Session Information
23 SES 10B, Unpacking the Backstage of a European Educational Research Project: Profknow – Professional Knowledge in Education and Health
Symposium
Time:
2008-09-12
14:45-16:15
Room:
B1 114
Chair:
Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson
Discussant:
Michael F D Young
Contribution
Comparative studies are highly politicised intellectual terrains. While they have initially emerged in a context of colonial discourses in old European and American Universities they recently flourish under the auspices of international organisations, such as the OECD, the World Bank, or the EU, who develop an interest on international studies. These international organisations set powerful research agendas in comparative studies, problematise, evaluate and construct social realities (Novoa & Lawn, 2002, Ozga et al., 2006). In the archaeology of comparative studies historicism and empiricism has many times prevailed over social contextualisation while technocratic documentation has been imposed on genuinely different social and cultural contexts. Based on the experience of the PROFKNOW research project this paper will attempt to reflect on some methodological questions related to international studies:
a. Who raises the research questions and how the national relevance of the questions is constructed and understood?
b. Who are voiced and who are silenced by selected comparative questions and the prevailing comparative methodologies?
c. What are the prerequisites for understanding the national comparatively?
The paper will discuss some of the tensions that emerge in comparative inquiry and especially the danger of over-generalisation and of fading of the contextual and hybrid through the distortive lens of a comparative methodology on one hand and the illuminative potential for understanding aspects of the contextual through cross-national comparison on the other.
References
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