Social research and comparative education

Comparative study is a most desirable way of approaching an understanding of education. The challenge is to do it in ways that are valid, persuasive, practically usable, and, above all, enlightening. According to Harold J Noah, comparative education has four purposes:

To describe educational systems, processes, or outcomes.

To assist in the development of educational institutions and practices.

To highlight the relationships between education and society.

To establish generalized statements about education those are valid in more than one country.

This paper seeks to introduce social research by setting out what seem to be some of the major theoretical and methodological issues raised for comparative education by the increasing prominence of the discourses of the knowledge economy, which, it is argued, represent a particularly strong version of globalization and its possible relationships to education systems, and hence an especially acute challenge to comparative education. The paper shows the diverse aspects of Comparative Education and Social Research to make comparisons across different countries or cultures.