enactment of the IBDP in each system illuminates the complex ways in which a global model is recontextualized interacting with local political and pedagogic cultures and aspirations. Results suggest we need to think of processes of internationalizations in the plural, since the IBDP as a global model is mediated by national and local political and pedagogical cultures.
