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, "Comparative Education:
The State of the Field"  Review of Research in
Education 3 (Itasca, Illinois: F.E. Peacock,
1975), 77-84. Reprinted by permission.

COMPARATIVE EDUCATION: THE STATE OF THE FIELD

All fields of study appear to be marked by similar phases of growth. In the beginning, contributions to the field tend to be discrete and unsystematic, prompted by the curiosity of the observers and their inherent interest in the subject. There are no rules, just the special insights and motivations of single observers, whose accounts are descriptive and usually lack systematic reporting or an expressed framework of theory.

As work in the field of study increases, reporting becomes more systematic and comprehensive, and the reporters are more self-conscious about the accuracy of their data and more concerned about the ways in which they arrive at conclusions from the data. The curiosity of observers becomes more focused on the possibilities of practical applications of new knowledge, and they are inclined to be critical of their own work and that of their colleagues. Particular types of studies emerge, marked by particular theoretical approaches to the subject, characteristic ways of observing and reporting, and broad agreement on what is or is not relevant. Practitioners in the field become aware of the precedents and of their intellectual ancestors, as well as the kinds of effort their contemporaries are directing at similar targets of study.

Comparative education has demonstrated all these characteristics during its development. The literature includes a wide array of subjects and approaches, symptomatic of the varied motives for studying foreign educational systems. It encompasses narrative description of single nations prompted by interest and curiosity, selective and structured observations motivated by the desire to apply lessons from abroad to the solution of educational problems at home, and encyclopedic codification of the "facts" about many countries. Such work may be impressionistic and even normative, providing a wealth of information and insights about the nations studied. In addition, it often reveals much about the culturally determined predilections of its authors.

Historical reviews of the literature in comparative education show clearly that systematic studies of foreign education increased dramatically as nations began to develop their own public school systems (Brickman, 1960, 1964, 1966; Fraser & Brickman, 1968; Hausman, 1967). Interest in foreign educational practices has been stimulated by nationalism, the growth in international communications, and the aftermath of major wars. For some, the motive was to help develop improved education modeled on foreign practices; for others, foreign study, travel, and teaching were seen as means to ease tensions among nations and foster an international perspective.

Two general questions have especially shaped the investigations of writers in comparative education: Why do educational thinking and practices differ among nations? What are the differences and similarities? The conceptual frame within which answers have been offered becomes evident from a brief review of the literature since the beginning of the 20th century, when Sadler (1900) emphasized the intimate and interactive relation of educational and historical facts.

The education systems of nations differ because of different historical and cultural traditions, but they are similar because there are common elements in human societies. In addition, important events transcending national boundaries have influenced their affairs -- the Protestant Revolution, Marxism, the Industrial Revolution, Imperialism (or the achievement of national independence from colonial control), for example. The interplay among such factors has occupied the attention of recent generations of comparative educators.

Comparative education writing has been influenced by several important perspectives. First, the realization that educational phenomena are part of the whole fabric of a nation's culture and history for the most part put an end to works that described and assessed schooling without reference to the larger cultural context of a country. Studies thereafter tended to set educational events against a historical background and to describe the genesis of different types of schools, educational philosophies, and school systems as parts of a series of political and social events. Kandel (1933) and Ulich (1961), especially, focused upon the links among history, national culture, political ideology, and schooling. Much attention was given to "national identity" as the key to understanding a nation's special educational characteristics (King, 1958; Mallinson, 1957). It was conceivable that this approach would end opportunities for comparison because of the tendency to assume that each nation and its education were unique. This danger was averted, however, by the great attention given to common factors and common problems presumed to affect many countries. The major assumption that characterized comparative education work during the first half of the 20th century was that such study could illuminate the past growth and current dynamics of educational change in whole societies (Hans, 1949).

It was not until after World War II, however, that the predominantly historical, philosophical, and theoretical approaches were challenged by more pragmatic considerations. Over a hundred years before, many writers had been prompted to study the schools in foreign countries with a view to improving classroom practices and school system policies in their own lands. From about 1950, this motive prompted a renewal of interest in comparative studies, whether in highly developed nations seeking a way out of the disorder of the postwar period or in the less developed world which was confronting the problems of newly achieved independence. Educational reform and planning for national survival and growth were everywhere of paramount importance.

Economists in particular led the move toward regarding the education system of a nation as its means for investing in human potential, as its way of developing national resources. But the problems were not only economic. The survival of a nation depended as much on its success in dealing with political and social problems as on the most efficient allocation of human resources. For the first time, some nations began to regard reform in education as a possible means of achieving a sense of national unity among disparate sub-populations, a tool for ameliorating gross disparities in status and opportunity among social classes, and a mechanism for improving skills and the quality of life. To study the experience of nations other than one's own seemed pertinent. Comparative study of education and of those social, political, and economic dimensions of society closely bound up with education was encouraged by these developments.

The social sciences thus provided a leavening for the predominantly historical and philosophical approaches of earlier comparative educators. Contemporary work has developed a greater specificity of criteria and a sharper awareness of causal relations. The underlying general questions now tend to be restated more in the following form: What factors in the school system or in the social, political, or other structures of the society explain variability in pupil achievement, administrative structure, school financing, instructional methodology, and other educational phenomena? To the questions of what the similarities and differences in educational practices among nations are and what explains these similarities and differences, a third question was added: What are the outcomes of these similarities and differences?

Comparative educators have for a long time been especially concerned with the availability of data comparable across nations, with controlling the biases of observers and interpreters of data, and with integrating the data, concepts, and analytic techniques of several academic disciplines. The work of international organizations has greatly improved the availability and, to some extent, the comparability of data. Collaborative work involving persons from different nations and disciplines has strengthened the methodological grasp of the problems involved. Further, the use of statistical analysis, model theory, and systems analysis for the purposes of comparative education has been heralded by some practitioners as signifying the emergence of the field as a science.

As a result, a new kind of comparative education research has developed: the empirical cross-national study in which large amounts of data are gathered and analyzed and a variety of social science concepts and techniques are used to test hypotheses about the relations between educational variables and political, economic, and social characteristics (Asher & Shively, 1969; Edding, 1965; Evans, 1968; Farrell, 1970; Lave & Kyle, 1968; Li, 1971). Interest in the methodological problems of cross-national comparison has been sharpened (Bereday, 1964; Foster, 1960; Holmes, 1965), and much attention has been given to the possibilities of using those strategies and tactics that had become commonplace in empirical social science research (Eckstein & Noah, 1969; Noah & Eckstein, 1969). International organizations, such as UNESCO and other specialized agencies of the United Nations, and the Organization for European Cooperation and Development (OECD) were able to collect educational and other social data systematically and on a vast scale. These agencies have also made valuable contributions to educational planning and policy efforts, for example, the series of studies on educational finance and planning produced by the International Institute of Educational Planning (a UNESCO agency), and a set of OECD country studies in which national policy and plans have been critically reviewed and analyzed by international teams of educational experts (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1969-; Unesco, 1964; International Institute for Educational Planning, 1967-1969). Technical assistance programs have encouraged the exchange of skilled professionals among developed and underdeveloped countries, and this has made evident the commonality and immediacy of socio-educational problems in many lands. Thus the burgeoning of data sources, increasing methodological sophistication, the meshing of social science expertise with education, and the presence of urgent problems requiring attention at the national policy level all have combined to give renewed power and variety to comparative studies in education.

An excellent example of this type of work is the massive survey undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (the IEA project). This project has been devoted to cross-national assessment of student achievement in selected school subjects and attempts to explain variance in such achievement. The first project was a study of mathematics achievement in 12 countries (Foshay, Thorndike, Hotyat, Pidgeon, & Walker, 1962; Husen, 1967). The most recent phases of work covered science, reading comprehension, and literature in 21 countries (Comber & Keeves, 1973; Purves, 1973; Thorndike, 1973), and reports on three more school subjects -- civic knowledge and English and French as foreign languages -- are in preparation (Farnen, Oppenheim, & Torney, in press; Lewis, 1975; Carroll, 1975). In addition, overall studies of the six-subject surveys are in preparation (Passow, Noah, & Eckstein, 1969; Peaker, 1975; Walker, 1976). Data were not, of course, collected merely on achievement. A vast amount of information in standardized form was obtained on student home background, school practices, teacher characteristics, and the nations' school systems, as well as selected social and economic data. Results were compared at three levels: among students, among schools, and among nations. The main statistical technique used for explaining variance in achievement was multiple regression.

The problems inherent in the new wave of empirical cross-national research are somewhat different from those of the earlier generation of comparativists, but they are not altogether unique. The latter could be faulted on grounds of personal or cultural subjectivity and bias, or because their global perspective was too theoretical, or because their descriptive detail was merely interesting or idiosyncratic and not generalizable. The more empirical studies, even when thoughtfully planned and rigorously executed, are subject to such familiar methodological criticisms as representativeness, the accuracy of data, and the appropriateness of analytical design. Two general concerns, however, are more important. First, the findings should have some relevance to decision making in education (whether at the national policy level or in the school or classroom in particular pedagogical terms), and second, the subtleties of human interaction in the teaching-learning process should not be neglected by undue emphasis upon easily quantifiable and more generally conventional dimensions of education.

In reference to the large-scale survey approach of IEA, the technical problems, while important, are not insuperable. If there is enough time, experience, cooperation among experts, and money, it is possible to reduce weaknesses in sampling, data collection, analysis, and inference to reasonable levels. Relating comparative studies of this kind to policy is a more difficult task, however. At one level is the widespread problem of how to communicate scholarly research findings to practitioners; at another is the selection of problems for investigation and the search for relations among factors that bear upon important professional policy issues. The IEA study does achieve this to some extent. For example, it illuminates the arguments over selective versus comprehensive schooling, documents and refines knowledge about the relation of sex of pupil to achievement in different subjects, and highlights the variable relations between school and home factors in accounting for pupil achievement in different subjects, at different ages, and in different countries. Furthermore, first attempts were made, notably in the literature and civic knowledge studies, to gather and to compare data on noncognitive variables.

The trend of the past decade toward empirical, quantitative, large-scale research has not been without its severe critics (Barber, 1972; Kazamias, 1970). In drawing upon the quantitative techniques of economists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists, researchers run the risk of becoming distracted from those topics that are more central to educational studies: curriculum, teaching methodology, and classroom and school organization. Furthermore, it is argued, enthusiasts for empirical methodology may ignore its limitations as an investigative strategy. Critics also tend to stress the inappropriateness of applying models of investigation drawn from the physical sciences to the humane arts, such as education. However, few practitioners are unaware of the differences in orientation inherent in the body of comparative studies: theoretical and practical, descriptive and analytical, objective and melioristic, philosophical-historical, and empirical. Each orientation has made and continues to make its own particular contribution to the understanding of data and educational problems. But few researchers today will deny the complementary nature of the approaches that characterize the predominantly historical studies of the 1930s and 1940s and the empirical studies of the past decade.

Schooling is a mass enterprise. As such there is value in analyzing its correlates and outcomes, using techniques of mass data collection and analysis. Because education is an international enterprise that is not limited to any particular time and place, it is therefore properly studied cross-culturally. This is not to reject the view of education as a small-scale individual process in which techniques of micro-observation, analysis of small-group behavior, and observations of classroom interaction and culture are desirable. The two approaches should properly be regarded as complementary and, as they are developed, they should contribute to better understanding of the educational process at all levels.

In education and in the social sciences at large, approaches range from attempts to identify the regularities of human behavior in social settings to emphasis upon the special, even unique qualities of the phenomena studied. Comparative education is no exception. At one end of the scale lies a group of works intended to test particular hypotheses systematically: quantified data are statistically analyzed and inferences and predictions are made, with conventional caveats. At the other end are studies of a different nature: colorful, intuitive, eclectic, impressionistic, ranging widely. over history, philosophy, and education, spiced with social comment. Whether a particular piece of work has value is not so much a matter of where it stands on this particular range of alternative approaches as it is of how well the work has been done in its own terms. Comparative education studies include a valuable scholarly tradition in the more humanistically oriented direction, and in recent years the field has been enriched by a growing array of works built upon empirical social science models. Viewed as complementary modes of study, both can contribute substantially to knowledge in comparative education.

REFERENCES

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