school children with the intent to demonstrate how concepts of internationalism are consumed by parents. An ethnography conducted by Imoto (2011)
investigated the growing number of international preschools in Japan, and why parents of Japanese students desired for their children to “acquire ‘natural’
English ability” (p. 281). Imoto’s (2011) research site is that of younger school-aged children, and focuses on the parents of these children. Although this research is similar to mine in that it raises questions about how Western international schools may be seen by non-Western parents as the place of access to globally hegemonic culture, Imoto’s (2011) research again focuses on ELL issues as a forefront consideration.
Imoto (2011) is interested in why such schools are growing in popularity within non-Western countries. Although it is a phenomenon as to why such an occurrence is happening, my research will consider more so the identity factors for youth and their strategies for negotiating such identities as opposed to the phenomena of increasing international schools in non-Western countries. To reiterate, here is where I think my research is purposeful: past research tends to either focus on students of refugee status, students of younger ages, or the phenomena itself of increasing international schools, whereas, my research will focus on how students of non-Western home cultures negotiate new cultural identities, and will not focus on statistics of why such schools are growing in popularity.
2.5.3 Ethnography of Dual-Language International School
One study, conducted by Fryer (2009), also aims to “reveal the reasons for [national] students attending the [international] school, and to identify the facets of international education” (p. 213). Fryer (2009) indicates that little international school research like this has been done in Hong Kong, and I would agree that this would also be the case for Morehouse International School (the pseudonym used for the research site in this research). Fryer’s (2009) research, however, includes data from three stakeholders of the school setting: students, parents, and teachers;
my research, however, focuses on student perspective and their interpretation of how their teachers help them to successfully negotiate their cultural identity.
Another difference is that the research site used in Fryer’s (2009)
ethnography was labeled as a dual-language school, where Mandarin and English were supposed to be the languages used at school, with Cantonese being the majority of students’ language of home. The site of my research is not a dual-language school; however, the dual-language (English) used to conduct academic and social interactions at school is different than the languages of home for most students. Fryer’s (2009) research aims to fulfill a void in the research in terms of parental perception of the importance and role of international schools, whereas this is not the focus for my research.
There are some similarities, however, between Fryer’s (2009) research and my own, particularly in the cultural context of students being non-Western and non-refugee status, as well as the role that intercultural mindedness plays within the school context. Students at Fryer’s (2009) research site are “national students who attend an international school”, and while this is not the case for all of my
intended participants, it is the case for the majority of students attending my research site school (p. 213). Although not all of Fryer’s (2009) research
questions are similar to my own, some of the research questions are quite similar in regards to “international education ethos”, specifically in the following two research questions: “how successfully does the school develop in students an awareness and appreciation of Chinese artistic, literary, and cultural traditions along with those of the rest of the world, in particular, the Anglo-Western”, and
“Does the school successfully develop in students a strong sense of multi-cultural values, especially emphasizing the need for altruism in a global community where people of different cultures, traditions and backgrounds regularly interact?” (p.
215). Although this research has been conducted in Hong Kong, and questions pertain to cultures of Hong Kong and China, I believe these similar questions also relate to my own research and shows that a similar exploration for a school in Bangkok is be beneficial to do.
One interesting difference between Fryer’s (2009) findings and the environment of my own research site is that parents at the research school site in Hong Kong were “disappointed that the students did not usually speak Mandarin socially at school, and all stakeholder groups strongly agreed that Chinese culture was under-represented in the Anglo-Western culture-dominated school” (p. 217).
Given my experience of seven years working at my research site in Bangkok, I infer, given conversations with administration and school recruitment and marketing offices, that parents of students are disappointed to hear such a high frequency of Thai being spoken socially at school, as they wish to hear more
natural English fluency on a social level, outside of classroom environments in areas such as hallways, student lounges, and school cafeterias. Parents of students attending my school, however, still would like to see Thai culture valued by their children and some students feel as though they are told by parents that they are too Western by culture. Exploring this contrast between the ethos of intercultural mindedness at my research site with the related, but somewhat different, findings of Fryer (2009) would reveal meaningful information to add to the research in intercultural issues of international schools.
Fryer’s (2009) research also suggests that educators of international schools, like the research site in Hong Kong, feel as though interplay between home and school languages (Cantonese and English) influences language success in school – if the home language is Cantonese only, it limits the ability to achieve dual-language (Mandarin-English) goals at school, but when the home language (Cantonese) is not included at school intercultural mindedness is lacking and this
“perhaps implies to the students that the host language and culture is somehow inferior” to English and Anglo-Western culture (p. 218). The question of how to provide access to cultures at school while also empowering the cultures of home is an area that still remains unclear to many international school teachers, thus is an important area for further research and exploration. Another possible parallel between Fryer’s (2009) research site and that of my own is in regards to how educators perceive the level of cultural diversity at the school as being low, whereas, parents perceived the level of cultural diversity as being high. Fryer (2009) suggested that these perceptions were based in differing contexts:
educators referenced the student body population when considering how culturally diverse the school was, but parents referenced the level of cultural diversity in the teaching faculty to determine a high amount of cultural diversity present at the school; this brings to question what ‘international’ means and how it is determined relative to the way in which cultural identities between home and school interact, and is therefore, essential to the future study of international schools experiences similar conditions of intercultural complexity.