Introduction: Deconstructing Comparative Education

Abstract

Despite its history of over a century, questions about the identity and nature of comparative education have been and continue to be raised in the literature, particularly in view of an expansion in the range of activities that have been labelled ‘comparative education’. Paradoxically, the field has been established institutionally in university academic courses and professional societies in various parts of the world, and has its own specialist book and journal publications. That the field is institutionalised as a separate area of inquiry in many countries – some stronger than others – does not therefore necessarily imply, much less justify, its intellectual legitimacy as an independent field.