Characteristics that define a top international school according to stakeholder perspectives. A Thai case study

Characteristics that define a top international school
according to stakeholder perspectives. A Thai case study

International schools have been around for more than 100 years (Thompson, 2018) but it is in the last 20 years that they have experienced a boom in growth (Gaskell, 2016). This recent boom has resulted in many more current students receiving an international education than at any other period in history. The resulting implication is that research in the international school market has lagged behind the commercial growth of international schools (Lee, Hallinger & Walker, 2012). The purpose of this research is to improve current knowledge of international schools by identifying the ten most important items in international schools as reported by three different stakeholder groups (administrators/teachers, parents and students).

Due to a lack of research in this area, a readily available research tool was not available to the researcher. It became therefore imperative that the researcher developed a tool for this process and the tool was created through interviews and utilization of a Delphi framework. The creation of this tool resulted in a questionnaire with 68 possible items; it was then trialled via a pilot study so the tool could be improved. These improvements were implemented and the tool was utilised to receive information from the three stakeholder groups associated with the case study school.

These results were then compared for similarities and differences between the three stakeholder groups. It was found that these groups were not statistically
independent on 46 items, and that two or more groups were statistically independent on 22 items. This indicated that for most items the different stakeholder groups
shared a common perspective on their relative importance. The research results were then analysed to identify the top ten items as reported by each of the three stakeholder groups. There was much similarity in the results with four items appearing in each stakeholder group’s top ten and six items appearing in two out of three stakeholder groups’ top ten.