Comparative Analysis: Methodological Optics in the Ideological Context

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary comparative pedagogical discourses are becoming increasingly popular and strongly modify the policy and practice of education worldwide. Intensification of empirical studies naturally leads to the decrease of the research interest in purely methodological issues that stand apart from practical application of comparative analysis and comparative method. This chapter attempts to fill in the methodological lacuna in the study of comparative method and its potential when doing research determined by the ideological context. The authors state two main research questions, the first one concerning the potential of comparative analysis for the detection of the technologies and facts of ideological indoctrination and the second one focusing on its functional possibilities in revealing the transformations in the vision of pedagogical reality by the theorist under the influence of the complete change of the state’s ideology. Statistical analysis of the units, content and comparative analysis, quantification, interpretation, and analogy were used for the comprehensive comparative study of the small volume of text by A. S. Makarenko Beseda s rabochim aktivom na zavode ‘Sharikopodshipnik’ (Conversation with Working Active Members at the Plant ‘Ball-bearing’) with comments published in Russian and its analogue issued in German by Makarenko-Referat laboratory and two text versions of “Zadachi i metody narodnoj shkoly” (“Objectives and Methods of National School”) by P. P. Blonsky issued under the same title in 1916 and 1917. General outcomes of the research vividly demonstrate how micro- and macro contexts may widen the horizons of the comparative method and significantly differentiate comparative research schemes.