Part I: Comparative Orientations
Toward a Science of Comparative Education
On Teaching a 'Scientific' Comparative Education
Defining Comparative Education: Conceptions
A Comparative Study of Outlier Schools in Metropolitan Settings
Other Schools and Ours
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish in Comparative Education
Use and Abuse of Comparative Education
State of the Field
Dependency Theory in Comparative Education
The Darling Young
The Comparative Mind: Metaphor in Comparative Education
Source:Max A. Eckstein, "On Teaching a 'Scientific' Comparative Education," Comparative Education Review, 14:3 (1970), 279-282. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press.
A look at the complete run of the Comparative Education Review since its first issue in 1957 shows that it is far from being merely the thin, dry voice of arcane researchers. From the very beginning, some attention has been given to teaching the subject of comparative education. Moreover, several of the leading authorities in the field have devoted their thoughts to its pedagogical problems. For example, Bereday, King and the late Dr. Isaac Kandel have all considered problems of content and organization of courses, have discussed some of the determinants of teaching strategy, and have reviewed various approaches to these tasks.1 Other articles on specific techniques of teaching or on appropriate materials for course work have been useful guides, especially for the beginning teacher, and have complemented the regular announcements, notes and more lengthy reviews of books in the field.2 All of which suggests that, notwithstanding their serious efforts to gain the respect of academic colleagues for the quality of their scholarly contributions, comparative educators still retain a serious professional commitment to education in the strictly teaching sense. They ponder over such practical questions as creating coherent and logical course outlines, using effective teaching materials, and planning approaches and experiences appropriate to the motives and values of their students. ON TEACHING A "SCIENTIFIC" COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
It was, in fact, out of this type of very down-to-earth teacher concern that Harold Noah and I first began to work together on our recent two volumes.3 In a brief article some four years ago when we introduced the idea of a strictly empirical approach to research in the field, we did so in the context of teaching a general, introductory course to a heterogeneous group of graduate students.4 At that time, we were thinking about the nature and value of published work in the field and of research methodology. But the spark was first ignited as we grappled with the problems of teachers seeking to do their everyday professional job. And from then on, as we have argued elsewhere, it appeared that the problems of research methodology and the problems of teaching were not to be considered and dealt with separately, as some have insisted, but that they are parts of the whole. Research strategy, educational content, and instructional technique seem somehow, at least for us, to have blended into one functional whole.
The distinction often made between the beginner (or tourist) in comparative education and the advanced student or scholar is a very important one. Their motives will no doubt differ; their respective levels of experience, information, study skill and analytical sophistication will certainly be different. But customarily, in comparative education as in other areas of study, this awareness had led to a heavy emphasis on description and on discussion of general or particular problems for the beginner, and an often sudden and overwhelming addition of"methodology" for the advanced student (including the professor embarking on the road to a publishing reputation). The argument is made that beginners or generalists will not care about the methodological ingredient and do not plan to be researchers, and that any attention given to this will turn them away from useful and interesting information and insights which will at the very least give them a smattering of "culture générale". But the good teacher, no matter at what level of instruction (from kindergarten to graduate school), must also be a good practitioner in his subject. To be effective as a teacher (as distinct from entertainer, propagandist, counsellor, instructor, shepherd and goad, which are only a few of the assortment of roles we are called upon to perform), one must be a model of doing science, mathematics, history -- and comparative education. In whatever ways are appropriate to a particular group of students, the essential nature of the activity must be studied, revealed, conveyed, not in isolation from but as an inherent part of the subject or area of instruction. To separate methodological concerns from other kinds of content for purposes of instruction is artificial.
At the risk of even greater indiscretion, I would add that no subject can be considered as well-taught unless its characteristic modes of thinking and study are conveyed to students one way or another. If they are expected to read relevant work, for example, they must learn not only to absorb what is in print. They need hooks on which they can hang critical comment, evaluation, and interpretation. This cannot simply be done by reviewing the relevant information, no matter how fascinating, nor by exposition. Self-consciousness about what one is doing and what others have done, is essential to both teacher and taught. In practice, what this means for any subject of instruction, is that the big organizing ideas (theories), the kinds of information (the data), the interpretations and conclusions (modes of inference, systems of validation) characteristic of that subject must be part of the content of any course of study. The assumptions and the views just expressed can be restated in two associated thoughts, one of them more related to the theme of empirical methodology in comparative study, and the other more explicitly pedagogical. First, the teacher needs to have something teachable and conceptually justifiable; second, he must be the mediator between his students and the relevant information in books and in the world around him. It is obvious, therefore, that even encyclopedic description is not enough, no matter how dramatically and successfully conveyed. Explanation arrived at through random, impressionistic comment is deceptive. Analysis arrived at through awareness of the modes of analysis used is imperative.
Now to the actual experience of teaching. My general hypothesis is that teaching comparative education along the theme of the empirical mode produces certain tangible and desirable results. However, I am in no position to test this proposition empirically at the moment. I am hesitant to specify all the relevant outputs; I am not competent to identify all the pertinent inputs; I suspect that I shall always be mystified by what goes on in that little black box labelled 'the teaching process'. In short, I draw upon my own experience and insights only, with the help of observations gleaned from colleagues and students.
My colleagues and I have attempted to teach a course which is not a saunter (or a gallop) across the landscape of world education systems, but rather a series of discussions of relevant general problems in which education and aspects of its various cultural contexts are believed to interact. We begin, as does the book Toward a Science of Comparative Education, with a review of the ways some of our predecessors have tackled comparative work and of the difficulties involved in systematic comparison. We then offer the concepts and methods of the empirical approach as a means of achieving understanding of the problem-topics selected for each week or fortnight. What might otherwise be a ragbag of assorted topics achieves coherence via the methodological emphasis which, in one way another, constantly draws attention to such questions as: from what set of assumptions and preconceptions does one approach the question studied; what is relevant to clarifying it; when one reaches some conclusion, how does one know that it is so, and what reliance can be placed on it.
Having much of the relevant discussion and material in the compact form of the two books has been most useful. Class time and conference sessions which would otherwise be needed for developing an argument and for exposition, can now be used for discussion and debate. Student time formerly devoted to searching out materials can now be devoted to absorbing and criticizing articles in the collection. On an individual basis, students will still require help in identifying sources of descriptive information on particular countries or regions. But my impression, at least, is that they use such sources in a more sophisticated way, less overwhelmed by the encyclopedic detail of new material, more discerning of its significance, more discriminating about its possible explanatory uses.
Students who have undergone this strategy of teaching have had very specific criteria for study and evaluation of their work. They have also had very practical aids to carrying it out.
Personally, I have found that the utterly inadequate has been virtually eliminated from the written work of students, that, with the help of the specialized, methodological focus, discussions of socio-educational problems in class or conference are rarely stupid, though they are often, understandably, naive or uninformed. Moreover, on an individual basis, I have seen a considerable spillover to other areas of the understanding gleaned in a comparative education course, something which is rather new in my experience.
For the instructor, there are some serious disadvantages to eschewing the descriptive approach. He must perforce be more careful about his own errors, biases, and convictions and work much harder. He must guard against being trapped by technical details of research, especially since students are often poorly prepared in basic social science concepts and tools of even the most elementary kind. How to help them grasp fundamental ideas and general concepts, and still give a course of study which introduces students to the substantive problems in education and society in a comparative context remains the most difficult problem. Moreover, while some students have to overcome their personal distaste for this style of study, others become over-ambitious in their choices -- both leading to considerable expenditure of time and psychic energy.
The pedagogical problems, in short, are by no means solved. Nor is the approach we have taken without problems and disadvantages. But with the general or beginning student in comparative education, I am satisfied that teaching the course around and on the theme of the empirical mode has both justification in theory and support in practice. I have not taken up the question of more advanced students. For them, I think the case is even stronger.
I must add another, very personal note by way of conclusion. Perhaps they are just peculiar to me, but there are two problems which continue to plague me as I teach the course along the lines described, using the two books, Toward A Science of Comparative Education and Scientific Investigations in Comparative Education. First, I have the common cultural bias of many people from Europe, against using a "book for the course." I never experienced this as a student in England. I never learned how to use a textbook properly as a teaching tool. Second, I have the problem of someone who has written down the content of lectures, symposia, classroom discussions and tutorial sessions, organized it into what seems to be the logical, efficient and clear pattern of words and ideas, and has no more to say. This raises a problem of how to fill class time. If a professor makes the error of letting his students see his sources, I've been warned, he cannot keep ahead of them. My students are more critical and challenging all the time. And I now know that I have committed the serious sartorial solecism of exposing my thinking and its sources to public gaze, leaving myself with only ascribed status and native wit as rags to cover my intellectual nakedness.
NOTES
- George Z. F. Bereday, "Some Methods of Teaching Comparative Education," Comparative Education Review, 2: (1958) 4-9; Edmund J. King, "Students, Teachers, and Researchers in Comparative Education," Comparative Education Review, 3 (1959) 33-36; Isaac L. Kandel, "A New Addition to Comparative Methodology," Comparative Education Review, 5 (1961) 4-6 [BACK]
Robert E. Belding, "Teaching by Case Method in Comparative Education," Comparative Education Review, 2 (1958) 31-32; Anthony Scarangelo, "The Use of Motion Pictures in Comparative Education," Comparative Education Review, 3 (1959) 24-27. [BACK]
Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein, Toward A Science of Comparative Education. New York: Macmillan, 1969, and Max A. Eckstein and Harold J. Noah (eds.), Scientific Investigations in Comparative Education. New York: Macmillan, 1969. [BACK]
Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein, "A Design for Teaching 'Comparative Education'," Comparative Education Review 10 (1966) 511-513. [BACK]