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This essay addresses the issue of incorporating comparative and international education research into teacher education by addressing how the field of comparative education is defined, the essential skills and knowledges that students must have in order to properly “consume” comparative research, the degree to which teacher education is presently equipped to effectively incorporate comparative research into its programming, and the changes needed to bring comparative research more squarely into the domain of teacher education. I argue that the study of comparative education research necessitates a foundational base, formed through serious and rigorous engagement with core courses in the social sciences and humanities as well as social foundations course in education. I advance that without this base, we run a greater risk of seeing comparative research become appropriated into a technocratic paradigm that governs much of what presently constitutes teacher education. The essay calls for the introduction of comparative education research into teacher education simultaneously with the advancement of the other social foundation courses, along with aggressive advocacy for a broader liberal arts core.

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.

This chapter discusses the main challenges in higher education comparative research, focusing on cross-national forms of comparison and presenting examples from European research. The first part stresses the importance of constructing concepts which can travel across countries. This part identifies the different vertical levels of comparison involved in higher education cross-national research, discussing how the need for exploring general patterns in higher education (e.g. globalisation and Europeanisation) is confronted with the importance of taking into account the diversity within the particular cases (e.g. institutional and individual experiences). The second part focuses on the equivalence of meaning in large-N (in particular, the Eurostudent and REFLEX datasets) and small-N studies, identifying the respective limits of the two forms of comparison. The chapter contends that comparative research in higher education could benefit from more collaboration between small-N qualitative comparativists and experts of large-N studies used in European policy-making.

This chapter provides an examination of the characteristics of comparative and international education research published in 2020 as well as an overview of the trends in this research since 2014. This analysis of published research includes a special focus on authors situated in the Global South as well as those authors who are affiliated with organizations outside of academic (i.e., professional, non-teaching organizations). These two focus characteristics reflect the shifting composition of authors and research in comparative and international education in the twenty-first century as well as the professionalization aspirations of the field of comparative and international education more broadly. Evidence from the seven years of data collection suggests that there is a marked shift toward increasingly more co-authored research, a shift from predominantly qualitative methods to non-empirical research content, and a rise in topic oriented research over the otherwise dominant single-country study in comparative and international education research.

Reflecting on scholarship and professional practice is a hallmark of a developing scholarly field and its professionalization. Yet, reflection requires data or evidence to support the ideas and directions of the field as it develops. Although there is an increasing amount of data examining comparative and international education scholarship, it is neither coordinated nor systematic. This research identifies a foundation plan for creating a systematic and consistent evidence base for reflective practice. First, by examining the full-text articles in four leading comparative and international education journals published in 2014, the research reported here empirically analyzes both the content coverage in the field as well as how the research published in the field is methodologically approached. This gives an indication of where the field of comparative and international education has been and where it is going. And, by finding the answers to the “what” and “how” questions, scholars and professionals in comparative and international education are better equipped to reflect on the field and revise, expand, and develop it accordingly. This foundational research finds that single-country, qualitative research authored by single authors dominates the field of comparative and international education. But, there is also evidence that the dominant discourse in the field – represented by the most frequent title, abstract, and keywords – is incorporated into quantitative and theoretical work more than in any other. This suggests that the nature of research in comparative and international education may be characterized by a particular type (single country, single author, qualitative), but that the dominant discourse published in the comparative and international education field does not necessarily align with the most frequently used methodologies in comparative and international education research.

Mixed methods research is an approach for blending quantitative and qualitative data analyses in a single study. It emerged as an alternative to the dichotomy of qualitative and quantitative traditions in the past 20 years. Some strengths of mixed methods research include the ability to generate and test theory, the capability to answer complex research questions, and the possibility of corroborating findings.

We argue the mixed methods approach fits well with comparative education studies because they seek to acquire data to make sound and meaningful comparisons about the experience and performance of education systems in different countries. By nature, comparative education attempts to explain why educational systems vary and to explore how education relates to wider social factors and forces. It consists of both confirmatory and exploratory inquiries that are based on the fundamental belief that education can be improved in all nations. Essentially, the mixed methods approach can adequately support the goals of comparative education studies, with its quantitative components serving the confirmatory objectives and the qualitative components attending to the exploratory end.

In this study, we conducted a survey of articles published between 2000 and 2014 in Comparative Education Review, Comparative Education, and Compare to discern the changes in patterns and preferences of dominant research methods. By surveying the three major journals in the field, we hope to reveal the means by which comparative education is conducted in its constituency. At the very least, we believe our study can provide important reference points for speculation about where comparative education might be headed in terms of methodology and methods.

Precise and rigorous international comparative research requires methodological reflections and determinations at each step of the empirical research process. This chapter analyzes the precision and rigor of international comparative higher education research by diagnosing their comparative methodology, particularly their country selection and case sampling. It evaluates 202 studies that have been published in journals of both higher education and comparative education, because international comparative higher education intellectually and institutionally intersects both interdisciplinary fields. The major empirical findings show a relative lack of explicit and elaborate justification strategies, as well as a lack of comparative methodology. But they also show that the intellectual and institutional context, represented here in the form of the journals, influences the implementation of comparative methodology. The use of comparative methodologies is more thorough in the context of comparative education, where a continuous debate about the theoretical and methodological aspects of comparative studies takes place. One of the implications of the study is that the debate regarding comparative methodologies within higher education research should be intensified.

This chapter examines the trends in published comparative and international education research from 2014 to 2019 with a special focus on 2019 publication in open access journals and by authors situated in the Global South. In particular, two trends from 2019 are (1) the increasing number of research publications in the field of comparative and international education that are being published in online, open access journals and (2) the representation among these research publications between authors situated in Global North versus Global South contexts. Evidence from the six years of data collection suggests that single country studies and qualitative methods continue to dominate published research in comparative and international education journals. 2019 data also show that there are significant different in the publication trends in subscription versus open access journals in the field, and that authors from the Global South are more likely to publish in open access journals, especially if they are female.

Historical studies of comparative education have been available and utilised in Europe and North America to justify and legitimise comparative and international education research in present day contexts (Cowen; Masemann et al.; Psacharopoulos; Schriewer). However, a review of the literature of comparative education research in Asia and the Pacific discloses that very little is known about its own history, purpose, or direction. The aim of this paper is to explore the idea that part of this circumstance stems from the fact that these fields of study are often perceived as undefined.

This analysis suggests that in the Asia and Pacific region, research in comparative and international education is generally perceived as narrowly defined.

This article points out that the “fields” differ in terms of paradigmatic representation but are both change‐dependent, and that while comparative education research does not necessarily require an international dimension to it, international education must contain comparative elements for critical analysis and reflection.

The first study of its kind to review the history of comparative education research in the region.

Research has established that reflective practice is a key to professionalization, but reflective practice requires data upon which to reflect. This research provides a two-year synthesis of data on comparative and international education scholarship, and the institutional, relational, topical, and methodological characteristics of the field producing this scholarship. By examining the scholarship published in comparative and international education journals in 2014 and 2015, analyses empirically examined the researcher characteristics, content coverage, and methodological approach of this published work. The analyses reported here find that about half of the publications in CIE in 2015 were by single authors and focused on single countries. The dominant methodology in the published scholarship continues to be overwhelmingly qualitative. This suggests that scholarship in comparative and international education over this two-year period may be characterized as single-author, single-country, qualitative case studies.