Ways of Knowing: Implications for Comparative Education

Abstract

Two topics that were emphasized in the 1990 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) annual meeting were educational reform in international perspective and global and international Members of CIES conceive of their mandate in a dualistic manner; the first topic is one of scholarly or theoretical interest, and the second is one of practical or pragmatic interest. Two forms of producers and consumers of these topics are also identified: researchers and academics on the one hand and practitioners or school-based personnel on the other. In this essay, I examine a subject that is relevant to the interests of both sides. Perhaps the discussion will demonstrate that the division between the two is a false one, or at least one that has been created by our conception of knowledge itself, by our culturally created conception of ways of knowing, or epistemology. subject of this essay is how our conceptions of ways of knowing have limited and restricted the very definition of comparative education that we have taught students and used in our own research and, indeed, have promulgated to practitioners. Additionally our conceptions have created a false dichotomy between theory and practice and a communication gap between academics and practitioners. Moreover, they have led to willful ignoring or bypassing of large areas of teaching and learning that are not considered in the domain of valid knowledge, such as indigenous systems of religious or medical knowledge, or new forms of self-education in areas considered to be fringe forms of knowledge.' My first awareness of this subject arose 15 years ago when I assigned Harry Wolcott's ethnography The Man in the Principal's Office to a third-year undergraduate class in anthropology and education. In this work, he discusses the relationship of school practice to academic research, from the teachers' or principals' perspective. He says they did not read