Reflections on the Development of Comparative Education
Val D. Rust, UCLA
Brian Johnstone, UCLA
Carine Allaf, UCLA
This essay deals with our reflections on the development of the field of comparative
education. We ask three major questions. What are its beginnings? Where has it gone? Where is
it going?
The Beginnings of Comparative Education
Beginnings are often vague, ill defined, and tangled. Accounts of a beginning are often
best associated with the mind of the story teller than the thing itself, and so it is with reports of
the beginning of comparative education. Some people are satisfied with vague generalities. And
so, comparative education began during a shadowy time in antiquity, when descriptive tales of
“useful lessons from foreign practices” were brought home by travelers to foreign parts, by
“amateurs,” who happened to take note of an exotic educational situation or school in another
culture (Noah & Eckstein, 1969). It is believed to have begun in the West when classical Greeks
1
such as Pindar, Herodotus, Xenophon, Cicero and Julius Caesar described educators and
education in lands beyond their own borders (Fraser & Brickman, 1968).
In this context, the origins of comparative education are “ancient” and associated more
with an art, in that those practicing it were concerned with the practice of learning and teaching
(Hilker, 1962). Stewart E. Fraser and William W. Brickman, remind us of a “growing awareness
of the monumental comparative writings of previous centuries” related to comparative and
international education (Brickman & Fraser, 1968). One task comparative educators have is to
catalogue these writings in some systematic form.
Even the origins of the term “comparative education” are a bit muddled. As early as
1785, Thomas Jefferson made reference to “comparative advantages of an American rather than
a European Education” (Jefferson, 1785), but the actual term was likely first used by William
Russell in 1826, in his translation of Marc-Antoine Jullien’s questions on l’éducation comparée,
written in 1816-17. Thus, Jullien may have been the first to use the term, at least in the French
language. In 1888-89, William T. Harris made reference to “a science of comparative
pedagogy,” suggesting that the term “comparative education” had not been universally accepted
in Americans by that time (Harris, 1889). The Germans continue to debate whether the term
should be Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft (comparative educational sciences) or
Vegleichende Pädagogik (comparative pedagogy) (Hilker, 1962; Schneider, 1961).
In 1816-17 Marc-Antoine Jullien began perhaps the first documented initiative in the
field of comparative education. He recommended that nation states collect data and catalogue
educational conditions through questionnaires he would design that would be reviewed by a
special committee, composed of experts from various countries. This information would then be
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shared by countries and serve as a frame of reference for formulating educational reform policy
in various countries (Fraser, 1964).
Comparative Education and the Academy
For most scholars, comparative education began when it became recognized in the
modern academy, with its growing orientation toward specialization and scientific investigation.
Comparative education did not appear as a subfield of education until educational studies were
adopted by teacher training institutions and universities.1 With university programs in education
came appointments of faculty devoted to comparative education, courses in comparative
education, textbooks for comparative education students, and academic journals that published
research findings and self-reflections on the field. Thus, comparative education is popularly
believed to have begun in 1899, when Teachers College, Columbia University in the United
States developed the first course in comparative education one year after Teachers College
became a part of Columbia University (Bereday, 1963). Curiously, George Bereday, who had
already published James Russell’s syllabus of the 1899 course, stated that the tradition of
comparative and international studies at Teachers College dates back to World War I, with the
publication of the first textbook in comparative education by Peter Sandiford (Sandiford, 1918).
That textbook, of course, was titled Comparative Education (Bereday, 1960). As was the case
with Sandiford’s edited volume, almost all of these early textbooks introduced university
1 The first professors of education were appointed in Scotland in 1876. Simon Somerville Laurie received the
appointment at Edinburgh and John Miller Dow Meiklejohn at St. Andrews. William H. Payne was the first in the
United States in 1879 at the University of Michigan. At the time of his appointment, William H. Payne had been
serving as the superintendent of Adrian School District in Michigan, and it is significant that the very first lectures
he gave at the University of Michigan were on the schools and the educational systems of Europe. Of course, the
term comparative education was not in use at the time. See, (Payne, 1887)
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students to comparative education as the notion of “education in” this or that country or world
region (Bereday, 1963).
The first journal devoted to comparative education was begun by Friedrich Schneider, a
professor at Köln University in Germany, who in 1931 established the Internationale Zeitschrift
für Erziehungswissenschaft (International Review of Educational Sciences). In the first edition,
Schneider outlined what he felt was the history, system, method, purposes, and contributions of
comparative education, and he attempted to establish a terminological base from which the
discipline would function (Schneider, 1931/32).
Some scholars set the beginning of the field with the formal establishment of professional
associations dedicated to comparative education. The first such organization was initially named
the Comparative Education Society, and its constitution was ratified in 1956, though its name
would later be changed to its current title, Comparative and International Education Society
(CIES). In that same year, a formal journal, the Comparative Education Review, was established
by CIES, intending to provide an outlet to scholars of research and reviews of works appearing
in the field.
The senior author of this essay, Val Rust, had a personal experience with beginnings,
related to doctoral students in the field, who would be expected to take over university
appointments as specialists in comparative education. Even though university appointments had
been made prior to doctoral programs in the field, these appointments consisted of people who
had been trained in fields other than comparative education. The foundations of the field of
comparative education were established by scholars representing historical and humanistic
inclinations, including historians Isaac Kandel, Friedrich Schneider, Nicholas Hans, Robert
Ulich, Andreas Kazamias, Claude A. Eggertsen, and William Brickman, and scholars who rely
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on what Robert Cowen calls “the culturalist motif,” such as Joseph Lauwerys, W. D. Halls,
Vernon Mallinson, and Edmund King. Of course, there were good early comparative education
scholars whom we identify with the more conventional disciplines within the social sciences,
including C. Arnold Anderson in sociology, Philip Foster, and Harold Noah in economics.
Interestingly, Max Eckstein is so closely identified with Harold Noah that his name is usually
connected with Noah’s orientation, although Eckstein comes from a literature and humanities
background.
Val D. Rust’s own doctoral advisor, Claude A. Eggertsen, mentioned above, was born in a
little railroad junction in Utah known as Thistle in Spanish Fork Canyon. At Thistle, his father was a
railroad man, but he saw to it that Claude had the preparation necessary to go to College at Brigham
Young University where he studied history, then to Stanford University, then the University of
Minnesota, and finally he moved to the University of Michigan where he established himself as a
prominent historian of American education. World War II had a profound impact on his life and
upon returning to his office in Ann Arbor, he felt cramped by his field of research: it was too small,
too confined, too limited. He embarked on the field of comparative education, transforming himself
from a student of America to a student of the world (V. D. Rust, 1987).
Influences Across Cultures
It is unfortunate that many of those explaining early academic comparative educationists
have been so locked into a certain view of scholarship that they have tended to discount early
versions of the field or cast them as inferior and defective. It has been difficult for them to
recognize that even “amateur” traveler’s tales had their virtues and value. Academic comparative
educators have tended to judge so much of the nineteenth century comparative education studies
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as inferior in that it was “utilitarian” filled with “description,” “without reasoned analysis” and
“eulogistic” (Templeton, 1954). These academic assessments were quite accurate about the
nature of these comparative works. They were indeed utilitarian, practical, and oriented toward
the general improvement of schools and educational systems. But the studies have been harshly
judged because they reflected a type of comparative study that is not common in the field today.
That is, they focused on what might today be referred to as “influences across cultures.” In fact,
there are contemporary academic fields of study, including comparative literature, that rely
almost exclusively on this type of activity. Comparative literature scholars are certainly
humanities oriented, but their basic quest has strong science overtones in that they attempt to
unravel interrelationships between individuals, schools of thought, or national literatures across
time and space. In terms of time, comparative literature specialists wish to chart how German
Catholic literature influenced German classicism and how it, in turn, influenced romanticism;
how Shakespeare changed English literature; and how modern European literature is in debt to
Greek and Latin literature. In terms of space, the comparative literature scholar wishes to trace
the movement of themes and genres from place to place: how religious themes in Switzerland
migrated to the Netherlands, then to America; how Tolstoi, Emerson and Thoreau influenced
Indian writers in South Asia; how Africa incorporates European writing styles; how the Don
Juan archetype moves from culture to culture (Highet, 1992; Weisbuch, 1989).
Just as in the field of comparative literature, “influences across cultures” is a definite and
wonderful part of the comparative education heritage that ought to be more highly prized and
appreciated than it sometimes is. Comparative education specialists could make a great
contribution to the field’s work by paying attention to historical and contemporary endeavors.
The work of countries such as Norway, in terms of national reform policy formation, has been
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especially significant. In the Norwegian educational reform tradition, for example, a commission
has usually been established either by Parliament or a Department of the government to study the
situation and make recommendations for change. Their recommendations have come in the form
of white papers, and, from their inception in the 1840s, these commissions have always
described relevant conditions in all Scandinavian countries, the rest of Western Europe and even
North America that served as options for consideration of alternative courses of action and
models for potential adoption (V. D. Rust, 1990). By exploring the ‘external’ educational world,
Norway was able to make appropriate and useful improvements to their own educational system.
Just as Norway looked to other European countries, the United States also took a vested
interest in Europe, developing relationships with France, Germany, and England. The American
involvement in Prussia was part of a general swell of interest throughout Europe in the 1830s and
40s initiated mainly through the report of a French scholar, Victor Cousin, who had been sent to
Germany by the French Ministry of Education in 1831. Sarah Austin's English translation in
London of Cousin's report in 1834 found its way to the United States and served as a trumpetcall for a general exodus of educators and statesmen from the United States to Europe, in
particular to Prussia. Indeed, Burke A. Hinsdale eventually came to write that Cousin's report
“produced results, direct and indirect, that far surpass in importance the results produced by any
other educational volume in the whole history of the country” (Hinsdale, 1906).
Of course it was utilitarian, descriptive and eulogistic. Following a trip to Europe, Calvin
E. Stowe returned to America to declare before the Ohio legislature that the Prussian educational
system was no “visionary scheme,” but represented a program of instruction “in the best school
districts that have ever been organized” (Stowe, 1930). Alexander Dallas Bache returned to
America from a two-year study of European schools to report that Prussian primary education
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was the “most perfect of the centralized systems” (Bache, 1839). Horace Mann, Secretary of the
Board of Education of the State of Massachusetts from 1837-1848, stated in his Seventh Annual
Report: “Among the nations of Europe, Prussia has long enjoyed the most distinguished
reputation for excellence of its schools” (Mann, 1844). The same praise was expressed by the
Superintendent of Common Schools in Connecticut, Henry Barnard, who claimed that the
Prussian schools had “attained a degree of excellence, which has attracted attention of statesmen
and commanded the admiration of intelligent educators in every part of Christendom” (Barnard,
1854).
Comparative educator Isaac Kandel would certainly have condemned such accounts of
Prussian education because he felt they were permeated with “mere descriptions of
administration, organization, and practices… written wholly from the point of view of education
alone, without any closely reasoned analysis of what the systems stood for or represented in the
field of national progress and development…; they were in general not prepared in the light of
their bearing on specific American problems, or, if they were prepared with this end in view,
sufficient allowances were not made for differences in national environments” (Kandel, 1930).
Such condemnations, including that of Kandel, took these reports out of context and
discounted the acute awareness American educational specialists had of the situation in Prussia.
The recommendations of the American reports were not universally accepted by American
policy makers, who opposed adoption of the Prussian schools, because the schools were seen to
be used by the Prussian state to perpetuate monarchical aims and to check the growing
revolutionary spirit within the boundaries of that Prussian state. In response to this challenge, the
reformers quickly admitted there was a relationship between Prussian schools and despotism.
Calvin E. Stowe openly conceded that the whole educational program of Prussia was “to unite
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with the military force which always attends despotism, a strong moral power over the
understanding and affections of the people” (Stowe, 1930). However, the American reformers
countered this negative argument by stating that the evils were naturally separable from the
good. Horace Mann maintained that if the Prussian schoolmaster could teach reading, writing,
geography, and arithmetic in half the time that was required in America, then surely they could
“copy his modes of teaching these elements, without adopting his notions of passive obedience
to government” (Mann, 1844). He argued that human faculties were the same everywhere. The
best means for their growth and development would therefore also be the same, and good schools
can be used to strengthen the democratic and republican spirit in America. Certainly, context and
analysis mattered to the American school reformers who were engaged in comparative education
study.
Comparative educators have been sensitive to foreign influences on education; as
comparative education became an academic field, its founders were generally more sensitive
about the possibilities of drawing on foreign models with the purpose of “perfecting national
systems with modifications and changes” than of including past influences from abroad in their
own analyses of a nation’s educational system (Hans, 1955). Clearly, early comparative studies
were intended to make a direct contribution to the American common school movement that led
to the establishment of an American school system. Consequently, the American common school
was almost an exact copy of the Prussian Volksschule. Curiously, these American reformers
often retained the French terms used by Cousin. Consequently, the American normal school is a
replica of the German teacher training seminar, though the term we use is French.
Fortunately, these types of early, pre-academic comparative education activities have not
disappeared from our current academic activities. Some important work has been done in
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comparative education circles related to tracing influences in educational change and reform.
Harry Armytage, for example, has written four books tracing the influence of America, France,
Germany, and Russia on English education (Armytage, 1967, 1968, 1969a, 1969b). Frederick
Schneider devoted most of his period of exile in Nazi Germany tracing the influences of German
education on other countries (Schneider, 1943). Even though his choice of topics is
understandable, given the National Socialist context within which he was working, his
contribution to “influences” remains significant. Some of the work of the senior author of this
essay has focused on the reciprocal influences on education between Germans and Americans
(V. D. Rust, 1967, 1968, 1997). In fact, Rust’s own dissertation represents one of the few studies
of a single country’s historical interest in education beyond the borders of that country (V. D.
Rust, 1967).
Fortunately for specialists in comparative education, significant contemporary work is
being engaged in relation to “influences across cultures” at least in borrowing terms. Recently,
scholars at Oxford University, under the leadership of David Phillips have engaged in a process of
conceptualizing what goes on in the “borrowing” process between nations, particularly as they
relate to policy formation and implementation (D. Phillips & Ochs, 2003). The Oxford framework
is not dissimilar to that developed by Rust in his study of educational policy formation and the
implementation process in Norway, which involve a series of phases: initiation study, consensusbuilding, legal framework and implementation (V. D. Rust, 1989).
Phillips and his colleagues have engaged in a large number of case studies, both
geographically and historically that demonstrate part or all of the borrowing process (D. Phillips,
2004). These Oxford scholars have been joined by people such as Gita Steiner-Khamsi at Teachers
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College, Columbia University, who is concerned not only with the borrowing process but also the
lending process (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004).
The borrowing process has gone on as long as there have been separate administrative
units that have maintained relations with each other. It is not clear how globalization provides
special contextual and circumstantial issues to be dealt with. Most of the borrowing that has been
documented has been between nation states or between systems of education in the modern age.
With the emergence of transnational conditions within the context of globalization, new models
are yet to be developed that illuminate the borrowing and lending process in education, as will be
discussed in the final section of this essay.
Comparative Education as a Scientific Enterprise
If there is a common theme that runs through the history of comparative education, at
least as an academic field, it is its quest to be a science. Such a quest is also reflected in the
whole field of educational studies. In 1887, the first American professor of education, William
H. Payne, posed the specific nature of the issue, by noting “education is chiefly an empirical art.”
There is “no science of education” but a major purpose of the field in higher education “is the
development of educational science” (Payne, 1887). This is not just an American issue. We
noted earlier that some Germans have preferred to use the term comparative pedagogy, because
it reflects a middle ground between the idealistic and the realistic, an educating art, an empirical
art, the contradictory notion of the “art of science.” Our own position related to comparative
education is that it has never been devoid of science impulses. Even the pre-academic practice
comparative education, which we refer to as “influences across cultures,” has clear scientific
dimensions.
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Comparative education must be viewed as one of a number of comparative fields of study
that have emerged at the time science was becoming a part of academic studies. Comparative
fields of learning were seen to emerge in the life sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries AD, as subfields of anatomy, paleontology, and embryology, but they quickly
expanded to almost every field coming into existence. In fact, some of these fields, including
2
sociology, were initially identified as comparative in nature. In 1905, Louis Henry Jordan, wrote
a large volume entitled Comparative Religion, where he extolled no less than twenty six
comparative fields, claiming that the common property of all these fields was their “distinctive
methodology.” That is, they all used the scientific method and aimed “to expound those
fundamental laws of relation.” And, according to Jordan, comparative education was one of the
more exemplary of these “scientific” comparative fields, because “no method of inquiry has
proved more fruitful of wise suggestions.”
3
If the example of Jordan serves us, we see that as comparative education entered the
academy, it had already been identified with being a science. We must consider methods,
methodology, and epistemology related to comparative education in the context of the broad
landscape of higher education and mainly in the context of science. The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, for example, deals with the meaning of the terms method and methodology under
the heading scientific method (Edwards, 1967).
2 Auguste Comte, father of sociology, initially named the field “comparative sociology.” See, (Compte, 1988)
3(Jordan, 1905) 35. The fields Jordan discussed were Comparative Anatomy, Comparative Philology,
Comparative Grammar, Comparative Education, Comparative Philosophy, Comparative Psychology,
Comparative History, Comparative Geography, Comparative Antiquities, Comparative Art, Comparative
Architecture, Comparative Agriculture, Comparative Forestry, Comparative Statistics, Comparative
Ethnology, Comparative Mythology, Comparative Sociology, Comparative Hygiene, Comparative
Hygiene, Comparative Physiology, Comparative Zoology, Comparative Jurisprudence, Comparative
Economics, Comparative Colonisation, Comparative Civics, and Comparative Politics.
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The terms are inextricably associated with intentions of academic fields to be scientific.
Bernard S. Phillips echoes most texts dealing with social science research as he defines the
scientific method as “(1) defining problems so as to build on available knowledge, (2) obtaining
information essential for dealing with these problems, (3) analyzing and interpreting these data in
accordance with clearly defined rules, (4) communicating the results of these efforts to others”
(B. S. Phillips, 1976). Robson also claims research strategies usually involve four levels: (1)
research design, (2) methods of data collection, (3) analysis of the data, (4) and interpretation and
implications of the analysis (Robson, 1993). There is a crucial difference between the terms
methodology and methods in our research. The first and last of the strategies noted by Phillips
and Robson rely so heavily on conceptual issues that they are mainly methodological in nature
while only the second and third levels deal explicitly with methods.
When we refer to research methodologies, we refer to the larger context for methods
being applied. In addition, methodologies usually have theoretical implications in that they
provide theories of how research does or should proceed. There is a long methodological
tradition in comparative education. The first academic comparative education scholars, such as
Isaac Kandel, Nicholas Hans, and Friedrich Schneider, argued that education can only be
understood within the context of broad economic, political, cultural, and social forces of a
country. And their methodology demanded that educational systems not only be described in
detail, but that the meaning of educational phenomena be derived by interpreting the economic,
political, cultural, and social conditions that defined the educational systems (Hans, 1955;
Kandel, 1933; Schneider, 1961). This deems that education is not a separate or isolated aspect of
society – rather it is deeply rooted within a society’s political, cultural, and economic conditions.
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As education came to be caught up in the drive to be more scientific, the methodological
debates shifted to issues of the social sciences. One of the main issues comparative education
scholars such as Brian Holmes and George Bereday argued over was whether research should
proceed inductively or deductively (Bereday, 1960; Dewey, 1910; Holmes, 1965; Popper, 1963).
The early scholars noted in the preceding paragraph took for granted that the process was
inductive. Educational systems were described and then interpreted from the broader economic,
political, cultural, and social context. Bereday’s comparative methodology was also inductive in
that it began with descriptions of two or more countries; then these systems were interpreted
from the broader context. The next phase was to juxtapose the data for the countries. Finally, this
data was compared. Clearly, their methodology was inductive in nature. Brian Holmes
challenged this tradition by relying on people such as John Dewey and Karl Popper to expound
on his so-called hypothetico-deductive approach to research and he criticized his colleagues for
their tendency to begin the research process with descriptions of educational phenomena and
only arrive at theory at a later stage in the process. This discussion is not dead and continues as a
methodological issue in the debate over so-called grounded theory (Strauss & Glasser, 1967).
Methodologies are also related to the selection of research methods. The choice of data
collection ought to be made on theoretical grounds and what data sources provide the most
compelling evidence. This is particularly the case with regard to when and to what degree
research ought to be qualitative or quantitative in nature (Crossley & Vulliamy, 1984; Heyman,
1979; Masemann, 1976). This issue focuses on the uses put to research. Robert Stake explains
the different orientations of those doing qualitative research as opposed to those doing
quantitative research: “Quantitative researchers have pressed for explanation and control;
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qualitative researchers have pressed for understanding the complex interrelationships among all
that exists” (Stake, 1995).
Comparative education methodological issues also deal with the degree to which studies
ought to be descriptive, interpretive or prescriptive, or whether it ought to be melioristic,
ideological, or strictly neutral (Kazamias, 1961), or the degree to which studies ought to be
problem based (Holmes, 1965). Other methodological concerns involve the relationship between
action and research, the relationship between the researcher and the object of research,4 or
whether a single perspective or multiple perspectives are more appropriate (Kellner, 1988).
Methods have to do with how we collect and analyze data. When one decides on the
methods of data collection, one is asking the following questions: what kind of information is
being sought, from what sources, and under what circumstances? When one decides on how to
analyze the data, one is deciding how to make sense out of the data that has been collected.
Science was particularly important in the development of comparative studies, and early
comparative scholars uniformly identified their field as one which relied on the use of the
scientific method. In the more general scientific sense, comparative scholars tested hypotheses
about causal relations between phenomena. However, from the beginning comparative scholars
also restricted their scientific research in two ways. First, they examined similarities and
differences between phenomena or classes of phenomena. Second, whereas science was
generally committed to experimentation as a way of making classifications and testing theory,
the comparative scholar relied almost entirely on studying variations in the natural setting.
We make no claim that comparative education studies are fundamentally different from
social sciences in general. In fact, all social sciences are comparative in nature, at least insofar as
4 There are some wonderful essays from feminists about the dilemmas they face in international work. See, for
example, (Cook & Fonow, 1991; Wolf, 1996)
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all thought, especially considering that scientific thought is comparative in nature. The major
complication of comparative studies is that it involves the analysis of “dissimilar units” (different
societies and cultures) (Smelser, 1976). In comparative education the unit of analysis is usually
the educational system or a subset of that system in two or more nation states (Thomas, 1998).
We recognize that no single research method or methodology has ever characterized the field of
comparative education. Isaac Kandel, in his classic work, Comparative Education, explained that
"the methodology of comparative education is determined by the purpose that the study is to
fulfill." In other words, Kandel assumed that different questions require somewhat different ways
of answering them. However, our research projects at UCLA have confirmed that the types of
research strategies available to people such as Kandel were rather limited, in that they focused
mainly on historical and humanistic strategies.
Comparative Education Matures
Since comparative education entered the academy, it has undergone great change. In
general, this change represents increasing complexity and diversity in the field. Such change
represents both advantages and disadvantages, which we intend to discuss and interpret.
1.
Internationalization of Comparative Education
Comparative education began as an academic field in the United States, but quickly
developed a presence in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and other European countries. This
Eurocentric situation remained the major base of the field until the last quarter of the twentieth
century, when programs and professorships rapidly began to expand to other parts of the world.
Erwin Epstein refers to this process as the internationalization of comparative education
(Epstein, 1981). The expansion of the field is best illustrated by the growth of the World Council
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of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) that was organized in 1970 to advance the field
globally. WCCES has held 12 world congresses, the last being held in Havana, Cuba in 2004. At
the time this essay was written in 2007, 33 different comparative education societies are listed as
members of the World Council.5 In the literature, a number of accounts are found of comparative
education in specific areas of the world. The United States claims the earliest account of its
association origins (Templeton, 1954), but there are also historical accounts of comparative
education in Japan, of Mainland China, of India, of Germany (V. D. Rust, 1967), of the former
Soviet Union, of Europe in general (Cowen, 1980), and other geographic units. Gary
Tsuchimochi claims comparative education in Japan was a direct outgrowth of World War II,
when the Japanese wished to gain access to the educational advantages the West presented to
them (Tsuchimochi, 1982). Sureshchandra Shukla also feels India’s interest in comparative
education sprang from it colonial past, but also from an interest in understanding the educational
conditions of its neighbors in China, Indonesia, and elsewhere (Shukla, 1983). The Chinese
Comparative Education Society was established in 1979 with the intention that the Chinese
educational community break away from its isolation with the rest of the world, so that it would
learn from developments elsewhere, but also to disseminate research findings about educational
developments in China (Chen, 1994). The former Soviet Union encouraged the development of
comparative education within its sphere of influence, but its intentions were unique among
comparative educators. It used education as a tool of propaganda in that the West was willing to
publish articles written by Soviets, even though these articles glorified developments in the
Soviet Union and castigated the West for is decadent, capitalistic educational policies and
programs (Hans, 1964).
5 See http://www.hku.hk/cerc/wcces.html
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2.
Expanding Scope of Research Options
The methodologies of early pioneers of the field were remarkably similar, in that no
single method has ever characterized the field of comparative education. Whereas the kinds of
data collection research strategies several decades ago were limited to literature reviews and
historical, the kinds of data collection strategies increased dramatically over time. By literature
reviews, we mean studies that are argued on the basis of secondary literature and could therefore
be seen as interpretive essays. The more conventional social science approaches, such as
interviews, ethnographies, participation/observation, questionnaires and other types of field
research has increased dramatically. In addition, one finds in comparative education journals
additional strategies such as project reviews, content analysis of texts, analysis of census data
and other large survey databases.6
3.
Expanding Scope of Data Analysis Options
Data Analysis in comparative education began almost exclusively as qualitative in nature.
That is, the tradition was constructivist, interpretive, and naturalistic in that it was based on a
paradigm that the researcher was continually interacting with the subject matter being researched
and that the researcher was a part of the evaluation process. That process remains in reduced
form even today, although a more positivistic, objective social science orientation has become a
mainstay of the field. In fact, our work at UCLA indicates that the primary fields with which
comparative educators today identify with are sociology, political science, and economics
(Henrickson et al., 2003). There remains a pervasive tendency to rely on qualitative data, but
6 For specific information concerning these strategies, see (V. D. Rust, Aminata Soumare, Octavio Pescador, and
Megumi Shibuya, 1999)
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there has been a significant increase in quantitative studies since the mid-sixties. These
quantitative studies are largely related with surveys and questionnaires.
4.
Expanding Geographic Orientation of Research
The first major observation is that the geographic focus of comparative research has
shifted dramatically from the 1960s until the present. In the 1960s comparative education studies
were largely focused on the developed world. In fact, in some areas of the world, comparative
education was seen as something quite theoretical and separated from the developing world. At
the University of London, for example, there was a clear separation between the comparative
education program and the old Department of Education in Developing Countries, which was
initially focused on colonial issues, then became generally concerned with “British foreign
assistance projects and with training administrators and practitioners in the Third World. . . .”
(Altbach, 1991). This has changed, and even at the University of London, the two departments
have merged to become the Department of International and Comparative Education.
The geographic origins of scholars have also shifted. Early centers for the study of
comparative education were staffed by specialists almost exclusively from the developed world.
Thus, Foster, Kandel, Kazamias, Brickman, Eggertsen, and Anderson were American; Hans and
Bereday were Polish; Rosello was Swiss: Schneider and Hilker were German; Noah, Eckstein,
Lauwreys, King, and Holmes were English. Today, scholars increasingly originate from various
parts of the world. They tend to come from countries falling in all spheres of human
development, though because of the political economy of countries reflecting low human
development, scholars from these countries are not as visible as scholars from other parts of the
world, mainly because they do not have the resources necessary to engage in international
research projects. Some remarkable developments can be observed. For example, in the 1990s
19
China had no less than seven journals devoted exclusively to comparative education (Chen,
1994). According to a recent Nan Tou University bulletin in Taiwan, that university maintains
six comparative education faculty positions, more than would be found at any American
comparative education university center.
5.
Theory in Comparative Education
Nowhere is greater change seen in recent decades than in theory. We have already noted
that a liberal, humanistic tradition exemplified the early years of comparative education at
universities, but this quickly gave way to endeavors to make comparative education a scientific
enterprise. The theoretical foundations for comparative education shifted toward the social
sciences, and the field was identified with two closely allied theoretical orientations: structural
functionalism and modernization. Kazamias and Schwartz note that structural functionalism
emphasized “social functions, societal interdependence, social order or consensus, and value free
science” (Kazamias & Schwartz, 1977). In the comparative education context they feel it seeks
to describe the interrelations between the educational system and other social institutions.
Without question, structural functionalism stood alone as the pervasive sociological theory
orientation of the period. It so dominated the landscape that it was simply taken for granted that
any legitimate study of social forces and factors would be based on that orientation.
At the same time, comparative education was coming to devote itself to modernization,
or the change process by which traditional societies would become modern. The mechanism by
which this process would occur was seen to be schooling and education, and so comparative
education became a central element in any modernization scheme (Altbach, 1991). A number of
specific theoretical orientations came into play in modernization, including human capital theory,
structural functionalism, and systems theory. Comparative education specialists were
20
comfortable with their role in the modernization process, because the field had always had a
reformist bent, a practical role in transforming not only education in any society but using
education to transform society itself (Kazamias & Schwartz, 1977). This ambition had been
central to many of the activities of those early reformists, who were anxious to influence others
across cultures through educational reform.
By the 1970s, the domination of structural functionalism and modernization precipitously
declined, as the hegemonic domination of earlier theoretical orientations was successfully
challenged. The major challenges came from a wide array of “emergent critical and interpretive
knowledge communities” (Paulston, 1993), which were attempting to change America into a
more open, pluralistic society. If they were not successful in transforming society, they were
certainly successful in changing academic environments, including comparative education.
With the decline of the hegemonic impulses of the 1950s and 60s, comparative
educationists became increasingly theory oriented, in large part because the journals publishing
comparative education works reflected an increasing number of theories. In addition, our work at
UCLA confirmed that authors included multiple perspectives in their work. In our inquiries of
authors of comparative studies, we compiled a list of at least 26 different theoretical orientations
authors publishing in major comparative education journals were relying on.7
We must emphasize that scholars who rely on and develop theory are generally
committed to science. We have found that almost all of the people contributing to comparative
education journals are committed to theory, and those few scholars who deny their work is
7 These included human capital, modernization, structural functionalism, systems theory rational choice, political
pluralism, organizational/institutional theory, dependency, Marxian/Neo-Marxian, World systems, ethnography,
phenomenology, constructivism, symbolic interactionism, critical theory, cultural revitalization, feminism, poststructuralism, post-modernism, pragmatic interactionism, and neo-colonialism. See (Henrickson et al., 2003)
21
theory driven see their work as descriptive and practice oriented. They are “profession” more
than “academics” driven.
One of the major concerns that have been raised over the years is the lack of unity in
comparative education. Surely, at the time the field entered the academy, there was a sense of
unity with regard to the disciplines in the field, the geographic focus, the origins of the early
comparative education scholars, the methodology, and the theoretical orientation. Over time, this
unity has been lost, and there has been some concern that the field has begun to spin out of
control and fragment itself in all of the above respects to the point that the field my have little
coherent identity.
From our vantage point we see the field becoming pluralistic rather than fragmented, and
that pluralism can be seen as a strength in that it indicates a break from the stifling orthodoxy,
that characterized the field in the 1950s and early 1960s ,both theoretically and
methodologically. However, any phenomenon that gyrates has the potential of spinning out of
control, loosing any sense of the identity and cohesiveness necessary for a field to grow and
thrive. This is certainly not yet the case; we see comparative education as a healthy, defined field
of endeavor.
Where is Comparative Education Headed?
It is our general perspective that comparative education is in a state of good health; it is
now opting for directions that introduce a fresh perspective for those who have been in the field
for several decades. This is being highlighted by comparative education students just entering the
field. The field reached a decisive and optimistic point in the late 1960s, with the publication of
Toward a Science of Comparative Education by Harold Noah and Max Eckstein. The general
tone of the book was that the field was finally establishing itself as a legitimate science. The
22
authors catalogue various phases of the field, including travelers’ tales, educational borrowing,
international educational cooperation, forces and factors shaping education. All of these were
“predecessors of modern comparative education” (Noah & Eckstein, 1969).
Discourse about modern comparative education inherently encompasses the notion of
globalization. Val Rust addressed the intersection of education and globalization in his
publication Foreign Influences in Educational Reform, which raises the question as to whether or
not research in the field of comparative education has been able to keep up with the rapid
progression of globalization. Rust cites three categories of educational response to
globalization—receptivity, resistance, and restoration (V. D. Rust, 2004).
Receptivity, also referred to as “cross-national attraction and borrowing,” is the process
through which education communities respond positively to external influences by adopting
aspects of other educational systems with the desired objective of improving their own. This has
been the main concentration of the field since its origin. The second response by education
communities is resistance. Advocated by radical theorists, resistance attempts to counter the
oppressive, capitalist forces of neo-liberal globalization through concerted efforts to maintain
and celebrate differences in cultures, languages, and political ideologies. Throughout the world,
cultural imperialism, a consequence of colonialism and now globalization, has been responsible
for the decline and decimation of countless indigenous languages and cultures. Restoration, the
third identified response, is initiated to ensure the preservation and promotion of such indigenous
knowledge.
Receptivity, resistance, and restoration adequately portray a historical focus of
comparative education. However, as up and coming professionals in this field, the junior authors
of this essay feel there has been a lack of focus on the oppressive nature of the forced imposition
23
of educational programs or requirements from dominant to dominated countries in non-symbiotic
relationships, which has been the trigger for educational resistance and restoration. This
relationship between dominant and dominated countries is substantially different from Rust’s
description of “reception theory,” and we feel that another category should be considered within
the field of comparative education. Such a category is comparable to the theory of reproduction,
in which “schools function in the interest of the dominant society” (Giroux, 1983). Whereas
receptivity reflects the internal efforts to improve an educational system by incorporating
selective aspects of external systems, reproduction is the forced implementation of educational
systems by an external, dominant society. In this case, the “dominant society” refers to the
developed or core countries, with a “hidden curriculum” of promoting the dominant, core culture
and maintaining a relationship of inequality and dependency. This is a significant consequence of
globalization that needs the full attention of future comparative education researchers.
Mainstream comparative education has conscripted the advancement of modernity as the
underlying definition of education. As new professionals in the field, we challenge this notion
and urge progressive comparative educators to cooperatively consider a meaning of education
that advances humanity instead of modernity. As part of this consideration it is necessary to pose
the question, has mainstream comparative education promoted a liberating ‘education’ or rather a
hegemonic neo-liberal political ideology? Paulo Freire states unambiguously that education is
politics (Shor & Freire, 1987). By promoting modernity, comparative education has sided with
the capitalist economic model, which Freire describes as having “absolute insensitivity to the
ethical dimension of existence” (Freire, 1998). What comparative education requires is a shared
discourse about the political forces that have infused modernity into the definition of education.
24
A brief consideration of UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) initiative provides the impetus for
this discourse.
The EFA goals, as accepted almost universally, represent a meaningful and
comprehensive humanist-based definition of education, which emphasizes educational equity,
access and literacy. Based on the latest quantitative evaluation of EFA by UNESCO, almost none
of the African, Middle Eastern (with the exception of Israel), non-English speaking Caribbean, or
Latin American countries, many of which had been coerced into adopting capitalist-based
educational systems, have yet met their EFA goals (UNESCO, 2006). The notable exception is
Cuba, which has succeeded by working outside of the dominant global capitalistic structure.
Disappointingly, Cuba has not received any distinction for achieving the EFA goals due
inevitably to its marginalized status for not supporting the dominant capitalist ideology.
Considering that EFA promotes a humanistic educational outlook, Cuba should be applauded for
its achievement in realizing the EFA goals and be considered as a model for other countries.
Comparative education, in a historical context, has provided a strong foundation for
international cooperation for the advancement of receptive education. However, neglecting the
reproductive aspect of mainstream comparative education has led to the necessity of resistance
and restoration. The recognition of the latter two should have been a warning sign that the focus
and interventionist approach of the field has resulted in non-symbiotic international relationships
and an increasingly dependent and exploitative global community. As up and coming
comparative educators, we concur with Arnove’s statement, “We believe that comparative
education can – and should – play a significant role in contributing to the possibility that coming
generations will use their talents on behalf of international peace and social justice in an
increasingly interconnected world” (Arnove, 1999). In order to play this role, comparative
25
education would do well to return to its roots. Isaac Kandel, the previously mentioned pioneer in
the field, wrote in 1955, “Because a nation seeks through education to mould the character of its
citizens and so reflects its aims – political, social, economic, and cultural – a study of its
educational system, as here defined, can contribute as richly to an understanding of its aims in
general as a direct study of its political policies” (Kandel, 1955). With this understanding of
comparative education as a field dedicated to research and receptivity, not interventionism and
reproduction; with the acceptance that education be defined in terms of humanism, not
capitalism; and with a praxis of liberation, not domination, individual countries and societies can
take ownership for defining their own educational systems for the benefit of their people, culture,
economics, and politics.
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