The continuous growth and development of ‘International Schooling’: the notion of a ‘transitionary phase’

Volume 38 of Compare included my paper (Bunnell, 2008) addressing the changing landscape of ‘International Schooling’. There, I had argued the case for identifying and predicting a ‘second phase’ of growth and development appearing, after a slow, gradual growth pattern evident since at least the 1960s. A decade later, it seems time to re-visit the situation, and discuss the emergent nature of this shifting scene especially as it was at that time, ‘relatively early in its development’ (Bunnell, 2008 p.416). In particular, the arena is now ripe for sociological inquiry (Resnik, 2012; Tarc and Mishra Tarc, 2015), and we can now add a sociological lens to my notion of there being two ‘phases’ of growth and development.