Riassunto esame Comparative history of education, Prof. Cadeddu Francesca, libro consigliato Origins and traditions in comparative education, Manzon

Comparative history of education: the global South and comparative and international education

Historical education of comparative and international education

In the historical evolution of comparative and international education, it has been customary to distinguish between seven phases. These phases take landmark publications of Noah and Eckstein for the first five phases and of Paulston for the last phases, as reference points.

These phases should be conceptualized not as a sequence of mutually exclusive phases, one substituting the previous, but as a continuous growth of bordering of the field. Phase 1 is still present today. Each phase represents a broadening or expansion of themes, objectives of the field. This chapter will also suggest joining the dots of a number of salient trends in the field today.

Phase 1: traveller’s tales from times immemorial

Comparison is a typical, unique and universal human activity. The very earliest human beings, as soon as they established contact with alien communities, be it in the course of migration, war, trade or whatever other reasons, commenced to compare their own societies, communities and cultures, and also their ways of raising children. Similar comparisons can be found in the public and social media.

This phase can be classified as a prescientific phase of comparative education. Social media is certainly set to supply a steady stream of these kinds of traveller’s tales. Social media’s implications and potential, as well as dangers for comparative and international education, is an assignment to be taken on by scholars in the field.

Phase 2: Comprehensive study of education systems abroad, with the aim of borrowing, since c. 1830

The formation of nation-states, from the early nineteenth century, in North America, Western Europe and then others, and the creation of public primary school systems, resulted in a new type of educational traveller. Government officials travelled to other countries and undertook systematic, exhaustive studies of those systems.

The intention was to take over and borrow good ideas, policies and practices to transplant them into their own education system at home, to improve their own education systems. This practice is still rife today. These surveys of foreign systems of education do not satisfy the requirements of rigorous scientific research based on prior beliefs; some education policies are presented to be better than others.

The biggest and fatal mistake of the studies was, and often is, their failure to factor into their account contextual similarities and differences between exporting and importing when borrowing. They should be careful of not succumbing too fast to human fascination.

At Humboldt University of Berlin, the scholar Jürgen Schriewer has developed the concept of “externalization”, describing how governments win legitimacy for domestic education reforms by referring to foreign exemplary cases. Many scholars pointed out instances where externalization is rife in major education reforms of a variety of countries in the world.

Phase 3: International co-operation since c. 1925

This phase in the historical evolution of comparative education was marked by the motivation and inspiration to improve the domestic education project, now being overshadowed by an ideal to improve the fate of humanity. This is also described as the philanthropic ideal of comparative education.

Jullien coined the term “comparative education” and is often called “the father of comparative education”. In 1817, this is then commonly taken as year 1 of the science of comparative education. Jullien saw education as a means to eradicate the political turmoil and wars in the world.

In 1925, UNESCO, the International Bureau of Education, as a part of the League of Nations, was founded. Year 1925 was the beginning of the activity of international co-operation in the field of comparative and international education.

In any case, the International Bureau of Education was eventually superseded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), set up in 1945. By the 1980s, the World Bank developed as the most prolific publisher of comparative education literature in the world.

A second kind of international co-operation in education by scholars of comparative and international education was taking place in research centers at universities.

A third kind of international co-operation in education is studies of education that are international in scope. The oldest and probably the best known, as well as the most extensive, of these are the studies of the International Association for the Evaluation of the Education Achievement (IEA), established in Stockholm in 1958: education around the world.

Another example of this kind of international or global study is the book series of Bloomsbury Publishers. This is a series of sixteen book volumes published between 2012 and 2016. Each volume covers a particular region, education systems covering education in all countries of the world.

A final form of international co-operation is comparative and international education professional societies. The oldest and largest is the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), based in the United States of America. Then the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE) was formed in 1959. These societies have loosely confederated in the WCCES, which came into being in 1970.

Phase 4: A “factors and forces” phase since c. 1930

The precursor to this phase was Sir Michael Sadler, a British historian and education official in the government. In 1900, he severely criticized the activities of those who occupied themselves with the identification of best foreign education ideas, policies and practices, to improve the education system at home.

Sadler’s argument was that the education system of any country is the result of contextual factors. It was created by and is being shaped by societal forces uniquely textured in each national context. Each national education system was, therefore, uniquely crafted to serve the needs of a specific, unique social context.

Taking one element of the education system and trying to import it into another education system is therefore bound to end in failure, as it will not be aligned to the new social context. Therefore, the entire notion of education borrowing should be abandoned. The other implication of Sadler’s ideas was that understanding any education system means its national context should first be studied.

It is also true that this “factors and forces” stage left a permanent mark on the field. “Context”, turning to societal context to understand education systems, has become a permanent, pivotal part of the work of scholars in the field, while all major textbooks used to teach comparative and international education courses take pioneering protagonists of this “factors and forces” mould.

The “factors and forces” mould also set in place the “black box” feature of the field. This means scholars concentrate on context and neglect what is taking place in education systems and institutions. This created a lacuna in the field.

In the recent past, voices have also gone up that “factors and forces” protagonists have, through their contribution to the crafting of the field, contributed to the historic and current Northern hegemony in the field. The whole concept of “context”, which has become a key concept in the field, has come under scrutiny and criticism recently, not least because the way it is employed by scholars in the field makes it an agent of Northern hegemony.

Phase 5: A social science phase from c. 1960

The history of the 25 years after the conclusion of the Second World War was characterized by the miraculous recovery of Western Europe, the Cold War and decolonization of large parts of the developing world or the third world. Analysts began to ascribe the economic miracle of Western Europe to investment in education. Thomas Schultz formulated his Theory of Human Capital.

Historically, education was seen as a consumer item, or even an economic liability. The Theory of Human Capital posits education or human capital as an element in the production process, next to and on equal footing with other production factors such as physical capital and infrastructure.

The Theory of Human Capital resulted in a revolution in economic thought and contributed to a seismic shift in thinking about education as well.

Schultz contended that in the case of developing countries, the instrumental value of education in raising economic output is even more underappreciated than in the case of developed countries. Not long after he first proclaimed his theory in 1961, there appeared a correlation coefficient between education effort or investment and economic output in 75 countries, showing that there is a strong co-variation between the strength or development of a nation’s education system and its economic output.

This evidence gave impetus to the development of modernization theory and to the growth of a belief in the power of education in the development of nations.

But to return to the social science phase, it was not only with respect to economic development, or modernization, that education came to be seen as pivotal. Education came to be seen as the solution to the entire round of challenges facing humanity. A limitless confidence in the power of education to bring about any wished-for societal change developed.

Education was seen as key to stamping out drug abuse, reducing alcohol abuse, combatting AIDS, for the field of comparative and international education. As for education, a massive education expansion project took off in the 1960s. Two developments induced by the context of the 1960s should be noted.

Firstly, the belief in the power of education promoted the expansion of comparative and international education at universities. In many countries, new chairs for comparative education were created in universities. On these institutional bases, professional societies were founded, conferences were organized and journals were created.

The second development in the field was the emergence of the social science phase. Breaking radically with the humanities-history framework of the preceding “factors and forces” phase, leading scholars in the field now wholesale appropriated the frameworks and key concepts.

This included an embracement of quantitative methods. Comparative and international education should be to test hypotheses of the statistical effect of education on societal outcomes, to investigate the correlation between the size of education effort and economic growth.

Phase 6: A phase of heterodoxy from c. 1970

The stellar global education expansion drive, launched in the 1960s, had not brought the expected social returns. For example, instead of bringing accelerated economic growth, after the first oil crisis in 1973, the world entered an economic slump.

Instead of decimating unemployment, education growth brought the specters of schooled unemployment and graduate unemployment. The result was that the 1970s was a time that, in contrast to the optimistic 1960s, showed a growing pessimism about the beneficial results of education.

This pessimism held among the public. An example, at the end of this decade, was the book by a Swedish comparativist, titled “The school in question: a comparative study of the school and its future in Western society”. One of the features in the 1960s was the belief that schools and education would promote social mobility.

At the end of his book, Husén comes to the conclusion that the school had changed from being “the great equalizer in society” to “the great sorting machine in society”.

The disillusionment with the positive outcomes of education gave rise to a series of paradigms in comparative and international education that opposed the dominant paradigms in the 1960s, such as modernization theory and human capital theory.

This phase took the name of “the phase of paradigm wars”. A leading set of opposing paradigms were the conflict paradigms portraying society as consisting of an assortment of groupings of unequal power. In this situation, the powerful groups use education as an instrument and as a means to subdue and suppress the less powerful groups.

Socioeconomic reproduction, this paradigm of socioeconomic reproduction has been applied in a variety of contexts all over the world. Another front of opposition was micro-paradigms.

The track layer was an article by Stephen Heyneman, which took issue with macro-analyses of education and society and asked for a study of everyday practice, behavior and interaction in classrooms and in schools instead of a study of macro-structures far removed from everyday education practice.

In contrast to the rising pessimism around education, the expansion accelerated. The center of gravity of this global education expansion project slowly but undisputedly began to drift towards the global South.

The pessimism of the 1970s affected the fortunes of comparative and international education. In the global North, chairs of comparative and international education at universities were abolished, and programs stopped.

In contrast to the fading fortunes of comparative education at universities in the global North, it stood strong and even expanded in parts of the global South. This feature, together with the disproportional growth of universities in the global South, meant that the centre of gravity of the field of comparative and international education started to shift towards the global South.

Phase 7: A phase of heterogeneity since c. 1990

As the final decade of the 20th century commenced, advocates of various paradigms stopped setting their arms against each other. They began to exuberate an acceptance of different paradigms becoming evident in comparative education. Postmodernism attempts to promote an awareness and appreciation of the value of a diversity of knowledge perspectives.

The CIES presidential address kicked off in the 1990s with Sandra Masemann’s presidential address, titled “Ways of Knowing: implications for comparative education”, in which she urged scholars in the field to acknowledge and embrace alternative ways of knowing.

That was followed by Val Rust’s 1991 presidential address, titled “Postmodernism and its comparative education implications”. The decade concluded with Ruth Hayhoe’s 2000 presidential address, when she clearly took up Vanda Masemann’s invitation to challenge modernity by putting on the table the object lesson of two cultures and societies, China and Japan.

This was, therefore, a phase of the multiplication and variety of paradigms.

These paradigms include:

• Semiotic theory
• Neocolonialism
• Systems theory
• Decolonialism
• Rational actor gaming
• World system analysis
• Critical anthropology
• Feminism
• Radical alterity
• Pragmatic interactionism
• Cultural revitalisation
• Phenomenology
• Liberation theory
• Critical modernisation and reflexive modernisation

This galaxy of paradigms illuminating the field of comparative education has been identified. It should be noted that for the proliferation of avant-garde paradigms, the traditional “factors and forces” or humanistic-historical approach, the most well-known being University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The 27 major theoretical positions currently present in the field of comparative and international education are distinguished.

Amidst this ever-multiplication of theoretical and methodological orientations, the global education expansion project surged ahead, continuing the trend remarked upon earlier that was taking place in the 1970s. This global education expansion project has been migrating towards the global South.

Turning to the situation of comparative education at universities, in the social science phase, in the global North in particular, it was in a phase of establishment; in the phase of heterogeneity, at universities, it was in a phase of fragmentation. In this phase of heterogeneity, comparative education at universities was in a phase of broadening.

That means comparative education returned, but not in the form of stand-alone courses under the name of comparative education. Comparative education was subsumed in courses such as “education and the ecology