Theories and methods in comparative education

Issues of methodology have been at the centre of debate among Comparative Educationists for decades. The essays in this volume, written for the most part by internationally recognised scholars from Europe, Latin America and the USA, reflect current interests in the metascientific discourse and its history in the field of Comparative Education. A shift in the nature of this discourse from prescription to socio-historical description is particularly clear in the essays in Part I in which frameworks, within which analyses of the literature can be made, are developed. Theories which direct attention to historical explanations and policy-oriented prediction and which inform conceptual problems in making cross-cultural comparisons are examined in Part II. In these essays reference is made to the different epistemological premises of such theories and to their application to substantive comparative research. The essays in Part III add an unusual dimension to methodological debates in so far as they define the disciplinary status and theoretical functions of Comparative Education within the wider context of Education (or Educology) as a basic discipline.