Unseen Forces or Ignoring Facts? Leadership Challenges in an International Baccalaureate School in Saudi Arabia

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Maysam Al Msharrafieh

• Leadership in an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Saudi Arabia faces plenty of challenges that prevent student learning, especially in the Diploma Program (DP). Recognizing the effects of culture on school leadership practices in this context, this capping paper identifies leadership aspects that can support better student learning and achievement. The paper focuses on the importance of cultural awareness, distributed leadership, and leaders’ ability to navigate the complexities of the Saudi Arabian culture while balancing the expectations of the international and national community. The challenges leaders face in this context include the need for sex segregation, managing parents’ expectations, and marketdriven goals. The paper brings to the forefront the leadership development program offered by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) to support leaders in multicultural school contexts. Leaders’ contextual literacy and the distributed leadership approach are characteristics that foster overall school success. The paper concludes that leaders’ flexibility, adaptability, and cultural awareness are perspectives that enhance student learning in IB
  schools.

• Date created

  2024-04-26

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Leadership
  • International Baccalaureate school
  • Saudi Arabian culture
  • contextual literacy
  • cultural awareness
  • distributed leadership
  • adaptability

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-vqeq-vt26

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International