Assessing the Disparities of School Internationalization among Metropolitan, Semi-urban, and Rural Areas

As the global emphasis on school internationalization extends from higher education to primary and secondary schools, addressing potential disparities across geographic locations is critical for educational equity. While existing studies suggest that metropolitan areas outperform rural areas with small-scale data, this highlights the need for large-scale analysis and further investigation of semi-urban areas. This study focuses on four indicators of school internationalization: Internationalization Goals, Campus and Administration Internationalization, Personnel and Curricula Internationalization, and International Partnerships, to assess the implementation of school internationalization among metropolitan, semi-urban, and rural areas. A total of 3,226 school administrators from primary and secondary schools in Taiwan were participants. The data were analyzed using multi-group latent mean structural analysis to assess the level of school internationalization and compare different areas. The results reveal that schools in metropolitan areas demonstrate higher levels across all indicators than in semi-urban and rural areas. However, semi-urban schools outperformed rural schools on only two indicators, namely Campus and Administration Internationalization and Personnel and Curricula Internationalization, but not on Internationalization Goals and International Partnerships. These findings and their implications for improving the implementation of school internationalization are also discussed.