Doing Comparative Education Research: Issues and Problems.

Doing comparative education research: Issues and problems Edited by Keith Watson Oxford: Symposium Books, 2001. 394 pp. 28 [pounds sterling] (US $46). ISBN 1 873927 83 5.

One of the more interesting phenomena concerning the 'shape' of educational studies in recent years has been the displacement of comparative education as it had developed through the 20th century. Conventional comparative education, with its fundamental concern to develop a 'method' to enable judicious cross-national borrowing of educational policies and practices, more or less faded away a generation ago. Whether it was too close an ally of modernity, whether it was insufficiently robust and subtle to account for complex conceptual and practical developments in education, or whether good scholars in education simply lost interest in it, time will probably tell.

What can be spoken of at the present time is the remarkable resurgence of interest in education as an international, global, and transcultural phenomenon. The old comparative education, with its focus on free-standing nation states as its prime unit of analysis, was simply incapable of interpreting both the ordered and the chaotic changes in edu-cation sweeping the world. It is a pity, then, that the rubric 'comparative education' survives as the main descriptor of a booming field of educational inquiry. Some, of course, have preferred for many years to use the term 'international education', but even this now fails to capture the essence of a field now dominated by concerns with globalisation and all it has to suggest and demand of research and analysis in education.

One only has to look at the list of Australian Research Council projects in education over the past seven years or so to see evidence for the health of Australian research in international, global and transcultural education, to an extent that Australian researchers have achieved an international prominence way beyond their numbers. But, and this is the point, would any of them refer to themselves as comparative educators? No.

It is widely appreciated that globalisation emerged as the social science concept of the late 20th century, coming just in the nick of time for scholars from both left and right. It was a straightforward matter for those interested in the world of educational change to see in globalisation--assuredly a hotly contested term and construct--a means of re-organising their thinking and lines of inquiry. It came just as the analysis of education was hit by the much-trumpeted crisis of disciplinarity and all its connotations of moving into postmodernist zones of deconstruction.

This welcome volume of essays points to the health of comparative education--especially as a field of research--in the United Kingdom (UK) at the present time. Many contributors echo an introductory chapter from Watson, a brief reflection on the changing role of comparative education. At a time of escalating neo-liberal reform, of international testing and accountability movements, of the regionalisation of educational accreditation and certification, and of increasing rhetoric about educational quality as a key to economic competitiveness, some of the founding concerns of comparative education have returned to the fore. In particular, much work on school effectiveness, learning outcomes and national learning achievement has been based on relatively context-free assumptions about how to compare. Politics is driving a return to the old comparative education at precisely the time when it has been discarded.

Part One opens the volume on a positive and unapologetic note with fine essays examining the reconceptualising of comparative education in the past decade or two. Watson is joined by Michael Crossley, Rosemary Preston and Patricia Broadfoot, whose essays for their breadth of coverage and critical insight could almost constitute a volume in their own right. The ground is surveyed in a forward-looking but at all times historically grounded review of progress in the field.

A very real strength in this volume is Part Two on Europe. Perhaps nothing more than education demonstrates the fragile and tentative character of European desires for unity and integration. The five essays highlight much of the potential of the new comparative education to make relevant contributions to educational theory, policy and practice. David Phillips and Anastasia Economou stand out with their commentary on conducting research into European Union education and training policy, relevant for any investigator of politicised bureaucracy.

Part Three reflects something of the origins of the volume, being grounded in a series of papers presented at the inaugural conference of the British Association for International and Comparative Education. Somewhere in the volume there had to be a miscellaneous section, and here it is. Nevertheless, in presenting a range of perspectives on 'practical issues and new approaches', we find UK comparativists at work, analysing such themes as comparing educational systems (Joanna Le Metais), gleaning meaning from comparative case studies (Michele Schweisfurth), and the contribution of history to comparative research (Anthony Sweeting). Leon Tikly contributes a powerful essay on post-colonialism, calling for a re-reading of globalisation theory in education to accommodate post-colonial perspectives.

A very limited Part Four attempts some commentary on international agencies, data collection and interpretation, and various kinds of international examinations. Its three contributions are too few to survey the scene, but Cohn Lacey and Angela Jacklin provide insightful commentary on educational aspects of the UK government's White Paper on International Development, and John Lowe binds up tightly the themes of globalisation, national education systems and the emergence of international examinations. An interesting Postscript to the volume is 'Harry' Higginson's reflections on the development of comparative education as witnessed in the pages of the journal Compare over some 30 years.

The volume is recommended as a reliable state-of-the-art overview. It highlights clearly the dangers facing education policy formation at the present time through comparative research undertaken by non-specialist consultants and politicians, or by appeal to quick-fix political 'solutions' to complex educational problems, or by the use of decontextualised statistics and data. With educational provision now breaking well beyond the reach of government, and with the transformations brought about by information technology, this welcome volume shows that the new comparative education is indeed re-inventing itself along compelling lines.

Phillip W. Jones

The University of Sydney