Comparative education histories: a postscript

ABSTRACT

Comparative education is two centuries old. Many mainstream historical narratives claim that the field began with the iconic opus of Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris (1817). This article offers to re-theorise the histories of comparative education. It suggests casting a far-sighted and panoramic look at the field’s origins. An underlying assumption in these histories is the embeddedness of comparative education in ever-changing world orders. The article concludes with a puzzle for future work on a global history of comparative education.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative education
• history of education
• comparative history
• critical historical studies

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to Robert Cowen, David Phillips, and Mark Bray for their generous and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Maria Manzon is Assistant Professor of the Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning at the Education University of Hong Kong. She researches on comparative education and on parent engagement in Asian contexts. She is Associate Editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Editor of CIEclopedia, an online who’s who in comparative and international education. Previously, she worked at the National Institute of Education in Singapore as research scientist. She was Chair of the Admissions and New Societies Standing Committee of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and is Board Member of the Comparative Education Society of Asia. Her publications in comparative education history and methods serve as reference texts internationally.

ORCID

Maria Manzon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4946-5688

Notes

1. CIEclopedia was founded in March 2008 by Teachers College, Columbia University, USA under the leadership of Gita Steiner-Khamsi. The website is currently hosted by the National Institute of Education, Singapore. At the time of writing, the database is in the process of being transferred to its new host, The Education University of Hong Kong under the editorship of Maria Manzon. See http://www.nie.edu.sg/cieclopedia-org/cieclopedia-org-a-to-z-listing (accessed 12 December 2017).