What is the 'international' of the International Baccalaureate? Towards a periodization of IB in the world

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) has accomplished a significant orientation toward international education, pulling together curricula and assessment through both a highly-regarded K-12 continuum of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs for schools and professional consultative mechanisms across national educational jurisdictions. This study examines the shifting dynamics of IBO's institutional ideals and programmatic mandate for international education over the past forty years as IBO has responded to global transformations. IBO's institutional ideals are signified by the term "international understanding," as the originary "dream" of providing a forward-looking, liberal-humanist "education of the whole person." In tension with the dream is the mandate to ensure IB's internationally recognized standards of quality. IBO has defended its organizational sovereignty and educational policy autonomy; nevertheless dynamic processes of world wide change have exerted substantial pressures on the sense of the lead term, "International," in the International Baccalaureate. I define four historical periods through which to consider a broad and complex set of modifications in IBO's discursive commitments to "international," and its role as a conduit for international education. Heuristically, I have termed these four periods: embedded liberalism (1962-1974), a transitional period (1975-1989), ascendancy of neoliberal globalization (1990-2001), and the contemporary moment (2002-2007).;The progressive values and common educational framework contributing to an expanding global IB (learning) community offer significant opportunities toward realizing the enduring dream of IB. However, these opportunities remain complicated by global inequalities and a reductive neoliberal imaginary that have become more pronounced in the 21st century. IBO policy makers and international education researchers need to creatively consider comprehensive approaches to understanding the role of education in an interdependent and asymmetric world. The prospects for realizing the dream of IB depend upon how well IB actors can learn to critically intervene in the instrumentalizing of the progressive aims of international education under its expanding incorporation as an expedient in an Anglo-neoliberal-referenced world.;IBO's historical relationship to international education is a timely concern for contemporary debates on international educational policy and practice. In some ways, three basic tensions that have structured the "international" of IB---citizenship, curricular aims, and functional operation---are also tensions that beset the broader field of international education. The contentious "citizenship" tension largely dissolves for IBO as many governments themselves aim to internationalize their educational programs; although the desired attributes for the student-subject in the 21st century gain heightened attention. The "curricular" tension is slightly relieved with the instituting of the younger-aged IB programs in relation to the original content-heavy and centrally-examined IB Diploma. Additionally, the curricular tension is altered as the idealist "international understanding," ostensibly directed toward encouraging progressive learner dispositions, is seen to converge with the needs of a global "knowledge economy." The "operational" tension endures with the desire to broaden access to IB beyond, on the one hand, a socio-economically advantaged private school clientele in "developing" economies and, on the other hand, the appropriation of IB and "international" nomenclature in market-driven "choice" paradigms operating within state systems of schooling in the Anglo-West.