In her teaching, research, and community activities in Canada, the author has repeatedly confronted questions regarding equality, diversity, and power. In this article, the author discusses diversity and equal opportunity to achieve excellence in education. Reflecting on these issues should help everyone to understand the complexities involved in…

Notes that comparative educators make extensive use of metaphors in thinking and writing. Examines the use of metaphors for description, explanation, and articulation of ideas. Explains how comparing is inherent in human thinking and how metaphorical comparison is a fundamental way researchers seek to extend their knowledge of the world. (SB)

This article presents the presidential address made by Martin Carnoy on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). The theme of the meeting was "Rethinking the Comparative." In this address, he spoke of ways to engage in comparative educational research, from individual country case…

Reviews three books that examine intersections of educational philosophy and research with the postpositivist landscape. The books present challenges for comparative education related to ethically examining the desire to know "the other," welcoming the new and diverse, employing dynamic concepts in analyses, and adopting a decentered…

Martin Carnoy, Philip Foster, Vandra Lea Masemann, Harold J. Noah, and Brian Holmes respond to Erwin H. Epstein's article, "Currents Left and Right: Ideology in Comparative Education." (BRR)

Considers recent perspectives in educational research, particularly the use of critical ethnography in the study of comparative education. Reviews the origin and relationship to critical ethnography of sociological, anthropological, interpretive, and critical approaches in comparative education. Discusses specific utility to the study of…

"Consciousness-raising" education employs group dialogue to make the poorest individuals in a society aware of their reality and their ability to change it. The author examines two contrasting sets of developmental assumptions in this form of education, the equilibrium and conflict concept of change, and related evaluation issues.…

Scientific, positivistic approaches to education have often circumvented, or even suppressed, alternative knowledge domains such as those of indigenous systems of medicine. In the postindustrial era, knowledge paradigms will become more holistic, context-dependent, and integrative, narrowing the gap between theory and practice. Contains 27…

Structures of multiple education and knowledge systems can be recreated in maps, in a social cartography where the space of the social map reflects effects of social changes in real space. Such maps allow social research to escape from modernism's positivist restraints, improve comparative educators' understanding of the social milieu, and open…

Discusses the current issue of "political correctness" in the academic community and the responsibility of scholarly journals to avoid ideological domination from either the right or the left. Describes the 1934 Nazi takeover of the International Review of Education, the only international journal of comparative education at that time.…

Criticizes a previous article's assumptions that globalization is a policy option that may be chosen or rejected by professionals, that acceptance of globalization undermines possibilities for improving existing inequities and that comparative education professionals are completely qualified to establish educational policy for the poor and…

Analyzes factors leading to the withdrawal from UNESCO of the United States, its leading financial contributor. Discusses the organization's structural contradiction (a majority of members contributing 1% of total funding), limited participation by successive U.S. administrations, organizational bureaucracy and mismanagement, indifference to U.S.…

Examines the postmodern challenge to the representation and practice of comparative and international education. Reviews the literature to identify major positions or arguments in the postmodern debate in comparative education. Maps these positions or knowledge communities as a discursive field of diverse perspectives and draws conclusions about…

This article presents a brief critical commentary on Martin Carnoy's presidential address from Robert F. Arnove, Nelly P. Stromquist, Christine Fox, Henry M. Levin, Vandra Lea Masemann, and Erwin H. Epstein. Among other things, Arnove finds particularly useful Carnoy's recommendations on ways to engage in comparative education research, from…

Disagrees with Psacharapoulos that theory and qualitative research have little value in studying educational problems. Emphasizes the importance of local context to educational planning, and the need for more thorough discussion of the concepts used in comparative education, consistent use of terminology, and honest elaboration of researchers'…