ABSTRACT
The absence of an extensive literature relating to the field of international education and international schools may well lead the new recruit, or the casual observer, to conclude that the concept of an 'international school' is an unimportant phenomenon, playing a minor role in education in perhaps a small number of fairly obscure parts of the world. And yet, to those who have been, or who currently are a part of it, the experiences of the world of international schools and international education are all too real. For many, the international school context raises a whole new set of challenging issues compared with their previous experiences of teaching in a national context: issues related, inter alia, to the multicultural, multilingual nature of the student population, to the transience of the student and teaching populations, to the variety of higher education destinations of the student population, to the nature of the curriculum and to the underpinning management dimension of all these factors. Some of them may be well served by literature generated within different but related contexts: the field of what is known as multicultural education, for instance, is a growing issue in many national contexts. Copious amounts of literature may also be found relating to various dimensions of management and the management of schools, much of which can be interpreted with relevance within the specific context of international schools, as can much of the fairly high profile range of curriculum-focused literature. What appears not to exist, however, is a literature base that focuses on the combination of these issues arising within the context of the international school.
