Acting comparatively upon the educational world: puzzles and possibilities

Abstract

This article suggests that the academic field of study called comparative education must always deal with the intellectual problems produced by the concept of context (the local, social embeddedness of educational phenomena) and transfer (the movement of educational ideas, policies and practices from one place to another, normally across a national boundary); and their relation. Considerable progress has been made, but these intellectual issues have not yet been fully sorted out despite the normal optimism—and the very powerful legitimation motif in the history of the field of study—about its ‘usefulness’: the special value of comparative education as a way of improving educational policy. The article suggests that the ideology of usefulness in the history of comparative education has helped to permit a whole range of intellectual, quasi‐intellectual, and rather practical activities to be gathered together under the umbrella name, ‘comparative education’ to the point where serious epistemological, ethical and political confusions are occurring. The article concludes by suggesting that it may be time for some fresh thinking about the intellectual shape of comparative education and its relations to educational policy. What are some of the simple questions which might help to clarify an agenda of possibilities?