The research on international education – especially on aspects of its management – is generally modest, especially at the level of empirically consistent studies. Traditional analytical tools, anchored in the paradigm of methodological nationalism (e.g., Beck, 2007), which is particularly relevant in the research of education, turned to be out inadequate for researching international education (e.g., Resnik, 2012; Schippling, 2018). There is a need to “transnationalize our research practices” (Keßler & Szakács-Behling, 2020, p. 183) to grasp the complex reality of international education in which local, national, international and transnational dimensions are intertwined. 

Our contribution proposes a methodological-level reflection on researching the management of international education, taking the example of German Schools Abroad, which are supervised by the Central Agency for Schools Abroad. The mission of these schools, as part of the cultural and educational policy for abroad, is to provide an encounter with the society and culture of the host country, to secure and expand school provision for German children abroad and to promote the teaching of the German language in the foreign school system. 

Taking the example of German Schools abroad, the research seeks in particular to explore the implications of the intercultural encounter between German and national actors at the management level, as well as the gaps between the governance structures envisaged by German bodies and the de facto models practised in schools at the local level (Barroso, 1996; Lima, 2001) in their structure as public-private partnerships (Klingebiel, 2014). As such, they operate within a model that simultaneously combines degrees of autonomy and dependence between German state educational bodies and the private maintainers of schools at the local level. The German state supports schools through funding and the provision of teachers, while the responsibility for the management and financing of schools lies mainly with local sponsors. In this context, the tension between private school autonomy and external state control is an important feature of German Schools Abroad. 

In conclusion, our contribution aims to provide a critical reflection on researching politics of the management of international education via the example of German Schools Abroad in a global perspective, discussing adequate methodological tools to overcome research that is anchored in the paradigm of methodological nationalism.

The contribution is based on a qualitative empirical research design, focusing on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with political representatives of German institutions which are directly involved with Schools Abroad, carried out in January 2022. In total, nine interviews were carried out: one interview with a representative of the Federal Foreign Office (School Department), one interview with a representative of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policy, two interviews with a representative of the Federal-State Committee for School Work Abroad, one interview with a representative of the Central Agency for Schools Abroad, one interview with a representative of the Secretariat of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, one interview with a representative of the World Association of German Schools Abroad, one interview with a representative of the Association of German Teachers Abroad and one interview with a representative of the Working Group on Teachers Abroad in the Education and Science Workers' Union. The interviews comprised several aspects of German Schools Abroad, such as their mission, the concept of encounter, the different subjects involved in the schools, and school management practices and challenges. The analysis of the interviews is conducted using the documentary interpretation method (Bohnsack, 2010; Nohl, 2017, p. 16), a reconstructive empirical method that comprises two levels of knowledge reconstruction: (1) ‘communicative knowledge’ which consists of ‘opinions, valuations, theories of the everyday life and statements of the interviewees’ and (2) ‘conjunctive knowledge’ which includes an implicit or tacit knowledge as ‘personal experiences founded in the practice of action’. As the method seeks to reconstruct the “hidden attitudes of persons, delving beneath the surface of public discourse and political correctness” (Scheunpflug et al., 2016, p. 7) it holds fecund potential for analysing educational policies in their discursive complexity, which contains indeterminacy, ambiguity and contradiction.

This research provides, firstly, new insights into the management of international schools, via the example of German Schools Abroad in a global perspective, which is an area that is currently very little studied (Adick, 2018; Kühn & Mersch, 2015; Mägdefrau & Wolff, 2018). Secondly, the study opens up global comparative perspectives on the politics of school management as it focuses on German Schools Abroad in different regions of the world (e.g., Szakács-Behling et al., 2021). Thirdly, the contribution focuses on an innovative methodological reflection that shows the potential of the documentary interpretation method for analysing complex educational realities that are embedded in local, national, international and transnational contexts (e.g., Scheunpflug et al., 2016).

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