Reviews the history of comparative adult education and the multiple pathways afforded by postmodernism and poststructuralism. Concludes that comparative adult education should avoid bipolar constructs and include exploration of the following: analysis, forces, power, genre, communication, interculturality, knowledge construction, evaluation, and…

Writings about educational systems can be broken into four approaches (dimensions), by which authors limit and create the conceptual schemes on which they base their work. Original work may be improved by an author's attending to the specific writing requirements of each dimension of educational composition. In the first dimension, papers are…

The fall of communism in 1989 brought a renewed interest in the educational systems of central and eastern Europe. Many foreign scholars claim that post-communist schooling is undemocratic, or at best transitionally democratic. For schools to democratize, they argue, teachers must become less authoritative; teaching methods should focus more on…

Noting America's traditional domination of educational research topics and methods, the author looks at recent attempts to enhance collaboration with: crossnational, multinational, and international projects. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of each, he concludes that multinational collaboration--the sharing of techniques--currently…

Val Rust, Aminata Soumare, Octavio Pescador, and Megumi Shibuya's article, "Research Strategies in Comparative Education" is a very important piece of scholarship in the field of comparative and international education. Historically, there has been much scholarly debate regarding the theoretical approaches found in the field and, on a smaller…

This brief paper considers the historical development of comparative education and consequent problems. It is argues that the origin of comparative education was found in the possibility of being both national and supranational in one's orientation to the study of education. This has led to confusion in what is being studied and the concepts used…

The current crisis in the field of comparative education is one of methodology: the quasi-scientific approach, which is widely used and expensively funded, necessarily jettisons a whole range of variables which are not measurable and which may well have more explanatory power. The quantitative studies have not been shown to yield anything which is…

A respected method of studying comparative education is that of analyzing national character and assessing its impact on methods and systems of education. Like anthropologists, comparative educators must immerse themselves in a society in order to study its educational system. This analogy raises the issue of methodology, and many studies have…

Naive dichotomous representations of complex realities persist in part because there is unfilled political and conceptual space in which they can flourish. Dichotomous representations of pedagogy have been popular and linger even though more discerning educators have abandoned this kind of rhetoric. Comparative perspective might contribute to the…

The linkage of the formal structures of higher learning in Islam and the development of higher education in the Medieval West is discussed. Recent findings indicate a transference of instructional methodology and even some organizational forms from Islamdom to the Christian West during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Islamic models of higher…

Research on comparative and international education cannot rely solely on the work of scholars. Before conclusions are reached, researchers may benefit from an examination of what journalists working in various countries have learned. While journalists may give less emphasis to education than to political, economic, social, or personality factors,…

A report concerning the value of the international exchange debate tour of New Zealand sponsored by the Committee on International Discussion and Debate of the Speech Communication Association is given in this paper. The report provides an examination of the goals and benefits of international exchange debating, discusses how this particular tour…

The metanarrative of modernity as constructed by language arts teaching in Malawian classrooms constructs an identity among Malawians that denies the multiplicity of influences, including the participation of Malawian and other African societies, in the narrative of the creation of school knowledge. It also perpetuates the marginality of…

Korean educational decentralization has been a subject that has continually resurfaced whenever education reform is seriously discussed. Although previous regimes eagerly tackled the issue of educational decentralization in their information and implementation of education reform policies, there is little evidence to show that educational…

To follow a curriculum is to be inducted into a social order. From this perspective, curriculum practice has the intention to foster social identities. The visible curriculum and the hidden curriculum are rendered as inseparable. This paper discusses curriculum research in the United Kingdom, adopting the framework sketched above. The paper pays…