Comparative education methodology in transition. Towards a science of complexity?

Autor/in	Schriewer, Jürgen
Titel	Comparative education methodology in transition. Towards a science of complexity?
Quelle	Aus: Schriewer, Jürgen (Hrsg.): Discourse formation in comparative education. Frankfurt, Main u.a.: Lang (2012) S. 3-52Verfügbarkeit
Reihe	Komparatistische Bibliothek. 10
Beigaben	Tabellen
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; Sammelwerksbeitrag
ISSN	0934-0858
ISBN	3-631-63588-5; 978-3-631-63588-9
Schlagwörter	Historische Pädagogik; Erziehungswissenschaft; Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft; Forschung; Methodologie; Vergleichende Forschung; Erkenntnistheorie; Systemtheorie; Wissenschaftsgeschichte; Wissenschaftstheorie; Internationaler Vergleich; 19. Jahrhundert; 20. Jahrhundert
Abstract	One of the central claims - if not the central claim - of comparative research in the social sciences has always been its distinctive role in providing explanation of macro-social phenomena. In this paper, the author will discuss this claim. In so doing, he will place particular emphasis on the difficulties which stand in the way of its realization. These difficulties arise from two kinds of complexity, which have become clear only in consideration both of the theoretical insight following from recent comparative social research and of contrary developments taking place at the level of international (or intercultural) relations. They are related, in other words, to the complexity of social causation, and to the complexity of comparative research's object domain proper. These issues will be discussed neither from the point of view of epistemological criticism nor of methodological prescription, as has been customary in Comparative Education methodology. Rather, the author shall try to take advantage of the possibilities, provided by the so-called socio-historical shift in the general meta-scientific discourse, to empirically substantiate and thus to objectify methodological arguments. Underlying this reasoning is, then, at least implicitly, a history of science perspective. More precisely, the author shall examine comparative methodology and - to some extent - research as they have developed at three successive time levels: (1) at the end of the eighteenth century, when the grand program of the comparative study of man and society emerged; (2) at the end of the nineteenth century, when the principles of what later became the mainstream social science comparative methodology were first defined; (3) at the end of the twentieth century, which acknowledges the questioning of fundamental assumptions of this mainstream methodology. (DIPF/Orig.).
Erfasst von	DIPF \| Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation, Frankfurt am Main
Update	2014/1