The role of community service-learning in international schools: a marginalized approach?

International schools have historically grappled with the fundamental dilemma of providing a high-quality curriculum and qualification supporting international mobility, while promoting a culture of peace and understanding. The internationalist (ideological)–globalist (pragmatic) spectrum of approaches can be applied to understand this dilemma. Historically being balanced towards the globalist (pragmatic) end of this spectrum, rapid growth of international education markets can be seen to further marginalize the internationalist (ideological) perspective. Community Service-Learning is a core pedagogical approach of many international schools, grounded in the ideological perspective and supporting the development of international mindedness and global citizenship. This same spectrum is applied in this paper to the Community Service-Learning literature in order to examine how instrumentalist and market forces of globalization are influencing the practice. It is concluded that Community Service-Learning programs in international schools similarly face a reconciliation of a dilemma between ideological and instrumentalist outcomes, with the scale tipped towards the latter.