Comparative Education and Training of International Baccalaureate Teachers

Introduction

In the United States, International Baccalaureate (IB) has expanded from a niche program in elite high schools to an increasingly popular approach to provide rigorous, globally oriented instruction to students in diverse urban public schools. Given IB’s global emphasis and the increasing diversity of students attending IB programs in the United States, the field of comparative education (CE) offers rich material for the preparation of IB teachers. The objectives of this entry are to offer lessons from CE that could be incorporated in the preparation of IB teachers in the United States and to describe aspects of the US experience that could be considered for IB programs in other parts of the world. Drawing on academic literature and IB-generated materials, the entry provides: (1) an overview of the growth and status of IB in the United States, including a discussion of how teachers are prepared to work in IB schools; (2) an introduction to the field of CE and its...