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Comparative Education In North America: The Search For Other Through The Escape From Self?, Irving Epstein

Irving Epstein

Few would argue with the contention that comparative education is at a crossroads. Not unlike the traditional social science fields, the social foundations sub-disciplines generally and comparative education in particular, have suffered as a result of general trends that have affected North American academic discourse and practice: increased disciplinary specialisation within the context of growing university corporatism, and in the 1990s, downsizing. For inherently generalist fields such as comparative education, these pressures have heightened prospects for their programmatic reduction or even elimination [1]. At the same time, they have encouraged a healthy introspection regarding current purpose and future goals [2]. …