School‐systems and Societies: recent contributions to a comparative sociology of education

Abstract

Comparative studies in the sociology of education have been rare in Britain, indeed they have been rare anywhere. Comparative education has not developed firm disciplinary bases, and this has been reflected in the agonising over appropriate theory and methodology which characterises books and journals in the field. Even the very claim to comparative study may not stand too close examination. In 1968, the American Comparative Education Society re-named itself the Comparative and International Education Society, mainly because much of the research that was being undertaken was of the nature of foreign area, rather than comparative studies. The classic writers to whom comparative educationists hark back were travelling foragers, who brought home information and ideas from foreign lands, and theorised about systems of education with their 'underlying forces', or sought transferable characteristics of education to recommend to their compatriots in efforts of national betterment. In fact, most of the early work, and even much recent comparative education, has been historical, descriptive and monocultural. That is to say, it has been atheoretical and, however informative about education in a particular society, rarely actually comparative in the sense of drawing up parallels and identifying similarities and differences in the characteristics and effects of education across two or more societies. Such limited work can be considered useful