1. Comparative education
- Concerns
- Egalitarian concern for educational quality and the opening of opportunity for more and more students
- Economic concern for equipping students with appropriate workplace competencies and skills
- Civic concern for educating citizens who can participate effectively in public life in increasingly pluralistic environments
- General humanistic concern for developing the whole person through a process of lifelong education
- Four premises (p. 4)
- educational issues rather than educational systems become the centerpiece for critical study
- the central issues are seen as educational dilemmas rather than educational problems
- these issues are examined cross-culturally in order to broaden and deepen understanding of the issues and, in turn, to enable personal improvements of educational practice
- the text uses analytic frameworks
- "Technology and mass communication are challenging the notion of national boundaries, changing economic relationships, fostering greater interdependence, and challenging citizens to reconsider their loyalties and identities" (p. 4)
- Four issues
- What are the purpose of schooling?
- What is equitable education," and who decides? (ed access & opportunity)
- What is the appropriate balance between education authority and accountability?
- What factors reinforce or hinder teacher professionalism?
- Rationale: to broaden one's perspective and sharpen one's focus; understanding in light of differing cultural, social, and political contexts (p. 5)
- Definition: comparative ed draws on multiple disciplines (e.g., sociology, political science, psychology, and anthropology) to examine education in developed and developing countries. Comparative inquiry often leads to an examination of the role that education plays in individual and national development. It also encourages us to question our educational systems and to examine how societal values influence our attitudes toward how we educate.
- Benefits: "Comparative thinking and international perspective taking are essential for citizens in a diverse, global society" (p. 6).
- "Comparative education and the critical perspective taking that comparative inquiry affords can prompt deeper examination of the tensions among society, development, and education and the role that citizens, either directly or indirectly, play in the educative process."
- Cultivate a political (ideological) awareness
- Comparative ed is a field that draws on a variety of disciplines to better understand the complexity of particular educational phenomena; thus serves as a device to mediate the relationships among the ed. foundations (e.g., history, philosophy, and sociology)
- comparative thinking is an essential skill and develops one's ability to think deeply and comparatively about the political, economic, social, and cultural landscape affecting education, as well as education's influence on that landscape
- Emphasis: from method (1960s-1970s) to content (the late 1970s) (e.g., school outcomes and the school/society relationships) - Michael Apple' (1978) critical inquiry devoted greater attention to the internal workings of schools by examining curriculum and pedagogy for ways in which processes maintain inequities and hide particular interests; 1980s-1990s, inquiry into the nation-state, social movements, conceptions of equity, educational control, and centralization-decentralization tendencies
- The instrumentalization orientation (p. 14) - devaluing practitioners' input and the dynamics of teaching (researcher specialization & practitioner marginalization)
- Control orientation: predictability & instructional replicability instead of context-laden classroom solutions
- Externality: recommendations for classroom practice are outputs of a scientific process that rely on specialized expertise, controlled settings, and the consequent exclusion of practitioners
- Fragmentation: Effectiveness is defined externally and in advance of the contexts practitioners encounter. Challenges of practice therefore tend to be construed as failures of practitioners' execution of prescriptions
- Control orientation: predictability & instructional replicability instead of context-laden classroom solutions
- Habermas (1971) three human interests
- Technical (control oriented)
- Practical (emphasizes understanding)
- Emancipatory (social critique and self-analysis)
- A practical approach (a multidisciplinary field of inquiry) p. 19
- Anthropological: the concept of culture
- Sociological: the concept of group affiliation and subcultures
- Political science: the concept of power, control, and influence
- Philosophical: the philosophical commitment the school and the society it serves (e.g., developing democratic values)
- Economic: concepts such as class, market, and human resources
- Historical: interpreting past events
- Psychological: the mind-sets and values people hold individually and as a society
- Comparative education as foundational in education (the tripartite purpose of EdFon is to develop the following perspectives, p. 21)
- Interpretive perspective: focuses on concepts and theories derived from the humanities and social sciences to examine and explain educational phenomena by considering the diverse cultural, philosophical, and historical contexts that affect the meaning and interpretations of that phenomena
- Normative perspective: helps educators to examine and explain education in relation to differing value orientations and assumptions about schooling
- Critical perspective: to develop in students the ability to question the contradictions and inconsistencies of educational beliefs, policies, and practices
- Problems v. Dilemmas p. 24
- problems: disruptive to society
- dilemmas: puzzles to be figured out. This term accommodate the fluidity, dyanmism, and uncertainty that characterize a characterize a changing, more global world (suggest an openness to the exploration)
- The skill of "comparative perspective taking": the process of performing cross-cultural investigation and then deriving insights from these investigations
- The value of comparative ed
- the value-laden nature of educational issues
- fostering national identity
- recognize that possibilities for human growth and threats to human survival transcend national boundaries
- addressing the international knowledge gap
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