Introduction

This volume presents the first-known investigation of the so-called diversity paradox, positing that diversity has become a tool for distinguishing and legitimating the concept of educated Western elites, and arguing for a major reconceptualization of diversity in different social and cultural contexts within international education.

Drawing on extensive and empirical studies of international school leadership, international school parents and pupils, institutional faculty, online sources and the author’s own wealth of experience teaching and leading in international contexts, the book investigates how this vision for education has emerged, contrasting it to both - how education is seen in other parts of the world, and how it has been conceptualised at other historical junctures. Exploring the positioning of teachers, academics and educational leaders in this discursive shift, chapters examine specific aspects of diversity, demonstrating how they have become areas of social conflict, serving to legitimise privilege in Western educational contexts while excluding other understandings of social cohesion and social inequalities. The book offers a novel approach to the analysis of international education by combining sociological and linguistic elements on which to base the argument.

Ultimately critiquing diversity as a rhetoric device that perpetuates structural and systemic inequalities, the book explores how diverse perspectives can be brought to discussion of diversity itself, and will therefore appeal to scholars, postgraduate students, and researchers in the fields of the sociology of education, international and comparative education, and higher education.