A Century of Evolution in Comparative Studies

Since 1900 comparative studies of education have repeatedly changed their content, focus, concerns, intentions and political significance. Their practitioners have also changed in their methods and awareness. For centuries before 1900, when Michael Sadler gave a new reorientation to comparative analyses of education, envy of other countries' military and technological prowess had caused much spasmodic copying of special institutions and methods of training. But in that year Sadler first gave prominence to the need for systematic study of other countries' entire context of educational influences, as an aid to understanding and reforming one's own matrix of learning. Stronger social inclusiveness and a wider cultivation of competences arose from new careers and the transformation of all communications. These gave new access to learning-by alternative modes and by alternations of study at different ages, in various settings, as occasion demanded. Meanwhile, colossal expansion and diversification in all kinds of formal provision after 1945, and growing concern for hitherto neglected populations, altered the conspectus of 'educational' needs and potentialities-together with old hierarchies of provision. Countries changed shape; some disappeared; new ones arose; empires and entire occupational prospects faded everywhere. Thus the texts, methods and presuppositions of older 'comparative' studies lost justification in a rapidly evolving context of world-wide and life long uncertainty. New participants and novel partnerships now take active responsibility for lifelong education far beyond older systems of provision and compliance. This article considers shifts in the whole contextual, conceptual and operational framework of education, together with their implications for the development of teaching, research, programming and partnerships in Comparative Education itself.     

Left right out: Australian education and the politics of signification

In recent years there has been a shift in popular thinking and government policy on education in Australia, away from the social democratic consensus of the Karmel era, towards a Rightist perception. While a number of sources of this movement may be identified, in this paper I will focus on the politics of discourse. Drawing on Laclau's and Mouffe's developments of Gramsci's theory of hegemony, I will explore the ways in which various educational lobby groups have sought to produce a ‘common‐sense’ concerning Australian schooling. The examination of a critical historical incident is a useful way of illustrating the strategies employed by these groups, as their political efforts are particularly concentrated at such times.

In its 1983 Education Guidelines the federal Labour government announced, amongst many things, that it intended to reduce funds to Australia's ‘best resourced’ private schools. A bitter debate between supporters of private schools and state schools ensued. On the surface each party sought merely to influence the 1984 Guidelines which would determine funding policies for some time to come. At the debates centre, however, were issues to do with the nature and purpose of schooling and what and whose interests it should serve.

This historical incident exemplifies the politics of the contending parties particularly well. Private schooling was used as a symbolic rallying point around which particular definitions of education were constructed. This paper will focus first on the discursive strategies of the private school lobby and its allies, the educational Right, then on those of the state school lobby and the Left. My contention is that the private school lobby and its allies have achieved a discursive ascendency and my intention is to suggest some reasons why this is so and how it was achieved.     

Supporting accomplished facilitation: examining the use of appreciative inquiry to inform the development of learning resources for medical educators

This paper examines the use of appreciative inquiry (AI) to guide development of web-based learning resources for medical educators who facilitate simulation-based learning experiences for doctors-in-training. AI can be viewed as a positive form of action research, which seeks to avoid deficit-based analyses and solutions, and commonly associated defensiveness. The use of AI to guide research and curriculum development has hitherto received scant attention.

Simulated medical practice allows learners’ needs to take top priority because simulated patients replace real patients (whose care would otherwise be top priority). Each episode of simulated clinical practice is followed by facilitated debriefing. Facilitators complete an initial ‘train the trainers’ course (typically one or three days). Our learning resources aimed to complement and extend initial courses.

AI informed data collection and analysis. It focused attention on identifying and understanding what was good about contemporary debriefing practices. We identified examples of practical wisdom and designed resources to help make these more transparent and accessible to all facilitators. Selected video records and interview excerpts demonstrated key points. We found opportunities to introduce ideas that would extend facilitators’ expertise.

We critique AI as an approach to action research and curriculum development, and recommend further use of AI in other contexts.