The Idea of the Visiting Inquiry in Comparative Education: The 1903 Mosely Commission and the United States

Abstract

Through a study of a privately funded and ambitious inquiry into the education system of the United States, the relations between the development of comparative education as an activity and the governing of education systems in the early 20th century can be illuminated. The relations and interests of early comparativists were mobilized and enhanced by private funding and significant numbers of public actors in education were involved in comparative inquiry. The 1903 Mosely Commission was a philanthropic intervention to reengineer the patchwork of English education, and an attempt to modernize it and influence its government on a large scale. Its innovation was in its methods of influence as well as its scientific reports. The Commission was a hybrid, transnational institution, using comparison to modernize the government of education, mainly involving policy actors and finally, claimed neither by the history or comparative study of education. Consequently, its significance has been lost.

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Martin Lawn

Martin Lawn is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh, an honorary senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, and a visiting professor at the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education (CELE) of the University of Turku, Finland. He researches European education policy and the history of the educational sciences across Europe. Recent books include: The Rise of Data in Education Systems: Collection, Visualization and Use (Symposium Books, 2014); and the coauthored (with S. Grek) Europeanizing Education: Governing a New Policy Space (Symposium Books, 2012).