Field Of Comparative Education Research Articles

Mentoring in education: an analysis of international practices and their implementation in Russia

Introduction. In the context of an ongoing discussion about the necessity to enhance the institution of mentoring in Russia, the examination and critical analysis of the experiences of countries where the system of mentoring for novice teachers is regulated at the state level is of undeniable interest. Aim. The study aimed to identify the main features of mentoring in France and determine the potential for applying international experience in the Russian educational system. Methodology and research methods. The research employed the following methods: an analysis of pedagogical literature and normative documents in the field of education in France, and a questionnaire survey of novice teachers working as trainee teachers in primary schools in Paris. As a survey technique, a continuous online survey with a group was employed. Results and scientific novelty. The process of becoming a fully qualified lower primary teacher in France is outlined: it involves passing a competitive examination (CRPE) and successfully completing a probation period. During this probation period, candidates are required to work for one year in a school as a trainee teacher under the guidance of mentor teachers. The research focuses on mentoring practices in France, the pathways to becoming a new teacher mentor, their job requirements, professional training, certification processes, as well as their roles and responsibilities. Based on the results of a survey of trainee teachers, a social profile of a novice teacher in France was created. The main challenges and shortcomings of the participants were identified, and their interactions with mentors were analysed. The collected data enabled the authors to emphasise the benefits of the French education policy regarding entry into the teaching profession and to formulate recommendations for mentor selection and training in Russia. Practical significance. The content of the article will be beneficial for specialists in the field of comparative education and for members of the scientific and pedagogical community engaged in teacher training programmes.

Contributors

Previous articleNext article FreeContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreThea Renda Abu El-Haj ([email protected]), a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, is an educational anthropologist. Her research explores questions raised by transnational migration and conflict, about belonging, rights, and citizenship. Her second book, Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11 won the 2016 American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award.Md Maksud Ali ([email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4449-8061) recently earned a PhD from the University of Queensland, where he works in the School of Education. Ali is interested in policy, politics, and practices of human capital development in English-language education and in relation to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. His research has been published in ELT Journal, TESOL Quarterly, English Today, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, and Language Assessment Quarterly.Minahil Asim ([email protected]) is assistant professor of educational leadership and program evaluation in the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa. She studies education reforms and policies that are focused on improving learning outcomes and educational trajectories for disadvantaged students.Hyeyon Chung ([email protected]) is a public school teacher in Korea and a PhD candidate in comparative education at Yonsei University. Her general research interest focuses on education policy, future school reforms, and teacher education. She is currently participating in the development of international faculty from developing countries and projects that measure student well-being.M. Obaidul Hamid ([email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3205-6124) is associate professor of TESOL education at the University of Queensland. Previously, he worked at the University of Dhaka. His research focuses on the policy and practice of TESOL education in developing societies. Hamid is coeditor of Language Planning for Medium of Instruction in Asia (Routledge, 2014). He is on the editorial boards of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Current Issues in Language Planning, English Teaching Practice & Critique, and Journal of Asia TEFL.Ian Hardy ([email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8124-8766) is associate professor of education in the School of Education, University of Queensland. Hardy’s work is informed by research into the relationship between education and society, particularly broader policy and political discourses and educators’ responses to the sociopolitical contexts in which their work is undertaken. His School Reform in an Era of Standardization: Authentic Accountabilities was published by Routledge in 2021.Rania Jaber ([email protected]) is a researcher interested in migration and global art practices. She holds a PhD in art history and world art studies from the University of East Anglia and has lectured in anthropology at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She is currently working in research development for the Faculty of Arts Business Law and Economics at the University of Adelaide.M. Adil Khan ([email protected]) is professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland. Prior to holding this position, he worked as Chief of Socio-Economic Governance and Management Branch of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), New York. Khan has published extensively on issues of poverty, climate change, governance, corruption, and monitoring and evaluation. He is principal author of the 2008 United Nations World Public Sector Report “People Matter: Civic Engagement in Public Governance” and the founding editor-in-chief and currently an editorial board member of the international journal Sustainable Development. He is also an editorial board member of the New York–based South Asia Journal.Sung Won Kim ([email protected]) is associate professor of comparative education at Yonsei University. Her previous research on education in China and worldwide was published in Comparative Education Review, International Journal of Educational Development, China Quarterly, China Journal, Gender and Education, Ethos and Educational Review.Julia C. Lerch ([email protected]) is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She studies the role of global culture and institutions in shaping various domains ranging from education to the humanitarian sector. Her work appears in leading journals in education and sociology and several edited volumesPeggy Levitt ([email protected]) is the Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology at Wellesley College and a cofounder of the Global (De)Centre. Her latest book, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display, was published by University of California Press in 2015.Caroline (Carly) Manion ([email protected]) is associate professor, teaching stream, and director of the Comparative, International, and Development Education Centre (CIDEC) at OISE, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on gender, intersectionality, and equity and inclusion across global and local dimensions of educational leadership and policy.Karen Mundy ([email protected]) is professor of educational leadership and policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and past president of the Comparative and International Education Society. She has written widely on educational multilateralism, education policy, and on education reform in sub-Saharan Africa.Brenda Oulo ([email protected]) is a multidisciplinary expert on adolescent girls’ research and codirector of the Girls Agency Lab (GAL), an innovative initiative to localize research and understand adolescent girls’ agency in East Africa. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Sheffield in Public Health Economics and Decision Science.Anant Pai ([email protected]) has held brief stints at the World Bank, the US State Department, and various research- and service-focused nonprofit organizations globally. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University and upon graduation completed a fellowship through Princeton University to complete his research.Monica Rosén ([email protected]) is professor of education at the University of Gothenburg. Her fields of expertise stretch over educational assessment, measurement, and quantitative research methods. She has a long history of involvement in both national and international assessment of students’ educational outcome, in which her own research has focused primarily on reading achievement from pedagogical and equity viewpoints.Ezequiel Saferstein ([email protected]) is a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council at the Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales of the San Martin National University in Buenos Aires. In 2021, his ¿Cómo se fabrica un best seller politico? was published by Siglo XXI Editores.Doyeon Shin ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in the department of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research focuses on labor practices, STS, human-machine communication, and education. Her regional interests include Korea, Japan, and East Asia. Her current academic project discusses labor practices in the Korean taxi industry after the introduction of the platform economy.Aubryn Allyn Sidle ([email protected]) is a lecturer in global development at Cornell University. She is a gender and education scholar, interested in the role of soft skills, alternative pedagogies, and community-based organizations in achieving gender equity in education. In 2022, she cofounded the Girls’ Agency Lab at AMPLIFY Girls, where she also serves as codirector.Isa Steinmann ([email protected]) is associate professor at Oslo Metropolitan University. One strand of her research focuses on how education systems and schools affect student achievement and educational inequality outcomes. Another strand of her research interests concerns how properties of international large-scale assessments affect their results and interact with the respondents.Rolf Strietholt ([email protected]) is cohead of the Research and Analysis Unit of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). He is also affiliated with TU Dortmund University. His research interests lie in the field of comparative education, with a special focus on inequalities in educational outcomes.Izza Tahir ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include foundational literacy and early-grade reading, language policy and planning in low- and middle-income countries, and teacher beliefs and teacher development.Cong Zhang ([email protected]) is associate professor of social development and public policy at Fudan University. Her research focuses mainly on parenting, grandparenting, gender, families, and kinship in China. Her publications have appeared in China Quarterly Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Studies, and International Journal of Educational Development. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 67, Number 2May 2023 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724223 © Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

비교교육연구에 있어서 담론적 제도주의 접근의 활용 가능성 탐색

[Purpose]This study aimed to explore the possibility of using discursive institutionalism as one of the new approaches for post-national comparative education research.
 [Methods] In this study, domestic and international literature were analyzed to explore the characteristics of the discursive institutionalism approach and the use of this approach in comparative education research, and the possibility and significance of the discursive institutionalism approach in comparative education research were discussed.
 [Results] The study revealed the following. First, the core argument of discursive institutionalism is that the discursive interactions between actors in the process of policy formation can lead to policy change or maintenance. Second, in the study of the discursive institutionalisml approach, the focus is on analyzing the discourse, that is, the coordinative discourse and communicative discourse communicated in the policy formation process. Third, the discursive institutionalism approach can be a useful theoretical framework for comparative education research to understand the transition and change of global education policy by allowing analysis of the translation and recontextualization process of global discourse in each country's policy context.
 [Conclusion] Based on the research results, this study suggested the active use of the discursive institutionalism approach in the field of comparative education and the analysis of the re-contextualization of global education discourse in Korea based on the discursive institutionalism approach.

Thematic and Methodological Trends of Graduate Thesis in Comparative Education: A Content Analysis

In this study, it is aimed to examine the graduate theses made between 2016-2021 in Turkey in the field of comparative education. The data used in the study, which was carried out according to the qualitative research design, were reached through document analysis. Within the scope of the study, 133 graduate theses registered in the database of Higher Education Institution National Thesis Center were analyzed by using content analysis technique in line with research problems. As a result of the findings, it was determined that the most thesis in the field of comparative education was made in 2018; It was determined that Hacettepe University and Gazi University were the universities with the highest number of graduate studies. It was determined that the majority of theses were made in the department of educational sciences. It was determined that the qualitative design was widely preferred in the theses examined and the document analysis technique was mostly used in the data collection process. It was concluded that the sample/comparison criteria and comparison approach were not specified in the majority of theses. It was also concluded that while Germany, England, Finland and the USA were the countries with which the most comparisons were made, the majority of theses were made for secondary and undergraduate education levels. In the theses examined, it was concluded that higher education and teacher education were the most frequently compared topics.

Narratives as a way of conceptualising the field of comparative education

ABSTRACT Based on the authors’ wide reading in the field, this article suggests the notion of the narrative as a fitting and meaningful way of conceptualising and mapping the field of comparative education. Four prominent narratives can be identified in not only the field of comparative education (and the scholarly discourse on education) but also the public discourse on education. These are the narratives of the capability theory, neoliberal economics, the creed of human rights, and the call for social justice. These narratives are contrasted, and guidelines are offered for further research on reconstructing and reflecting on the current state of comparative education and its future trajectory.

The state and ‘field’ of comparative higher education

ABSTRACT Comparative higher education is arguably lagging behind its sister field of comparative education. It has been developed more recently, lacks in institutional structure, its intellectual debate is marginal, and its political construction is incomplete. Yet, despite the pitfalls of comparative higher education research, this article argues that higher education would benefit highly from a strong and united field of comparative studies, built around a community of comparatists. A strong comparative research field in higher education would serve incredibly well in a sector that is highly internationalised, helping develop theories and conceptualisations, as well as methodologies. It would help strengthen research and further our understanding of higher education at all levels – global, international, and local.

Analyzing instrumental music education models: a four-dimension tool

While Instrumental Music Education (IME) is offered to students in most developed countries, its rationale and implementation differ significantly due to the sociocultural values and expectations of each society, which tend to remain implicit within educational policies. In this article, we argue that each society should be fully aware of the characteristics of their IME models, which requires self-reflection and careful examination of alternative models. To facilitate this process, we propose a framework to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of IME models. The field of comparative education provides strategies to analyze similarities and differences in policies around the world. With the goal of identifying the various dimensions involved in IME models, we provide a detailed analysis of three contrasting cases: Spain, the United States of America, and Singapore. The variables considered are educational philosophy, presence of IME within schools, curriculum and assessment, and teacher education. Based on a documentary analysis, these cases lead to the identification of four analytic dimensions: Accessibility, Value attributed to IME, Professionalization and Specialization, and Teacher’s Qualification and Requirements. We encourage policymakers around the world to utilize this four-dimension framework to gain awareness of the role IME plays in their respective countries.

Epistemologia da Educação Comparada com ênfase em reformas educacionais: um olhar a partir da teoria Decolonial

Abstract From the beginning, Comparative Education has a reformist vocation and was permeated by several Epistemologies, which influences the approach on the tensions between the local and the global. Decolonial Theory discusses this tension. This article deals with the Epistemology of Comparative Education emphasizing the educational reforms from a Decolonial perspective. We conducted bibliographic and documental research. Comparative Education has a pragmatic use and the way the Reforms were and still are being implemented does not consider the local specificities of each region. The main conclusion is that the Decolonial Theory gives subsidies for an epistemological turn in the field of Comparative Education with an emphasis on educational reforms in order to (re)think the articulation between the tension of the local and the global.

Position of the Board of Directors in Higher Education Institutions in Mongolia - Focusing on Analysis of Founder’s Representatives

In 1995, during the process of democratization, Mongolia established a Law on Education and a Law on Higher Education. These laws positioned the board of directors as the ultimate decision-making body within each university and stipulated that the board’s membership include the representatives of the university’s founder, faculty members, students, parents, and alumni, enabling a wide range of people to participate in university governance. At the same time, it was stipulated that the representatives nominated by the founder would account for 51-60% of the board’s membership, giving them a majority that runs counter to the principle of introducing greater diversity into the board. This article examines the positioning of the board of directors in Mongolian higher education institutions through reviews of documents and the websites of existing higher education institutions. In particular, this article clarifies the position of the board of directors as the mainstay of governance systems in both national and private universities in Mongolia. These findings are expected not only to further understanding of Mongolian higher education but also to furnish new insights into the board of directors as an organ for both internal control and external connection. This study offers implications for future research in the field of comparative education on higher education’s governance reform in line with globalization and marketization.

Physical education at school: Work and Teaching Subjectivity within one Brazilian post-Graduate programme

ABSTRACT Pedagogical studies – related to teaching didactics and methodologies – are fundamental in the globalized world, especially in the complex field of comparative education (Morin, 1999. Os sete saberes necessários à educação do futuro. Cortez). Exchanges of knowledge from applied educational practices, coupled with their underlying foundations, can produce resonances for the broad understanding and improvement of educational actions. We reaffirm the validity of sharing formative experiences at different levels of analysis for the development of physical education teacher education (PETE), in association with symbols and social values related to the nature of teaching work with the images and deep psychological processes. From the complexity in the articulation of different epistemological bases, the grounded Freirean perspective contributes to understanding the subjective aspects of teaching in PETE

A Gestão Participativa de Instituições de Educação Profissional e Tecnológica no contexto de programa de Internacionalização

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar as políticas de internacionalização na perspectiva da gestão participativa em duas instituições de Educação Profissional e Tecnológica do Brasil e do Peru. A abordagem teorico-metodológica supõe o exercício comparativo e o tratamento dos casos. Interações entre forças globais, econômicas e culturais e os contextos locais são demonstradas no campo da educação comparada pelos autores Aguilar (2018), Arnove (2012), Cowen (2012), Han (1971), Kazamias (2012), Lourrenço Filho (2004), Mazon (2015). Abordam-se as políticas de profissionalização e a gestão escolar participativa nas instituições pesquisadas quanto às concepções e estratégias adotadas por elas. Conclui-se que há pequena participação dos alunos na gestão de instituições e espaços escolares, tais como Grêmios Escolares ou Centros Acadêmicos, Associações de Pais e Mestres, Associações Atléticas ou, ainda, Conselhos de Escola e Congregações nas duas instituições pesquisadas.

La Música en Educación Infantil: Análisis comparativo de los currículos autonómicos de España

The transfer of the Spanish State to the Autonomous Communities with full competences in education during the last two decades of the 20th century, currently allows two different levels to be found where official curricula are developed: the national and the autonomous ones. This double conception is the starting point of this study where it is intended to delve into the differences and similarities of a specific curricular element, the contents. The purpose of this study is to establish the differences and similarities between the music content present in the curricula of the different Spanish autonomous communities and the Royal Decrees published that contain the minimum teachings for the second cycle of Early Childhood Education for the Spanish national framework. With its own methodological design within the field of Comparative Education and using the CARMEN questionnaire based on the comparative analysis of curricular elements as the main research instrument. The results reveal that the presence of the musical contents in the different blocks there are starting differences regarding the national documents taken as a reference. Changes in the contents of the regional documents with respect to their national documents were more frequent for the LOGSE period than in the LOE period. It has been verified that there is no influence of the political party present in order to establish a greater or lesser degree of similarity in the minimum teachings. Educational curricula are not used in Spain as an ideological tool at the service of the ideals of one political party or another.

After Progress

During the 1950s the field of comparative education was steered by the American idea of progress. The Comparative Education Society was founded under an assumption that research and understanding of education worldwide is progressive, and thus social engineering through education could ameliorate poverty, inequality, disease, and other mid-twentieth-century challenges. This essay speculates on the future of a field that no longer assumes that more or better understanding about education will lead to better consequences. However, rather than conceding defeat, the essay offers examples from an agenda that is necessary to promote education for sustainability. Progress is still one guiding star for researchers, among others stars in the constellation. The Comparative and International Education Society can still contribute to a global conversation on sustainable development. However, the essay concludes by noting several key challenges for the organization.

The Mobility of Education Policy in the 21st Century: Lessons from Other Fields

The ways information about national education policies is exchanged and interpreted is a field of comparative education that is under-developed. What discussion and analysis there is seems to ignore the insights and models prevalent in other domains. We looked to fields like political science, and economic and social development for concepts to strengthen the analysis of education policy mobility between nations. We found an abundance of metaphors most of which fail to capture key elements of policy diffusion including the notion that ideas change as they cross cultural boundaries. We observe that policy transfer can be purposefully initiated by the host as well as a product of coercion or external incentives. Our principal conclusions are that common framings of traveling education policies are linear, one-directional and marked by an air of beneficence. They overlook the importance of context and the actions of sovereign nations in policy formation.

George F. Bereday Award for 2019

Previous articleNext article FreeAwardGeorge F. Bereday Award for 2019PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreEach year the Bereday Award Committee selects the most outstanding Comparative Education Review (CER) article for the George F. Bereday Award. The selection committee includes scholars who are chosen for their breadth of methodological skills and intellectual rigor. This year’s committee was chaired by Thomas Luschei (Claremont Graduate University), and included Yi-Lin Chiang (National Chenchi University), Marlaine Lockheed (Princeton University), Payal Shah (University of South Carolina), and Rolf Straubhaar (Texas State University). From the 23 research articles published in volume 63 (2019) of CER (selected from almost 200 annual submissions), the Committee awarded the honor to Amy Jo Dowd and Lesley Bartlett for their article “The Need for Speed: Interrogating the Dominance of Oral Reading Fluency in International Reading Efforts,” published in May. The committee reported the following: “The article examines the use of correct words per minute (CWPM) as a measure of the impact of reading interventions. Drawing on reading assessment data from 11 country sites in monolingual and multilingual populations, the authors conclude that a global CWPM standard ‘rests upon untenable assumptions.’ … The committee noted the article’s clarity and strength of argument, rigorous conceptual framework, and the strong potential impact of the research on education policy and the field of comparative education.” The CER editors congratulate Amy Jo Dowd and Lesley Bartlett on this honor.The committee also noted the high quality of the other articles in volume 63 and offered an honorable mention to two articles: Tracy Brunette, Benjamin Piper, Rachel Jordan, Simon King, and Rehemah Nabacwa, “The Impact of Mother Tongue Reading Instruction in Twelve Ugandan Languages and the Role of Language Complexity, Socioeconomic Factors, and Program Implementation,” published in November, and Sarah Dryden-Peterson and Celia Reddick, “‘What I Believe Can Rescue That Nation’: Diaspora Working to Transform Education in Fragility and Conflict,” published in May.George Zygmunt Fijalkowski Bereday, born in Warsaw in 1920, was both the founding editor of CER and a cofounder of the Comparative Education Society, along with his close colleague William Brickman. A graduate of London and Oxford (while also serving in the British army during World War II), Professor Bereday subsequently arrived in the United States for PhD studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Later he received a JD from Columbia Law School, where he studied while teaching comparative education, sociology, and juvenile law at Columbia Teachers College from 1955 until his untimely death in 1983. William Brickman (writing in the fall of that year in Western European Education) called Bereday an extraordinarily talented and gifted personality: “A polyglot, he read, spoke, comprehended, and lectured in several Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages … and he attained a practical ability in the use of Japanese.” Brickman also enthused that “Professor Bereday represented a rare blend of the classical and the modern, of Eastern and Western European education and scholarship, and of the Occidental and Oriental cultures” and that he “exhibited endless evidence of humanism toward other cultures and humanitarianism toward persons of all ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds.” Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 64, Number 2May 2020 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/708238 © 2020 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Liberal Education across Continents: Transfer Elasticity and US Influence

This essay considers the variants of liberal education that have arisen outside of the United States, conceptualizing liberal education as a loosely transferred “ideal type” and the United States as a “reference society.” The geopolitical framings (i.e., American style, European model, Asian approach) that differentiate global liberal education are explored, and I argue that these labels are revealing in terms of location and legitimacy but less useful with respect to understanding the educational transfer that has been occurring. I analyze the loose coupling asserted in theories of educational borrowing, calling attention to the possibilities and limits of the geopolitical framing, and responding to the spatial reconsideration being called for in the comparative education field.

Towards a comparative history of comparative education: a personal journey

ABSTRACTAction follows from being. One’s way of doing and understanding comparative education follows from one’s being. It springs from the soul. Using [Kim, T., and R. Brooks’ (2013). “Internationalisation, Mobile Academics, and Knowledge Creation in Universities: A Comparative Analysis.” SRHE Research Award (2011/12) Final Report] framework on the relationship between academic mobility and knowledge creation, I will reflect here on my personal and intellectual journey and how it has shaped my work on comparative histories of the field of comparative education. As this article is written, I am commencing a new transition in my professional life, this time in Japan. I am reflecting on a possible new research agenda building on my past work and the new panorama opened from my new vantage point in the field.

Knowledge and Time-Space Dualism in Comparative Education: an Analytical Study

Comparative education has changed over the past decades, which may refer to several reasons and repercussions, including scientific, technological, and informational changes and the effects of globalization, which led to the emergence of new issues and questions related to the changing concepts of time and place and the nature of (the other) in comparative educational studies.The current research is considered to be one of the theoretical / basic researches in the field of comparative education, and thus it seeks to contribute to supporting the knowledge structure of comparative education depending on the critical method. In this regard, the research studies the nature of the global context surrounding and influencing comparative education in the twenty-first century, the nature of knowledge development in comparative education, and the effects of time-space dualism on comparative education in an attempt to reach some proposed insights for developing knowledge in comparative education in the light of time-space dualism.

Jullien’s 1817 Esquisse: Toward a “Science” of Comparative Higher Education?

This article links comparative and international higher education research to ideas put forward in the 1817 pamphlet by Marc-Antoine Jullien, Esquisse, that is widely recognized as a foundational work for the field of comparative education, including providing its name. The paper describes how Jullien’s ideas in Esquisse are reflected in the contemporary work of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS), including examples of comparative higher education tables analogous to those first described in Esquisse. The positivist approach advocated by Jullien is linked to contemporary research such as international rankings of higher education institutions (league tables) and surveys of the professoriate. It concludes with implications for future directions of comparative education research that are more “scientific” because they embed the increasingly sophisticated capacity for measurement and data collection within systematic conceptual frameworks as well as ever more rigorous quantitative and qualitative methodological techniques.

The structuration of comparative discourse and the imagination of knowledge spaces: Portugal, the ‘South of Europe’, and the ‘South below’

ABSTRACTThe present article addresses the issue of structuration of the field of Comparative Education in Portugal. The narrative is constructed at two levels, one of a more descriptive nature, the other more interpretative. In the first part of the text, the construction of a comparative imagination is addressed on the basis of four main points in time: the impact of overseas echoes in education reforms (seventeenth to nineteenth century), the importance of the pedagogical experiences acquired in overseas missions (nineteenth to twentieth century), internationalisation of the educational question in the African colonies (late nineteenth century, mid twentieth century) and finally, the impact of international bodies on the modernisation of the Portuguese education system (50s, mid-70s). In the second part of the text, the emergence of the field of Comparative Education is discussed as a scientific research area, and as an autonomous formative component. Several disciplinarization dynamics and their institutional application points are identified, pointing to the importance of European Union funded projects for the integration of research groups in international comparative study networks. Towards the end of the text, several standard approaches that structure comparative discourse and the practices of Portuguese researchers are pinpointed.