Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts

Student identity formation in international schools

Nigel Bagnall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317632160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The increased movement of people globally has changed the face of national and international schooling. Higher levels of mobility have resulted from both the willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life, and the forced movement of refugee families travelling away from war, famine and other extreme circumstances. This book explores the idea that the complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools.

By examining a selection of responses from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines and Switzerland, the book discusses key issues surrounding identity and cosmopolitan senses of belonging. Chapters draw from current literature and recent qualitative research to highlight the concerns that students face within the international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The interviews provide a rich and unique body of knowledge, demonstrating how perceptions of identity and belonging are changing, especially with affiliation to a national or a global identity. The notion that international students have become global citizens through their affiliation to a global rather than a national identity exhibits a changing and potentially irreversible trend.

Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts will be of key interest to researchers, academics and policy makers involved with international schooling and globalised education.

Chapter I

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Introduction

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One of the underlying premises of this book is the belief that the increasingly complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools. It is evident that the movement of people globally has changed the face of schools both nationally and internationally. This increased level of mobility may be a result of several factors. The forced movement of refugee families and their children moving from war, famine, and other extreme circumstances is one group. The willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life in another country is another sector. These movements ebb and flow as the economies of the world continue to grasp the realities of a planet that is both constantly changing and irrevocably interconnected. The ISC Research group¹ claims that in March 2013 there were over 6,500 English-medium schools globally catering for over 3.3 million students. This does not include the large numbers of international schools using alternative languages of instruction, such as the schools of the French, German, and Japanese.

International schools fall into a number of distinct categories. Most of these schools are unique in some way but they do have common attributes. This book examines a selection of responses about identity and belonging, from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Philippines. These students must often move from one continent to another because of the nature of their parents’ work. A review of the literature highlights some of the issues these students face within an international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The students involved in this study were interviewed about their nationalities, their sense of belonging, and their thoughts about the future. Their responses were either video-recorded or tape-recorded and analyzed by thematic groupings using NVivo.

International schools² have no unifying thread of nationalism. While some, such as the United Nations International School in Hanoi, talk of the need to unify all humanity under the banner of a universal code of ethics, for the most part international schools acknowledge the limitations placed upon them as agents for the transformation of global citizens (Bagnall, 2008). Kanno (2008), in her work on second language acquisition, uses Anderson’s (1991) theory of ‘imagined communities’. For Kanno and Norton (2003, p. 241), the concept of imagined communities refers to ‘groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination’. Kanno (2008, p. 6) explains: Anderson argued that nations are best conceived of as imagined political communities ‘because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. We forge our sense of belonging and loyalty to our nations chiefly through the power of our imagination. The nation as an imagined community does not make it any less real for us than much smaller communities in which we recognize most members’ faces.

In fact, Anderson believes that almost all communities, beyond those of the scale of face-to-face contact, are imagined. Thus, the nation, albeit an imagined construct, is a real community, one that inspires a sense of ‘a deep, horizontal comradeship’. Further, Anderson notes, it is these deeply felt ties to imagined communities that have ultimately compelled millions of people to sacrifice their lives to their nations (Anderson in Kanno, 2008, p. 7). This aspect of imagined communities provides a way of understanding what is implied in belonging. Large numbers of people are advocates of a global society. They believe as much in a global society as in one constrained by national boundaries. The students in international schools are often seen as members of such a group who believe that the world is their home. Many parents, for instance, have visions of imagined communities for their children, and these visions often guide their educational decisions for them (eg: Dagenais, 2003). Similarly, schools have imagined communities for the students they serve. While individual learners aspire to certain imagined identities and membership in certain communities of imagination, schools also envision future affiliations for students: what kinds of adults they will grow up to be, what communities they will join in the future, and what roles they will play in those communities (Kanno, 2008, p. 26).

This introduces the concept of affiliation and belonging from a global rather than a national perspective. A number of key themes emerge:

• Why is it important to understand the impact of global affiliation on international-school students?

• What other societal groups may be affected by global tendencies?

• What does the literature pertaining to global affiliation have to say about the impact of globalisation on individuals and their sense of belonging?

Contemporary views

Perhaps one of the first authors to become widely known for his work on the concept of identity and identity formation was Erikson. Based on his observations from a clinical psychology perspective, he wrote in 1968 on the concept of identity and identity formation, making the observation that

in the present state of our civilization it is not yet possible to foresee whether or not a more universal identity promises to embrace all the diversities and dissonances, relativities and mortal dangers which emerge with technological and scientific progress.

(Erikson, 1968, p. 90)

His work on identity formation has remained an enduring legacy and is a fitting starting point for this study. He was a psychoanalyst who used case studies to formulate his position on identity and identity formation in individuals. Drawing on Freud and his seminal studies relating to the id, ego, and superego, Erikson is especially concerned with the id and its relation to society. The id was ‘the instinctual force driving man from within’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 45). Erikson believes that it is not until the arrival at adolescence that individuals have ‘the prerequisites in physiological growth, mental maturation, and social responsibility to experience and pass through the crisis of identity’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 91). He goes on to say that the identity crisis is the psychosocial aspect of adolescing.

Erikson believed that the individual goes through eight developmental phases from birth to the end of life, beginning with ‘trust vs mistrust’ and moving through to ‘integrity vs despair’.

1 Trust vs mistrust

2 Autonomy vs shame, doubt

3 Initiative vs guilt

4 Industry vs inferiority

5 Identity vs identity confusion

6 Intimacy vs isolation

7 Generativity vs stagnation

8 Integrity vs despair

Each of these represents a potential crisis because of a radical change in the perspective of the individual. Crisis is used here in a developmental sense to connote not a threat ‘of catastrophe, but a turning point, a crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential, and therefore, the ontogenetic source of generational strength and maladjustment’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 96).

The beginning of feelings of social connectedness for Erikson begins in the fourth phase.

This is socially a most decisive stage. Since industry involves doing things beside and with others, a first sense of division of labour and of differential opportunity–that is a sense of the technological ethos of a culture—develops at this time. Therefore, the configurations of culture and the manipulations basic to the prevailing technology must reach meaningfully into school life, supporting in every child a feeling of competence.

(Erikson, 1968, p. 126)

The fifth stage is equally if not more important, as the individual searches for their identity.

Should a young person feel that the environment tries to deprive him too radically of all the forms of expression which permit him to develop and integrate the next step, he may resist with the wild strength encountered in animals who are suddenly forced to defend their lives. For, indeed, in the social jungle of human existence there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.

(Erikson, 1968, p. 130)

For Erikson, the loss of or inability to find an identity is ‘often expressed in a scornful and snobbish hostility towards the roles offered as proper and desirable in one’s family or immediate community’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 172). He makes the point that if any aspect of the individual’s identity is missing, such as a clear sense of masculinity or femininity, membership of a particular nation, or class membership, it can become ‘the main focus of the young person’s acid disdain’ (ibid).

Erikson believes that the goals that different civilizations have for youth vary and may be bent on reform or salvation, progress or reason, depending on the developing identity potentials of the particular society. ‘For among the essentials, which they provide for youth, is a sensually convincing time perspective compatible with a coherent world image’ (Erikson, 1968, p. 182).

Erikson is optimistic about the role played by youth and youth leaders. He talks about one such abortive ideological leader, Hamlet.

His drama combines all the elements of which successful ideological leaders are made: they are often the post adolescents who make out of the very contradictions of their adolescence the polarities of their charisma.

(Erikson, 1968, p. 258)

He talks of the challenges provided by the depth of conflict encountered by youth and yet the ‘uncanny gifts and uncanny luck with which they offer to the crisis of a whole generation the solution of their own personal crisis’ (ibid).

For Erikson there was an inevitable move forward to what he called the identity of one mankind. The common language provided by science and technology

in turn may well help them to make transparent the superstitions of their traditional moralities and may even permit them to advance rapidly through a historical period during which they must put a vain super identity of neo-nationalism in the place of their much exploited historical identity weakness.

(Erikson, 1968, p. 260)

Identity and its crisis may then provide a connection between the known past and the unknown future.

One of the first noteworthy studies concerned with global identity and its impact on individuals was that of Schaetti (2000). Using 16 adults with international experience, Schaetti made some significant comments on global nomads and their adjustment back into mainstream American life after living abroad. Her cohort of nationals or bi-nationals of seven countries was composed of 15 racially white adults and one biracial adult. In-depth interviews were conducted in which participants discussed their identity heritage, their identity development resolution expression, and their sense of belonging (Schaetti, 2000, p. v). She proposed a model of global nomad identity development across the lifespan, which suggests that global nomad identity is a search for identity congruence (ibid). She acknowledges that her sample was small and critiques her methodology in latter work, noting that the concepts she introduced to her subjects were complex and left an element of uncertainty in her findings. Her study is worthy of mention as she was amongst the first to explore the concept of global as opposed to national identity formation.

McMullen, writing at the same time as Schaetti, explored the growth of a global identity through the eyes of the Bahai faith. McMullen (2000, p. 176) talks of the world in the eyes of the Bahai being unique in its theology and organizational structure because it ‘envisions a world undivided by national, religious, ethnic, or racial prejudice’. McMullen’s work provides a solid overview of the Bahai faith and the basis of the Bahai religious identity. It shows one area, the spiritual, in which the concept of global identity has a universal dimension.

Lapidus (2001, p. 37) used the Muslim faith and its historical bases of communal, national, and global identities to demonstrate how in recent decades ‘there has been an extraordinary flourishing of transnational and global Islamic movements’. Most of these are evidenced in religious reform and missionary movements; some are political networks working to form Islamic states. Lapidus goes on to note, however, that on closer examination we find that universalistic Islamic movements are almost always embedded in national state and parochial settings rather than global settings. Lapidus asserts that Muslim, and national, ethnic, tribal, and local identities blend together, making global assumptions possible but unlikely.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methodological and theoretical considerations of identity formation
• 3 Global identity: International students’ perceptions of identity and belonging—a theoretical perspective
• 4 The school’s significance in student perceptions of affiliation and belonging
• 5 Countries and birth-related aspects of belonging and identity
• 6 Making sense of belonging and global identity
• 7 Global identity
• Appendix 1 questionnaire
• Index