International mindedness and global citizenship are two key terms within international education, which underpin much of the discourse within the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. This article proposes how a participatory approach to education for international mindedness and global citizenship can help educators within international schools to encourage students to think critically about reality beyond their "ivory tower isolation", questioning the inequalities in the world that surrounds them. The article shows how the use of a critical, participatory pedagogy within the field of service learning can be employed in order to explore what global citizenship and international mindedness mean in the context of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. The article also proposes that this participatory, critical inquiry involves engaging students as researchers as an effective pedagogy in order to bring about new knowledge and understandings relating to the concepts of global citizenship and international mindedness.