ABSTRACT

In 2012, Ecuador signed an agreement to introduce the International Baccalaureate into the country’s public-schools. Once considered an emblematic policy of former president Correa’s administration, the initiative is now questioned and its future uncertain. This ethnographic study strives to write against the commonly invoked deficit narratives that attribute the initiative’s shortcoming to students’ dispositions. I considered how the practices and meanings that result from the encounter between the IB and the contextual arrangements of a public-school inhibited students’ abilities to successfully engage with the programme. I focused on the feelings of frustration and disengagement that emerge as students attempted to negotiate the material constraints present in their experiences of schooling and the promise of social mobility attributed to the IB. Based on these findings, I highlight the dangers of an initiative in which success is largely predicated on students’ agential responses to the constraints of their environments.

摘要

2012 年，厄瓜多尔签署了一项协议，将国际文凭课程引入该国的公立学校。该倡议曾被视为前总统科雷亚政府的标志性政策，但现在受到质疑，其未来也充满不确定性。这项民族志研究力图反对通常被引用的缺陷叙述，这些叙述将倡议的缺点归因于学生的性格。我考虑了 IB 与公立学校的情境安排之间的相遇所产生的实践和意义如何抑制学生成功参与该项目的能力。我专注于当学生试图就他们的学校教育经历中存在的物质限制和 IB 带来的社会流动性承诺进行谈判时出现的挫折感和脱离感。基于这些发现，我强调了一项倡议的危险性，在该倡议中，成功主要取决于学生对其环境限制的代理反应。