Researching on international education: overcoming the paradigm of methodological nationalism?

Abstract

International schools have been expanding and diversifying at a global level, especially during the last decades. Two main explanatory approaches for this development can be identified: a normative motive for their creation, which aimed at promoting intercultural dialogue and thus at contributing to a better international understanding and to world peace on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an explanatory pragmatic approach. This approach finds explanation for the expansion of international education, bearing in mind the increasing migration of highly qualified employees of global companies and the need for internationally compatible courses for their children. Ball and Nikita (2014: 82) call them a “global middle class” and a “burgeoning, mobile, post-national middle class who operates on a global scale” (see also Firmino da Costa 2015). These two approaches can be regarded as complementary.