The elite international school is a rich site for sociological inquiry in global times. In this paper, we conceptualize the international school as a transnational space of agonist social class-making given the dynamic positioning of the complement of international school actors. We position international schoolteachers in the middle of these interactions and suggest that the middle position gives much-needed insight into the complex and relational qualities of class-making. To qualify our theorization of middling and social class-making in elite schools, we draw from interviews with Canadian teachers working in international schools in the Global South.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) emerged in the 1960s after a significant demand arose for an internationally recognized secondary school-leaving diploma among a subset of the international school community. In tension with the practical demands of producing and sustaining a mobile diploma were underlying liberal-humanist visions of a progressive model of schooling for 'international understanding' in an era of embedded liberalism. This article examines three structuring tensions (citizenship, curricular aims and operation) of the 'International' of IB and how they were managed by the IB Organization in the founding period (1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973).

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