Reviewing reflexivity in International Baccalaureate research: An examination of how practitioner-researchers position themselves

Abstract

This article addresses the need for a discussion around collective reflexive practices within the subfield of international education focused on international schools and, in particular, the International Baccalaureate. Many researchers in this field are former school educators whose personal and professional experiences inspired their research journey. However, despite their close ties to the programmes and institutions they study, there has been little collective discourse around reflexivity and positionality. This article reviews the literature and analyses data from over 100 doctoral dissertations on the International Baccalaureate, written by practitioner-researchers, to examine how reflexivity and positionality have been approached. The findings reveal that while some researchers acknowledge their positionality or discuss a reflexive practice, these considerations are often underdeveloped and lack a systematic approach. The article argues for the need of increased dialogue, and proposes a framework for reflexive practices within international education to ensure that researchers critically assess how their personal beliefs and experiences influence their work, ultimately leading to more transparent and impactful research in the field.

Introduction

Many researchers in international education began as classroom educators, like those in other subfields of Education Studies (Hawkes and Yerrabati, 2018). There are several recognised subfields of international education. This paper focuses on the subfield of international education concerned with international schools and the International Baccalaureate (IB) (Dolby and Rahman, 2008). The International Baccalaureate authorizes schools to use one or more of the four IB programmes: the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme, Diploma Programme and Career-related Programme. The IB, established in 1968, is the best-known model of pre-tertiary international education that does not align to any one nation. While the IB’s model of international education does not centre on one nation state, it does embrace Western educational traditions and knowledge, according to a former IB Director General (Walker, 2010). The IB is not the only organisation promoting such a form of international education, but it is arguably the best known in both practice and research. While not all schools that use the IB would describe themselves as international schools, research on the IB has often been explored in the context of international schooling (Dolby and Rahman, 2008).

Beyond academics, the IB claims its model of international education encourages students to ‘create a better and more peaceful world’ (IB, 2025). To this end, the IB’s model of international education is as much a ‘world social movement’ as it is academic content (Bagnall, 1994: 4). The IB refers to this as the ‘deeper purpose’ of their programmes (IB, 2019: 1). This article takes the position that what makes this subfield of international education unique is not the site of study but the ideology underpinning it.

The IB does not run schools, and not every school that claims to be international follows the IB. Complicating the relationship further, not every school that offers an IB programme self-identifies as an international school. But many of those responsible for developing the IB, whom I describe as creator-researchers, have also been instrumental in developing the field of research on international education to such an extent that the two are quite intertwined in research (Dolby and Rahman, 2008). Further, those who teach IB programmes – particularly if they teach in international schools – may move between several schools during their careers, some offering IB programmes and some not. Teacher mobility, therefore, is another way in which research on the IB intersects with research on international schools that may use other types of programming. In these ways, research on the IB is not restricted only to IB practices, and can be explored to better understand trends across research in international schools more generally. On the other hand, IB schools that are state-funded – including for instance many of those in the United States – may not identify quite as explicitly with the international school sector that is most often conceptualized as private, elite and existing in the post-colonial world.

Educators arrive at international education for a variety of reasons, but many find themselves drawn to the philosophy popularised through the IB. Due to the challenges of accessing schools for research, many educator-researchers, especially at the doctoral level and often studying on a part-time basis, rely on personal and professional networks to obtain permission for fieldwork. Even those who research at sites outside of their networks remain insiders to the content and the mission of the programming. Considering these close connections to the programmes and educational institutions they study, it is perhaps surprising how few conversations around positionality and reflexivity appear to be recorded as occurring in this field.

Considering these ideological demands that the IB’s model of international education requires of educators, it would make sense for researchers within this field to better understand how their own assumptions, feelings, and experiences may shape the research. It has been argued that teachers’ insider knowledge can benefit international education research (Twigg, 2010). Yet this ‘backyard’ research can also raise complex questions over the role of the researcher and their proximity to the research subjects (Glesne, 2011). However, there appears to be little to no recorded debate over how international educators turned researchers can position themselves when undertaking research in international schools or relating to international education programmes such as those of the IB. By reviewing relevant literature and presenting data collected from doctoral dissertations focused on the IB, this article argues that it is time to consider more strongly how a reflexive practice could be developed across research on the IB and the subfield of international education related to international schools more broadly.

The article focuses on two questions:

1. How have positionality and reflexivity been utilised within doctoral dissertations focusing on the International Baccalaureate?

2. What can this review of reflexive practices amongst doctoral students on the IB reveal about the ways reflexivity is practiced within international education?

Before revealing findings, this article reviews definitions for positionality and reflexivity and explores how they have been, and have not been, used within this subfield of international education, positions the author in terms of this project and reviews the methods used. Ultimately, it finds that there is a need for more explicit and transparent discussions around reflexivity within this field.

Positionality and reflexivity in international education

Research traditions have approached reflexivity and positionality in different ways (Hammond and Wellington, 2013). In short, both speak to the idea, largely held in the social sciences, that a researcher’s personal background and life experiences will influence the final research product (Bigelow, 1999). Increasingly there are calls to explore how researchers’ ‘moral assumptions’ might be shaping the design and conduct of research (Creswell, 2007: 205). While the two concepts of positionality and reflexivity are inter-related and can sometimes be understood to hold overlapping meanings, this article understands them as distinct terms. As argued by Hammond and Wellington (2013), positionality refers to what ‘we know and believe’, while reflexivity is a process to interrogate what ‘we do with this knowledge’ (129). Positionality is often viewed as a one-off statement, including biographical details of the researcher, such as whether they taught in schools before turning to research, or elements of their identity such as gender, race or class. A basic statement of positionality often includes declaration of a researcher’s background, values and beliefs.

Reflexivity, in contrast, is a process – and one that a researcher should maintain throughout all stages of the research project. Reflexivity is often viewed as ‘the recognition that as researchers, we are part of the social world that we study’ (Ackerly and True, 2010). Practitioners of reflexivity ensure that they are constantly assessing how their lived experiences, and assumptions, might be contributing to the research project (Palaganas et al, 2017; Wood and Bloor, 2006). The concept of lived experiences, here, refers to the subjective, personal, and nuanced ways in which individuals make sense of their world. As a concept, it is central to qualitative research methodologies, particularly phenomenology, which seeks to understand how people perceive and interpret their realities (Given, 2008).

While reflexivity may be more often expected for qualitative researchers, there is increasing attention to the ways in which the researcher influences quantitative data and the role that reflexivity can play in methods that have been traditionally classified as objective (Jamieson et al, 2023; Whatley 2022). Reflexivity is not a one-time element of research in the way that formatting references may be. Rather, reflexivity is a process, a chance for the researcher to constantly check in and assess how the researcher is interacting with the research project. Reflexivity may be employed as a method for enhancing validity (Duarte, 2013). It is often used as one tool to combat bias, as many social scientists no longer see the researcher as objective but as a tool in the research, one where it becomes necessary to better understand what vantage point is being employed (Bloor and Wood, 2006).

Finally, reflexivity is not only an individual practice in research but a collective one (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). That is, research fields ‘inevitably shape the framing of research questions’ (Whitaker and Atkinson, 2019: 4). This can be seen in the different approaches taken by different fields when studying the same topics. For example, collective reflexivity might strengthen the field’s approach to defining international schools – many though not all of which offer IB programmes – which traditionally has privileged older, non-profit models of schooling that cater to an elite student body composed of different nationalities. Many established researchers write about the newer for-profit models with an ‘overtone of disdain’ (Bailey, 2022: 15), which is grounded more in opinion than in evidence. This uncertainty over conceptualisations of the international school can also be found in doctoral research. The doctoral work featured in this study rarely utilised published works around international schools when defining their cases; instead, the practitioner-researchers tended to rely on their own professional understanding of the concept, sometimes conflating the IB with all international schools as that had been their personal experience (see, eg, Ranger, 2012).

In addition, research around the IB, and international schools, has experienced ‘continuous progress’ (Bunnell, 2014: 43). Research funded by the IB organisation is often conducted at sites chosen by the IB, with many researchers then submitting such findings to peer-reviewed journals so that these best practices enter the academic discussion (eg Barratt Hacking et al, 2018; Rizvi et al, 2019). Yet it would seem that few projects appear to offer counter perspectives around poor practices or when international education does not go as planned. For example, the decline in numbers of IB schools in the UK and Ecuador has not been explored in doctoral dissertations with the same interest as the rise of schools in China and the US. Bias may not be the only reason for such omissions from research, but a stronger collective reflexive process might help identify other such gaps and weaknesses in the field.

A reflexive practice does not need to be explicit (Brown, 2022). However, it feels necessary here to foreground a conversation around reflexive practices considering the lack of existing publications on this topic. While not every researcher necessarily needs to publish all steps of their reflexive practice, a general absence of conversations around reflexivity in the field may signal to incoming researchers that reflexivity is not seen as important or constructive for the development of the field.

Critics argue that it is possible to be too reflexive in practice (Atkinson, 1991) or that reflexivity is ‘unprofessional or intrusive [if researchers are required] to disclose their personal characteristics’ (Barusch et al, 2011: 7). However, it is generally accepted that a balanced approach to reflexivity will strengthen the research (Pillow, 2003). That does not mean that the research becomes about the researcher, but that more researchers should foreground questions of influences and interests.

There are some examples of stated positionality within professional research undertaken on international schools or the IB (see, eg, Taylor and Porath, 2006; Tarc and Mishra Tarc, 2015) and IB-funded studies (Barratt Hacking et al, 2017). The journal in which the current article is published, the Journal of Research in International Education, one of the largest sources of research on this subfield of international education (Ben Jaafar et al, 2023), offers author biographies following articles, but these are not required to be integrated into the authors’ research or to reveal how such backgrounds may have contributed to the production of the research.

Considering the centrality of what a former IB Deputy Director General describes as an ‘ideological mission [. . .] to prepare students for world citizenship’ (Hill, 2012: 251) and the popularity of this message with their teachers, it is perhaps surprising that research has not explored how these personal beliefs may be contributing to the research on international education. Speaking about researchers on the IB, specifically, one researcher observed that ‘it is very rare that they write from a neutral position’ (Bagnall, 2008 in Bunnell, 2014: 43). Yet few researchers appear to have explored how this lack of neutrality may be interacting with their research practices.

Even when researchers acknowledge their affiliation to the IB, there are still few recorded conversations as to how that might have impacted the research process. For example, one doctoral student, who served as the head of school for both schools used in his research, wrote that he ‘wholeheartedly’ embraces the IB mission (Condon, 2021: 88), but did not comment on how this commitment might affect his research. A second doctoral student, who was a leader of an international school researching leaders at other international schools, wrote: ‘As the Head of an international school in India myself, I will have an influence on the respondents’ (Ranger, 2012: 36). This statement underscores the central mission of this research: to spark a conversation around how the position of the researcher, and their connections to international schooling, may be impacting international education research, and to begin to consider how an explicit framework for reflexivity could strengthen the field. By recognising these influences, the field can move towards a more intentional, collective, and ambitious embrace of reflexive practices, ultimately enhancing the rigor and transparency of research.

Researcher’s positionality and reflexivity

Like many in this field, I was a school educator before I was a researcher. While I taught at a school that offered IB programmes, I did not directly teach those courses. The decision to focus on the IB in my own research was not driven by an inherent belief in its programmes, as appeared to be the case for many of my peers, but rather by pragmatic considerations. As an American expatriate who had lived in four countries over eight years, international education was the one educational model I could study that would be relevant no matter where I moved next.

My own reflexive practice was honed through interactions with my university supervisors more than through existing research from international education. When recounting one visit to the field, my supervisor observed a show of wealth that had not stood out to me, presumably due to my own experiences within private schools. It was a crucial moment in my doctoral experience that woke me up to the ways in which my experiences may be shaping the way I collected and analysed data from the field. These experiences led me to take a deeper look at the ways in which reflexivity has been practiced in the field and how we can collectively strengthen it. I observed that while most educators in the field seemed to hold strong opinions related to key concepts in international education, there appeared to be little in the research to encourage them to assess how these beliefs may be shaping their research practices.

Methods

Following the completion of my own doctoral research, I became interested in how other doctoral researchers have investigated this field and how reflexivity has been addressed in their work. This study is part of a broader project based on that inquiry. The sample for this study consists of 103 doctoral dissertations, both EdD and PhD, published between 2011 and 2022. Between 2011 and 2014, the IB created bibliographies of published works on its programmes (IB 2012, 2013, 2014). From 2015 onward, external researchers compiled these bibliographies for the IB (Aklog, 2021, 2022, 2023; Dabrowski, 2016, 2017, 2018; Engel et al, 2015; Popușoi & Holman, 2019, 2020). Through these bibliographies I counted 149 doctoral dissertations, of which over 90% were written by people with previous IB experience. I could access 103 full-length dissertations, which became the sample for this study. A majority of the dissertations in this sample are from US universities, which may reflect both the dominance of US-based doctoral programmes and the IB’s current geographic reach. This geographic distribution is noted but is not a primary focus of this paper.

While the IB-funded bibliographies do not claim to be a comprehensive list of all works on the IB, and the methods for collection vary across years, they provide a publicly available record of IB-related doctoral work and are a useful starting point for identifying trends. In this stage of the project, I focused on these bibliographies to examine the dissertations I believed to be most visible within the IB’s documented research landscape. Although incomplete, this sample offers a strong basis for exploring the relative absence of reflexivity in this body of doctoral work and makes a case for more focus on reflexivity in the future.

Word searches through NVIVO for ‘reflexivity’ and ‘positionality’ were conducted. Relevant sections of text were saved and coded through NVIVO. I used content analysis approaches to organise by themes related to the first research question of this project: How have past doctoral students explored positionality and reflexivity through their projects?

The decision to focus on doctoral scholarship stemmed from the observed lack of reference to positionality and reflexivity within professionally published articles relating to the IB and/or international schools. While the absence of such trends is itself worthy of investigation, it is challenging to present evidence of something that has not occurred. Therefore, the focus of this research was chosen in order to review how these discussions are taking place at the doctoral level, with the aim of better understanding how reflexive practices may be established and strengthened collectively across the field.

In focusing on explicit references to positionality and reflexivity, this study does not suggest that there is only one way to practice reflexivity, as not all reflexive practices need to be shared with readers (Brown, 2022). However, given the apparent limited guidance on reflexivity in international education research, this study highlights explicit examples to showcase how positionality and reflexivity have been considered, to explore when it is being utilised, and to initiate a dialogue on how these practices may be encouraged within the field.

Findings: A review of how doctoral students on the International Baccalaureate engage explicit reflexive practices

In a review of 103 doctoral dissertations published between 2011 and 2022, approximately one-third of dissertations explicitly mentioned either ‘positionality’ or ‘reflexivity’. Twenty-three dissertations spoke of ‘reflexivity’ (22%) and 17 mentioned ‘positionality’ (17%), with six of these entries arising from researchers who used both concepts.

None of these mentions of positionality or reflexivity connected to research conducted by published researchers within international education. The most detailed discussions of positionality or reflexivity were found in dissertations that adopted theoretical frameworks emphasising the role of the researcher in knowledge production, such as phenomenology (see, eg, Bates, 2016; Hale, 2017; Campbell, 2019) or constructivism (eg, Saad Al-Din, 2014). For example, Hale (2017) adopted a phenomenological approach, leading to a direct engagement with her positionality alongside her participant, where they jointly explored Milner’s (2007) Race, culture, and researcher positionality: Working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. This was rare, as most researchers did not actively interrogate their positionality with participants. This finding suggests that while these terms have been engaged by some doctoral researchers, their usage is limited within the field of international education and, where used, researchers were drawing from other traditions and disciplines, such as sociology.

Positionality

No doctoral dissertation prior to 2015 mentioned positionality, indicating a possible shift more recently that has been influenced by broader trends in education research. For those where positionality was discussed, it was often found in a sub-section within methodology chapters entitled ‘Positionality’ (Campbell, 2019; Lu 2019; Newton-Woods, 2018; Preschern, 2021) or ‘Positionality statement’ (Khairallah, 2015: 22). These sections, ranging from one paragraph to several pages in length, explored researchers’ past professional experiences, similar to a short biography. ‘The researcher’s educational leadership career began as an administrator in a traditional school that became an authorised IB PYP school’, began one such section (Campbell, 2019: 8). This is a typical example of positionality statements, with most researchers using this space to explain their careers in education and, occasionally, how this led them to their doctoral project.

Most positionality passages provided detailed insights into where teachers came from, how they entered teaching and how they became involved in the IB specifically. When researchers came from a country other than where their research was located (Lu, 2019; Petrossian, 2020; Preschern, 2020), they were more likely to note this difference as opposed to researchers studying within their own home contexts who did not discuss how their similar nationality might impact their research. ‘As an international student who has been studying abroad for almost seven years in the United States, my position gives me a more profound understanding of international curricula. I finished my high school in mainland China, then I spent four years in Seattle for my undergraduate program’, began one statement (Lu, 2019: 9). Some researchers used positionality statements to locate themselves in terms of geographic insider or outsider status to their research in addition to introducing their own professional backgrounds in education.

Positionality was most often discussed as a tool to combat bias (Moskop 2022; Petrossian, 2020; Philbin, 2022). Positionality statements provided space for the researcher to share how, prior to the research, they may have influenced the school in which the research was undertaken, and to showcase their own personal connections to the site of research. For example, Campbell (2019) discussed how the case study school in her study had changed under her leadership and how it had received IB authorisation during that time.

As noted above, the IB does not run schools itself but authorises schools to offer one or more of their four educational programmes. Consequently, each school has some flexibility in terms of how the IB programmes are implemented. In addition to how Campbell used her positionality statement to show her relationship to both the school and the IB, other researchers used this section to explore how their past IB experiences might have coloured their research approaches. Two other practitioner-researchers (Glass, 2016; Khairallah, 2015) noted how their experience with the IB at one school might colour the way they viewed IB practices in other schools, and how they needed to be mindful of that point during their research. Yet such explicit positioning of the researchers’ IB experience was minimal across the sample population in this study.

Khairallah noted she ‘became a fan of the [IB] method’ (2015: 22), using her positionality subsection to note that she entered into the research with a pre-determined idea of the programming and wanted to explicitly be able to explore that through the research. Similarly, another researcher stated:

I acknowledge my bias toward [global citizenship] and [global citizenship education]. I believe GC is a vital part of the curriculum; however, I recognized I may have teachers in my study who disagree with me or come to their understanding and perceptions of both constructs from different perspectives. In all of these situations, I worked to keep my biases and perspectives at the forefront of my mind to maintain my willingness to view their influence while also keeping the ideas and perspectives of my participants at the center of my data collection and analysis’ (Christoff, 2020: 100).

While Christoff did not mention the IB specifically here, such a statement reflects how researchers’ preconceived notions of the values-infused international education programming could potentially shape the research.

There were other dissertations which spoke to similar ideas but did not explicitly use the term positionality. Some researchers included sections entitled ‘Role of the researcher’ (eg O’Dell, 2017; Petrossian, 2020). These sections provided similar biographical information that could be understood as speaking to positionality, yet were not counted here as this study focused on explicit uses of the term. But it is important to note that in some cases similar information is being conveyed through different terminology, which may also be explained by the fact that research on international education is taking place across six continents and through many different universities, making it difficult to find a standardised approach.

Reflexivity

The term reflexivity was more frequently mentioned here than positionality, although, as was the case with positionality, more recent dissertations were more likely to discuss it. Nearly 25% of dissertations published after 2015 mentioned reflexivity, as opposed to only 14% of dissertations published between 2011 and 2014. However, in many of these post-2015 dissertations, reflexivity was discussed only superficially. While it was beyond the scope of the study to assess the merits of each use of reflexivity, the majority of researchers did not define the concept nor explore in detail how such a reflexive practice contributed to their research. These mentions were often brief, with little explanation of what reflexivity entailed or how it was practiced. For instance, Glass mentioned documenting ethical and methodological dilemmas in a journal, which she explained offered ‘necessary attention to research reflexivity’ (2016: 43) but did not provide further details, including her understanding of what reflexivity is, or how she undertook reflexive practice. Unlike positionality, which was frequently included as its own subsection, reflexivity was most often included as a means to strengthen the research such as through validity (Duarte, 2013), trustworthiness (Augustine, 2020; Christoff, 2020; Glass, 2016), transparency (Outhwaite, 2016), or confirmability (Oladimeji, 2018).

In some cases, researchers alluded to a deeper reflexive practice without expanding on how they navigated it. Christoff (2020) mentioned reflexivity as part of a suite of strategies used to establish research trustworthiness, but did not delve into how reflexivity was integrated throughout their study: ‘In sum, I used triangulation, member checking, peer feedback, reflexivity, and an audit trail to build trustworthiness into my study. These strategies were essential to creating a research effort that is clear, credible, and sound’ (Christoff, 2020: 102). No clear examples were provided as to how reflexivity was processed throughout the research project beyond this line, or how these different approaches worked together to build trustworthiness.

Oladimeji (2018) acknowledged the effort to minimise bias by challenging pre-existing assumptions they held as an IB educator, but did not elaborate on what those assumptions were or how they were addressed during the research process. She later cites this ‘personal bias’ as a possible limitation of the research without providing any explicit examples as to how she mitigated it beyond acknowledging its possible existence.

While most dissertations treated reflexivity more as a term to include as opposed to a process to explore, two researchers did model reflexivity within their dissertation and in their conclusion chapters explored how it affected their research. Forrest reflected on how her role within an IB school might have influenced her research: ‘As the school’s Director of Specialist Programmes, I had strongly bought into the IB’s . . . view that student-centred teaching and explicit instruction of ATL [Approaches to Teaching and Learning] skills . . . have great potential to support students’ capacity to take ownership over their own learning’ (2019: 82). This acknowledgment in her conclusion indicates a critical self-awareness about how her professional role and alignment with the IB’s educational philosophy could have shaped her research trajectory and findings.

Another researcher (Duarte) also disclosed entering the research with a positive idea of the IB. Yet, Duarte notes ‘I did not know all the reasons why I favored the IB Diploma Programme’ (2013: 132). A reflexive practice woven through the research allowed Duarte to show the reader how this view developed and was challenged through his research. He later acknowledged the value of a faculty member’s advice to include non-IB teachers in his focus groups, recognising that this broadened perspective added ‘color, conflict, and richness’ to his study (Duarte, 2013: 132). This indicates an awareness of how his initial biases, which saw him only want to focus on the IB aspects within the case study school, could have limited the depth of his research, illustrating the importance of reflexivity in navigating such influences.

As was the case with positionality, in some cases researchers described actions that could be viewed as reflexive research practices without explicitly using the term. For example, O’Dell explicitly noted the challenge of managing their own enthusiasm for the IB’s philosophy: ‘I believe strongly in the importance of international mindedness for teachers and had to control that passion when interviewing my participants so that their answers were not influenced by my own beliefs’ (2017: 70). This statement underscores the potential for pre-existing beliefs to shape research outcomes, particularly in a field where educators often enter with a strong commitment to the IB’s values. This situation is compounded by the fact that many educators actively choose to transition from national education systems to teaching within the IB framework, fully embracing its content and values. Such a transition, often involving significant personal and professional commitments, makes the practice of reflexivity even more crucial in international education research. While this study primarily focused on how terms such as ‘reflexivity’ and ‘positionality’ are explicitly applied, it is relevant to include examples of such practices to illustrate alternative styles of reflexive engagement, especially if researchers in the field are to work towards a more explicit and collective reflexive approach to research.

Discussion

The findings from this review of 103 IB-focused doctoral dissertations reveal an emergent, yet limited, engagement with reflexivity and positionality within research on the IB. While recent years have seen an increase in the explicit mention of these concepts, their application in the sample that forms the basis of this study remains largely superficial. This trend suggests that while there is a growing awareness of the importance of reflexivity and positionality, there is still a notable gap in how these are integrated into international education research practices. Further, their use appears to be led by research traditions outside international education and no doctoral student in this study connected their reflexive practice to any conversation within international education. This relatively superficial treatment raises concerns about the depth of critical reflection being applied by practitioner-researchers, particularly in a field where personal and professional connections to the subject matter and shared ideologies are common.

Analysis of this data found that those who engaged in reflexive practices were likely influenced by their supervisors or departments, or the theoretical frameworks they adopted, rather than by the immediate field of international education research. Consequently, these students may be drawing upon reflexive practices from broader educational trends rather than from any precedent within IB research. This absence not only limits the critical depth of individual research projects but also suggests a missed opportunity for the field to establish more rigorous and reflexive research practices that speak to the challenges of conducting research on the IB and international schools, especially around access to schools, and relationships with both participants and the mission and values of the school and curriculum.

Findings from this study suggest that reflexivity is often more asserted than demonstrated. Many students treated reflexivity as a line item to enhance the perceived rigor of their research, rather than as a core methodological principle. The limited and superficial treatment of reflexivity points to a need for clearer guidance and more robust frameworks within the field to help researchers meaningfully engage with their positionality and reflexivity throughout the research process. These applications of reflexivity in IB research at the graduate level mirror the current professional landscape, where researchers who are more established often note that personal connections were used to gain access to participants, but few devote more than a few sentences, if that, to explore how their professional and personal backgrounds may have contributed to the research outputs. (For examples of this phenomenon, see Bailey, 2015; Harrison and Hou, 2023; Pham and Saltmarsh, 2013).

Given the constructivist underpinning of the IB’s educational programmes (McDonald-Lane, 2020), fostering a more developed reflexive practice among researchers—and within the field more broadly—might not require a significant shift. Instead, it may simply demand a more concerted collective effort to draw on existing themes and model ways in which reflexive practices can be amplified and supported. Further, considering that many within the first generation of researchers to develop research around the IB and international schooling, including those who have become best known in the field, such as Thompson, Peterson, Hill, and Walker, were also involved in the establishment of the IB’s pedagogy, mission and programming (Azzi, 2023; Eleftherakis, 2020), it would be even more important to collectively understand how researchers respond and reflect upon the values-infused practices of the IB programme.

This first generation of researchers, including the creator-researchers who were instrumental in establishing the IB as an educational movement as well as a research field, often concurrently, appear to have been notably silent around their own positionality to the research. For example, former IB Deputy Director General Ian Hill reflected on his time with the IB (2016), but barely touched on his role as one of the most prolific researchers in the field. Whatever the reason for this omission, it reinforces the silence around reflexivity from established creator-researchers and could signal to early career researchers that such positioning is not needed in this field.

That doctoral students in the field have had few examples to draw upon when considering their own practice is important as it shows that this ‘emerging’ field (Ben Jaafar et al, 2023) has not yet undertaken a discussion about the ways in which researchers are engaging with the field as both educators and researchers. This highlights a gap in the field’s collective reflexive practices and underscores the need for a more structured dialogue on how researchers' backgrounds and professional commitments influence their work. By encouraging more explicit and shared reflexive practices, the field of international education research can evolve toward greater transparency and depth in its scholarly contributions, which could only strengthen the research being produced.

While the field of international education research is still developing, the absence of established traditions may contribute to the inconsistencies in how reflexivity and positionality are addressed. The geographic dispersion of international education researchers further complicates the development of shared norms and practices. Moreover, the importance of reflexivity in international education is heightened by the unique dynamics of the field. Educators must opt-in to the IB’s model of international education, taking on board a willingness to embody and embrace the IB’s ‘deeper purpose’ (IB, 2019). This transition requires not only learning to teach a new programme but also a commitment to the IB as a ‘world social movement’ (Bagnall, 1994: 4). Given this context, reflexivity becomes crucial not just as a methodological tool but as a means of critically assessing how one’s professional identity and commitments may influence research. And, as noted above, this is not only an individual concern but also a collective question as researchers together inform the direction of the field. While the call for reflexivity in international education research is easy to make, it is far more challenging to consistently and transparently incorporate it across all stages of research.

Recommendations

This article aimed to examine the ways in which reflexivity and positionality have been practiced in research on the IB, suggesting that – on the basis of the doctoral dissertations analysed – there is little precedent for it in the field although there appears to be growing interest in exploring such approaches among doctoral researchers. Beyond recommending individuals spend more time reflecting and publishing examples of such reflexive practices, this article has highlighted the need for greater dialogue and perhaps even a framework for reflexive practices in the field of international education that encompasses IB research.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to propose a full framework, there are several topics such a framework should address including ways practitioner-researchers could examine the assumptions they bring to research based on their international experiences, such as what they assume makes a school international and how their personal beliefs in the mission and values of the IB may influence research design and other elements of the research process. A framework could also address how insider status may help researchers access the site, but could also explore potential weaknesses such as failing to adequately define concepts or ignoring ways in which power manifests between researchers and participants, especially if the researcher is known to participants. It would also be worth exploring how perceived power relations within international education, such as the privileged status of native-English speakers, may affect who is gaining access and where.

A final recommendation is that more established researchers in the field take more action to model reflexive practices, which might encourage deeper reflection from doctoral students and early career researchers, who may be interested in the topic but have so far had to draw from other fields for models of reflexive practice.

Conclusion

This study has identified a notable gap in the subfield of international education concerned with the International Baccalaureate: the absence of a collective discourse on the role of the researcher, particularly regarding reflexivity and positionality. By examining 103 doctoral dissertations on the International Baccalaureate (IB), this research explored how individual and collective reflexive practices are—or are not—integrated into the field. Despite the deep personal and professional connections many researchers have to international education, there is a noticeable lack of guidance on how these connections should be critically reflected upon within research practices. This gap is particularly striking given the nature of the IB community, where educators are expected to embrace the IB’s ‘deeper purpose’ and subscribe to an ideological worldview, which many carry into their research. While acknowledging the limited scope of this dataset, and without making claims for its generalisability, it seems likely that the concerns arising here merit consideration more widely.

Findings of this study reveal that while some researchers engage with reflexivity, this practice is far from universal and may often be treated as a peripheral component rather than a core or ingrained element of the research process. Reflexivity is frequently reduced to a brief mention, primarily to bolster the perceived soundness of the research, rather than being developed as an integral part of the methodology. This lack of emphasis may stem from the absence of a formalised framework within the specific subfield to guide researchers in navigating their positionality. As a result, reflexive practice may more often be driven by the interests of the doctoral researcher or supervisor, rather than a broader conversation within the IB research community.

The introduction of a reflexive framework would encourage a more collective understanding of how researchers’ personal and professional connections to the IB influence the research process. This is particularly important in a field where many researchers are also practitioners, deeply embedded in the very educational systems and ideologies they are studying. Without such a framework, the field risks perpetuating a culture where the researcher’s positionality is either overlooked or insufficiently examined, leading to research that may lack critical self-awareness. In conclusion, to advance the rigor and transparency of research on the IB and international schools, it is crucial to establish a collective framework that encourages deeper engagement with reflexivity and positionality, ensuring that researchers are equipped to critically assess how their own experiences and biases shape their scholarship.