The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the construction of pedagogic identity: A preliminary study

Abstract

Bernstein (1999, 2000) proposes that contrasting educational discourses construct contrasting retrospective, prospective, decentred (market) and decentred (therapeutic) pedagogic identities. In different times and geographical locations the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) has been projected onto a variety of pedagogic identities. In its earliest years there appears to have been vacillation between a weak form of retrospective identity, expressed as nostalgia for a grouped curriculum that prevailed before the introduction of A level in England, and an educational discourse projecting selected elements of the past into the future. A ‘progressive’ decentred therapeutic identity, exemplified by the IB Learner Profile, is the version the IB currently appears to project. However, this article proposes that the IB is assailed by market forces and that the IB DP is being driven towards a decentred (market) identity.