Fieldwork with Depth: Its Implication and Future Directions of Comparative Education Research in Japan

Abstract

Comparative education research in Japan is strongly oriented toward emphasizing fieldwork, unlike Western methodologies that aim for theorization. For this reason, it is sometimes regarded as peripheral research without a theorizing orientation or as a counterstrategy to Western research. This study examines why Japanese comparative education research emphasizes fieldwork, focusing on discussions at the Japanese Society of Comparative Education from the 1990s to the present, and considers whether the discussion far from aimed at theorizing. It can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, has been trying to analyze the subject with sincerity through more in-depth fieldwork and is aware of the back and forth between theorizing and differentiation. Furthermore, recently, an international, agenda-based approach and the concept of transboundary fieldwork based on triangulation and Border Studies as a new way of looking at the field itself have also emerged. Therefore, it can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, is increasingly aiming for a multilayered and relative analysis of the field, which is an argument autonomously derived from a focus on the field rather than being a strategy or a challenge to Western universalization-oriented methodologies.

Citation

Sugimura, M. (2023), "Fieldwork with Depth: Its Implication and Future Directions of Comparative Education Research in Japan", Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2022 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 46A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 179-191. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792023000046A013