REVIEW SYMPOSIUM

Abstract

Culture and Pedagogy: international comparisons in primary education ROBIN ALEXANDER, 2000Oxford, Blackwell Publishers642 pp., £16.99ISBN 0-631-225050 (hbk); 0-631-220518 (pbk)Reviewed by Marilyn Osborn, Tony Edwards and Pat ThomsonThis book can only be described as a tour de force. At least several studies or books in one, it represents years of careful and detailed research. Using case studies of teaching and learning in five countries, France, Russia, India, the USA and England, Alexander combines rich description of language, pedagogy and cultural context with the attempt to develop a theoretical framework, no less than a theory of pedagogy. The book combines international and historical comparison together with the rich analysis of primary school and classroom life in the five cultures under study.Comparative educationalists since the beginning of the twentieth century have long made the point that in studying other systems of education “we should not forget that the things outside the schools matter even more than the things inside the schools, and govern and interpret the things inside” (Sadler, 1900). Yet much of the recent enthusiasm for international comparison has been based on a growing tendency to ‘borrow’ educational policies and practices from one national setting where they appear to be effective and to attempt to transplant these into another with little regard for the potential significance of the cultural context into which they will be imported. In this way international comparisons have been used to legitimate claims about the condition of national systems of education and to justify radical changes in educational policy. Alexander is strongly critical of such approaches. Many of the studies which have been used in this way have employed large-scale methods and international studies of educational achievement. By their very nature such studies have been unable to fully take culture into account. Yet such an understanding of educational perspectives and practices within their cultural context is fundamental to understanding how learning takes place and this book is certainly designed to address this issue.