| Abstract: | This paper directly addresses a fundamental issue concerning comparative education research: is it feasible to do comparative education research while focusing on a single society? From the outset, the answer is seen to be affirmative and based clearly on the belief that comparisons over time are at least as interesting and instructive as comparisons over place. With Hong Kong as the focal point and with particularities given credence, conceptual and methodological problems gain clarity. They include difficulties connected with periodization, the identification of agency in policy‐making, the accessibility and reliability of sources, and the generation and/or deliberate dissemination of myths. The same focus and approach facilitates discussion of themes and issues. These include the historic and current role of colonialism in education and the status it has been accorded by some generalists as conceptual skeleton‐key or, alternatively, as possibly a neo‐colonial myth. Current fashions in favour of quantifying quality are examined and both their provenance and their significance discussed, as are other emergent, as opposed to pre‐determined, themes. The paper concludes with a brief reconnaissance of world systems theory, dependency theory, critical theory, and postmodernism, leading up to an even more cursory consideration of the role of theory in research on comparative (historical) education. |
