Teaching Comparative Education in Cuba and the United States: A Comparative Historical Analysis

• In Event: Teaching Comparative and International Education (CIE): Pedagogical Aspects of CIE and CIE Guiding Pedagogies

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the results of a cross-national collaborative effort to undertake comparative histories of comparative education. It is based on a review of the literature and the professional experiences of a team of Cuban and U.S. comparative educators. The analysis examines the teaching of Comparative Education – the students who take the courses and the curricular content that included – in university-level courses in Cuba and the U.S. during different historical periods: the 19th century, the first half of the 20th century, the second half of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century.
In both countries we observed a discontinuity of whether comparative education courses were compulsory, or even offered, in undergraduate education programs. In Cuba these courses were offered as compulsory courses between 1945 and 1960, between 1977 and 1992, and between 2010 and 2016, but were not offered or included as an elective course during the intervening years (1960-1977, 1992-2010, and post-2016). The pattern in the U.S. reflects as an expansion (from 1950 to 1970) followed by a contraction or disappearance (from the 1980s to the present) of offerings of undergraduate courses in comparative education.
With regard to the topics and countries focused on the curriculum of comparative education courses, we note changes in both countries over time. The initial courses offered (1899-1900 in the US and 1945 in Cuba) emphasized the descriptions of the characteristics of educational systems in several countries. However, the highlighted countries differed, with the course in the U.S. directed to England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Wales and the existing British colonies, while the course in Cuba gave attention to Canada, England, ten Latin American countries and the Soviet Union. In the United States, as well as in Cuba, comparative education courses paid increasing attention to education in contexts of "developing" countries, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as a variety of topics, such as colonialism, development, international organizations, and globalization.
With respect to methodological approaches, we indicate that comparative education courses in Cuba tended to promote the 4-step approach identified by the American comparative educator, George Bereday, although content analysis and other historical and social science methods were included. In contrast, in recent decades, comparative education courses in the U.S. generally emphasized social science and historical methods (both qualitative and quantitative), but reality did not stress the use of comparative methodologies, such as Bereday’s approach. Part of the intentionality of Cuba’s “borrowing” of Bereday's methodological approach and, apparently, the reason why Bereday's approach in recent years has not been at the core of U.S. comparative education courses is because Cuba continues to be concerned with achieving the scientific status of comparative education, while in the United States courses this topic tends to be treated as part of the field’s history (mainly in the 1950s and 1960s).

Author

• Mark B. Ginsburg, University of Maryland