A friendly face but a lot of steel’: Growth and curriculum policy ambiguity of the International Baccalaureate curriculum in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore

Abstract

This international and comparative educational study explored the emerging opportunities and challenges to the implementation of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) across the three contexts of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, alongside the trend of rapid adoption of the IB curriculum in the region and the continuing globalisation of education. The study seeks to understand the relationship between the IB's curriculum policy communications and the impacts of this rapid proliferation on the teachers and schools and compare how the teaching and implementation of the curriculum were altered and transformed within the respective contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with secondary school teachers, administrators, and school leaders in 2020 and 2021 across fifteen (15) IB schools running the DP. Using the framework of policy trajectories conceptualised by Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012), our analysis indicated what we termed a 'curriculum policy ambiguity' concerning the dynamics of how system and processes around IB policies and its top-down bureaucratic structure interfaced with the IB teachers and schools. Yet, the response and mitigation towards this ambiguity have been a generative source of implementational practices exemplified by the proliferation of an enormous body of unofficial sources of information that have become critical towards the successful implementation of IB, while arguably driving more heterogenous teaching practices and collaborative exchanges. Nonetheless, the same ambiguity applied specifically to assessments within the IB has been problematic within highly assessment-driven milieus, engendering intense dissonance and anxious activity among IB teachers, although the impact varied across the three contexts due to differences in implementational experience embedded within the local IB network. Our findings suggest IB's faces unsustainable growth issues that compromise multiple aspects of its curriculum, including the mission of equity and inclusivity consistent with its motto of 'Education for All'.