Abstract:
Over the past three years the International Baccalaureate organisation has undertaken an exponential investment in education research, which has included more than 70 commissioned studies that have explored different facets of the organisation’s suite of K-12 education programmes. This presentation reflects on this considerable research activity and attempts to draw out the lessons that have been learnt from attempting to generate a large global body of contemporary knowledge about IB programmes. A major focus of the discussion will be on providing an honest appraisal of the difficulties of conducting research involving multiple countries where a broad range of factors such as cultural and contextual issues, the idiosyncratic qualities of different researcher teams, and widely varying access to schools and data sources, present both opportunities and challenges to research projects. Moreover, the presentation will identify, and offer advice, regarding common pitfalls, oversights and mistakes made researchers when submitting proposals, conducting data collection and reporting results from global research to not-for-profit agencies such as the International Baccalaureate organisation.