A new year begins. And with it come our resolutions; taking on the challenges we have been avoiding, at long last solving recurring problems, reaching out to those who need our help, stepping up to take action where we know we can make a difference. What would these resolutions look like for those of us responsible for leadership in international education? As the end of 2019 neared, two things occupied my mind. One is exciting; the other is continually frustrating, knocking us backwards and blocking our work.

As some of us pack away the fairy lights, baubles, and tinsel from the festive season, we also try to find time to pause and reflect. We reflect on what we do, what we have achieved, and where we are going. Occasionally we may go one step further and reflect on why we do what we do? 

Global citizenship is an often-used term and means different things to different people. Setting the tone for 2020, our Symposia on Intercultural Learning will provide a stage for a diverse group of international educators to present their latest research and techniques from their own cultural perspectives and contexts across the globe.

I’d heard first-hand from colleagues and members of our community about the profound and perhaps confronting experience of attending a CIS Child Protection Workshop. Harsh realities are brought into sharp focus and participants leave with an urgency to take positive action. 

Life is made up of a tapestry of transitions, big and small, simple and complex. By developing ways to positively navigate transitions as early as possible in life we are in a far stronger position to deal with future significant ones as they occur.

Earlier this year I was invited to attend a gathering of university presidents from around the world as they considered trends and shared strategies to Reinvent Higher Education. We examined issues set to impact academia, government, and the private sector as the future workforce continues to be buffeted by change.

We belong to a community of problem-solvers, people who are keen to improve the quality of international education. At our second Summit of school and university leaders we looked at admissions reform, global citizenship and work-readiness, and supporting well-being across and beyond education.

The term “global citizenship” has been a popular and often-used term for over a decade. When I joined Tupperware Brands in 2006 as VP Global Social Responsibility, I was told by the company’s Chairman & CEO, Rick Goings, that he expected me to lead the global citizenship agenda for the company.

An experimental and ambitious initiative was launched in 2008 to reform secondary education across Kazakhstan. Just over a decade later, a network of 21 “beacon” schools are setting standards for education, both across and beyond the country.

Data protection found its way onto my list of responsibilities, and it got there unexpectedly. Like many leaders, I began to pay closer attention in 2018 when a new law, the European General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR as it is commonly known, was about to be  implemented. Initially, I wondered, just how much time are we going to have to devote to this?

We sometimes shy away from using certain terms, perhaps because they are too confronting, as suggested by Laurie Tarsharksi in her recent post Three ways your words can make students safer. Older generations regularly witness younger generations taking existing words and loading them with entirely new meanings. In business, we sometimes adapt existing terms for strategic or marketing purposes. In this post, Juan-Camilo Tamayo discusses the emerging use of the term “clients” by some of the admissions and counselling community in the place of “students” and “families”. 

Many of us have data-related responsibilities in our jobs, but are we getting the most out of our data to help us do our jobs more effectively? At CIS, we regularly invite our members to complete surveys that give them access to data designed to inform decisions at their school. Here are three ways our members can get the most out of “live” CIS surveys right now. Two of these surveys have deadlines on 31 October 2019.

Amidst the usual flurry of activity in many schools this September, I'm sure that, like me, your thoughts have been diverted to victims of the latest environmental and human-made disasters. Exposure to these traumatic events can, of course, have a lasting effect on impacted children way beyond the clean-up period. 

Schools providing Chinese students with an international education typically have a staff that includes both Chinese and foreign teachers and school leaders. The development of the skills that students need to be successful learners in an environment beyond China, assumes that the teachers have the understandings and skills to foster intercultural learning and competencies.

The topic of student mental health and well-being is broad, complex and highly sensitive so we are careful and privileged to work with experts from a wide range of associated specialist fields. Their expertise covers forensic psychology, medical practitioners, writers, activism, editing, nursing, safeguarding, researching, workshop design, and clinical psychology. Several of them will be sharing their insights and practical strategies with our community in November ...

It’s quite a responsibility to find and recruit the right teachers, and it’s largely the responsibility of your school leadership to do so. When a school takes a more egalitarian approach by formally inviting teaching staff into the recruitment process, a school’s chances of recruiting the right person with the right fit for that school’s culture increases—according to Mireille Rabaté and Nicole Jackson at Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill.

You can make children safer at your school by changing how you talk about harm. The strongest word isn’t always the right word. Perhaps it’s the news or social media, but there is a tendency to refer to all sexual offenders as predators or pedophiles. Yet, no one believes they hire, work with, or know a pedophile or predator. Casual use of these pejorative terms is inaccurate and leads to harmful bias.

When 50% of your school’s staff are from a local eastern culture and 50% are from a western culture, how do you navigate the many associated cultural behaviours and inevitable misunderstandings to nurture a mutually respectful, collaborative, effective and happy working environment for all?

We live in a world where change is the norm and some estimate that two out of three children now starting school will have jobs that don’t exist today. How do we plan ahead when we operate in school systems that were designed for the industrial revolution, not Industry 4.0? How can we most effectively help schools recruit leaders best suited to navigate the changes that are already happening and will continue to happen?