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Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
7-4-2026
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
College
Education
Department/School/Program
Educational Leadership Studies
Faculty
John Nash
Abstract
International schools allocate substantial resources to implement progressive curricular innovations; however, the advantages offered by these developments are contingent on their effective execution within classroom settings. This mixed methods action research (MMAR) study examined the implementation of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Global Context (GC) Strategy in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) at an international school in China and asked how the school might strengthen its capacity to enact this and similar innovations. Following a sequential MMAR design, a reconnaissance phase combined a whole-staff survey (n=87) with qualitative interviews to diagnose the individual, organizational, and contextual factors shaping implementation. Analyses identified two educator subpopulations with distinct needs and showed that enactment depended less on willingness to use GCs than on conceptual readiness, self-efficacy, operational clarity, and the visibility of practice.
Using Intervention Mapping, these findings informed the design of a self-paced, web-based intervention targeting informed adoption readiness, the upstream condition on which the frequency, quality, and self-efficacy of use were found to depend. An evaluation phase compared pre- and post-intervention surveys (n=33) alongside open-ended qualitative responses. The intervention produced moderate gains in clarity, conceptual understanding, perceived subject fit, and intention to prioritize GCs, and teachers' definitions of readiness became more concrete and design oriented. Methodologically, the study is among the first to integrate Century and colleagues' Innovation Critical Components approach and Factor Framework with Implementation Mapping, offering a replicable approach for diagnosing and acting on implementation capacity in schools. The findings suggest adopting readiness as a key implementation outcome, highlights the importance of relational and distributed leadership in heterarchical schools, and identifies teacher preparation as a valuable space for fostering global teaching dispositions.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.337
Archival?
Archival
Recommended Citation
Hayden, Christopher J. IV, "ENHANCING INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION CAPACITY: SUPPORTING CONTEXTUALIZED LEARNING AT AN INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE SCHOOL IN CHINA" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies. 79.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/edl_etds/79
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