The International Baccalaureate® (IB) is a non-profit educational foundation, motivated by its mission to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. IB views global mindedness at the core of its programmes and seeks empirical evidence of the extent to which its programmes contribute to secondary students’ global mindedness.
For this study, STS conducted a six-country study of IB students’ global mindedness. Specifically, STS tested the adequacy of the psychometric and cross-cultural properties of World Values Survey items, using extant World Values Survey data and pilot data from IB secondary students. STS then used a final set of survey items to collect operational data from IB secondary students in six countries—Australia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. STS examined associations between IB students’ global-mindedness levels and their interaction with the IB program. We also benchmarked IB students’ global-mindedness levels against those of young adults in the same countries. Finally, STS explored other factors that might moderate global-mindedness levels in IB students, including response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of this study will help IB better understand levels of global mindedness among students in schools that offer IB programmes.
