In this presentation, we reflect critically on the research design underpinning the TeachersCareers project (2017-2022) in order to contribute to the discussion on the potentialities and limitations of comparative methods in the contemporary era of globalization of educational policies. Funded by the European Research Council, the project grapples with the structural and cultural environments shaping the employment regimes of the teaching profession in the context of accelerated globalization. The project addresses two critical questions: how is the teaching profession (re)institutionalized in a globalizing world? And, how does globalization affect central mechanisms for the profession, such as its training and professional development models, modes of recruitment, and labor markets and careers? Based on a multiscalar study combining multiple sources of data and methods, the project innovatively analyzes the reconfiguration of teachers’ careers in Europe, with a focus on joint evolutions and intersections of the European Union (EU) governance, and in the two contrasting systems of England and France. Drawing on sociological and historical new-institutionalisms, the research design is developed to make sense of ongoing interactions between trajectories of institutional developments at different levels (European, national, local) with implications for teacher professionalism. For this purpose, the research design combines analyses of policy processes and structuration drawing on the concept of field and types of fields (Zietsma et al, 2017) to analyze the emergence and structuration of the EU teacher policy field, the dynamics and interactions between EU and national policy and professional fields, and longitudinal analyses of institutional development and change at the national level in France and England to capture evolutions in the employment regime of teachers (Thelen, 2014). The analyses are thus longitudinal at both the national and European levels. In the project, the policy analyses are mainly based on document analyses and interviews with key stakeholders, while employment and labor market studies cover a broad range of methods (comparative quantitative analysis of professional and employment regimes based on TALIS 2013 and 2018 data, longitudinal workforce analyses at the national level, labor market analyses in local spaces such as Lyon and London, and qualitative analyses of individual teacher career pathways). In discussing the challenges associated with such a complex research design we argue for the need of methodogical pluralism, well-defined research interests, and strong theorisation of the globalisation concept (Dumay & Mangez, forthcoming), in comparative education research.

Thelen, K. (2014). Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zietsma, C., Groenewegen, P., Logue, D.M., and Hinings, C.R. (2017). Field or Fields? Building the Scaffolding for Cumulation of Research on Institutional Fields. ANNALS, 11, 391–450.