Comparative education as a field of study in universities (and "comparative education" as practised by nineteenth-century administrators of education in Canada, England, France and the USA) has always addressed the theme of "transfer": that is, the movement of educational ideas, principles and practices, and institutions and…

This article tries to look forward and backward simultaneously--the normal uncomfortable perspective used within articles written for anniversary issues. The theme of the paper is the need for some academic housekeeping. The main motif is that "comparative education" does not have an essential identity but that earlier debates which…

This article revisits a topic central to the past and the present of comparative education: the theme of "transfer". It outlines four ideas. First, that comparative education as a field of study, having begun in the study of "mobilities", became diverted by other anxieties. Second, the article notes that the theme of "transfer" is far broader than…

Over time, the field of comparative education has seen sharp discontinuities in method and topic. One approach to understanding these discontinuities is to examine their roots in a "double-reading" of the world: the combination of academe's internal display of a disciplinary form and the external reading of a specific global time-space social…

Outlines several ways of looking comparatively at democratic educational systems. Examines narratives of democratic education in American educational history; nation-building as a primary policy objective; and conceptual weaknesses of the model of elite, mass, and universal education. Sees current trends toward educational efficiency and quality…

Comparative education should stop trying to figure out how to borrow educational systems from one culture and transplant them into another. Instead, it should focus on how educational systems can be described and explained, comparatively, in a way that captures the intersections of forces of history, social structures, and individuals' pedagogic…

Comparative education is late in addressing postmodern issues because of its traditional theoretical orientation and focus on practice and policy. Ideal-typical models illustrate how "modern" educational goals based on notions of national culture and a social contract are being replaced by postmodern emphases on efficiency and international…

In several countries, university purposes and functions are being renegotiated as governments insist on a certain kind of "product" and careful measures of university "productivity." Identifies immediate consequences for university culture, particularly displacement of academic leadership by a culture of "management." Argues that the university is…

The author gives an account of comparative education in Europe, using professional comparative education societies as the main unit of description. He states that the intellectual definition of European comparative education (focus on higher education and teacher education) is sharply different from that of American comparative education (focus on…