Historicizing Comparative Education Research Method and Disrupting Its Terrain

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: The (Im)possibility of Methods in Curriculum Study and Teacher Education, and Its “Alternative” Investigation

Abstract

In contemporary education research, comparison is used as an epistemological platform for representing the educational truth: student achievement for their learning, national education quality for the future national competitiveness, teacher professionalism for the quality of teaching. The present state of education is explained in a numeric system which shows a student, teacher, or a nation’s rank and relative predominance over ‘others’. Especially in transnational education research, the result of comparison is often utilized as a tool to show not only the condition of the country in the global race (function of diagnosis), but also the direction of social development (prescription). Especially as more education ‘data’ and the use of big data gains attention globally, research methodology using technology and calculation is thought to have more explanatory power and scientific evidence (Williamson, 2016; Halpern, 2015).
The purpose of this paper is to disrupt the use of comparativeness as an ontological and epistemological grid in understanding education phenomenon and subjects. In order to understand this methodological tendency, I will first discuss the trust in the use of comparison to satisfy the human desire for knowledge (Foucault, 1970). By historicizing the comparing practice and the use of comparative knowledge juxtaposed with the burgeoning social interest in science in early 19th century, the comparative methodology as scientific knowledge production tool will be explored (Daston & Gallison, 1992). Moreover, the ontological experience from ‘knowing the object’ by comparison and its dual representations will be discussed in terms of the educational researcher and the researched (knower and the known), using post-colonial development projects in early and mid-20th century and the recent international large-scale assessment tests run by OECD and global education commercial companies (Li, 2007; Tierney, 2010; Barber & Ogza, 2014).
         Secondly, this paper discusses the idea of traveling and translation as methods to expand the epistemic approach in studying international education reforms. By exploring the movements such as ‘evidence-based reforms’, ‘curriculum for global competencies’, ‘closing the achievement gap’, or education ODA with the idea of travel (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005; Popkewitz, 2008), the link between scientific research method and onto-epistemological presumption about an ‘educated person’ will be explored. Further, by closely looking at the recent curriculum reform in South Korea and its relation to the trend of global education reforms using the idea of traveling, the paper shows in detail about how the new methodological imagination may expand possibilities to discuss the education phenomenon using this cultural and historical lens.
This critical analysis about the mode of comparison and possibilities of traveling theories in curriculum research provides an opportunity to think about the pitfall of ‘methodism’ or ‘methodolgism’, which can be found in today’s acceleration of scientific research methodology. By opening up the conversation about the epistemic terrain of curriculum research, this paper seeks to find other ways to experience the field of education, rather than providing another methodological best practice.

Author

• Ji-Hye Kim, Korean Educational Development Institute