CIS Perspectives Blog

How can schools build socially responsible leadership without adding new initiatives or more meeting time? Each of these six conversation starters for your next staff meeting ends with one small action, making the work practical, measurable, and sustainable. You can use them immediately—no special training required.

Our hearts are heavy as we learn how conflict around the world is impacting colleagues, students and their families in schools and universities. Here’s some guidance as we try to make sense of and navigate these distressing times.

All schools are learning organisations. Dr Sudha Govindswamy examines the building blocks of learning organisations and provides examples of how schools can develop as learning organisations and how we demonstrate organisational learning at CIS.

CIS school members are committed to exploring, understanding, and adopting leading practices in international education. CIS membership is a mark of quality, signaling to the rest of the world that the school shares a commitment to socially responsible leadership.

In our work leading institutional improvement, we focus on social responsibility. We help school leaders and governing bodies to improve how they model social responsibility and how they educate students to develop as socially responsible citizens.

Jane Larsson reflects on emerging role models and the importance of language and tone. How are we helping emerging leaders understand the power of their words and the importance of communicating effectively? How can we empower them to become thoughtful, effective leaders who act ethically, think critically, and lead with social responsibility?

It’s been a remarkable year for the CIS community, filled with new initiatives and significant changes. Read our reflections as we celebrate the great strides we're taking forward together.

Whether you are a leader or teacher, whether you work in a school or a university, you are a role model who is watched closely by your students. Your actions and words matter. Learn more from Jane Larsson on why and how we must address the agency gap.

As we reflect on the past year, it's with a sense of pride that we share the milestones and innovations that have marked our journey. 

'The latest iteration of the CIS Vision calls for our organization to support the development of socially responsible leadership through international education. When asked how I would describe my role here, the term critical friend comes to mind. I'm here to support the internal transformation.' Hear more from Dr Nneka Johnson 

Neither admissions nor counselling exists on culturally neutral terrains. That is, everything that we do in the realm of admissions and counselling is culturally influenced. Darnell Fine asks: what is the dominant culture holding influence over these processes?

'I’ve just started a year-long internal Fellowship at CIS, the organization’s first role of this kind ...' Hear more from Dr Nneka Johnson.

Student agency in promoting anti-discriminatory practices is key in shaping student experiences both at school and in life beyond school. During student interviews with a group of primary school students at a recent preparatory evaluation visit to Braeburn Dar Es Salaam, I asked what anti-discrimination meant to them.

Biases can emerge over time, and regular reflection is essential for us to nurture a healthy and inclusive environment for our school communities. This is especially important as you consider your human resources and recruitment practices. Orpheus Crutchfield and Mary Rose Fernandez describe the key challenges facing schools and applicants.

The Frankfurt International School community is learning to be comfortable with discomfort, adding drops of colour, how to make progress with transparency, research, global awareness, and social responsibility. Hear their story from Loretta Fernando-Smith and Christopher Wilcox.

Environmental sustainability is a complex topic and an element of our Global Citizenship Model that emerged from CIS research in 2022. We turned to our member schools and universities to learn from their innovative sustainability practices; where to start, how to overcome challenges, and expand our learning.  

In the second of this two-part series, we learn more from the Amala Education community for refugees and displaced youth. This time, we focus on how they embed global citizenship, what 21st-century skills look like, and their approaches to recruitment and enrolment.

Amala Education delivers educational programmes to their refugee communities and fulfils its Arabic name by delivering hope for the future for many who, just a few years before, had very few opportunities. Learn about their inspirational work.

CIS Supporting Members are long-standing educational organizations, twenty-seven in total, whose strategic objectives support and complement our own. Here’s the story of AIELOC: The Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color, who celebrate their 5th Anniversary.

As a new year dawns, here's a round-up of our most popular blogs in 2022, in case you missed them.