Comparative Studies And Educational Decision

This volume offers a conceptual justification and methodology for comparative studies of education matching developments in the social sciences and other comparative disciplines. It also relates comparative studies of education to the practical business of policy formulation at all levels. Thus it bridges the widening gap between the purely academic world and the world of decision for development. The author draws illustrations from educational reforms, but goes further in suggesting suitable procedures or institutions which might achieve soundly based policies and secure their implementation. He takes account of the planning techniques and achievements of UNESCO, OECD and other international organizations, and examines the activities and aims of national planning for education in a wider perspective of world re-orientation.

Since 1988, the Board on International Comparative Studies in Education (BICSE) at the (U.S.) National Research Council of the National Academies has engaged in activities designed to increase the rigor and sophistication of international comparative studies in education by encouraging synergies between large and smaller scale international comparative education research, to identify gaps in the existing research base, and to assist in communicating results to policy makers and the public. Under the current grant (1998-2002), funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, BICSE has sponsored public events and commissioned papers on the effects of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the power of video technology in international education research, international perspectives on teacher quality, and advances in the methodology of cross-national surveys of education achievement. This report responds to a request from the board's sponsors under the current grant to produce a report that builds on its previous work.

Introducing Comparative Education aims to familiarize newcomers with comparative education as a field of study and to provide a continuing reference as people become more actively involved with comparative studies and the problems associated with developing them in rigorous and productive ways. The purposes and methods of comparative education are also discussed. Comprised of eight chapters, this book begins by presenting a neat, simple, and generally accepted definition of comparative education. The reader is then introduced to the history and development of comparative education; the purposes of comparative education; some of the pitfalls in trying to compare education or educational systems across cultural and national boundaries; and some of the alternative methods open to those who would like to develop studies in comparative education. The approaches associated with Isaac Kandel, Nicholas Hans, and G. Z. F. Bereday, Brian Holmes, Edmund King, Harold Noah, and Max Eckstein are considered. The book concludes with a listing of resources for teaching and learning. This monograph is intended for students and educators.

First published in 1980, Diversity and Unity in Education is the result of a conference set up to analyse criteria of diversity in education, comment on the politics of decision-making where diversity exists, and review in comparative perspective policies within countries and regions which have been designed to achieve educational harmony. Issues associated with the provision of separate education on the basis of sex and intelligence are identified and discussed. The extent to which national and local government officials, teachers and parents should, and do, participate in policy decisions is also analysed. International organisations, research workers and consultants will find the volume valuable for the direction it gives to research studies in education. University teachers of comparative education and those involved in multicultural education will find topics on which further research can be developed and postgraduate teaching can be based. The contributors are all distinguished international educationalists who have devoted their careers to the analysis of multicultural education in a world perspective. They are drawn from east and west Europe, North America, Africa and Latin America.