Comparative Education
Comparative education is a field of study that focuses on the provision of organized
learning activities across international and intercultural boundaries and utilizes comparative
methods of study. Comparative education is a fully established academic field of study that
examines education in one country (or group of countries) by using data and insights drawn from
the practices and situation in another country, or countries.
What is Comparative Education?
Comparative education is a vast field of study. It does not only study the educational systems of
other countries or confine itself to a single strict definition because it covers disciplines such as
the sociology, political science, psychology, and anthropology of different countries.
“Comparative Education is the detailed study of educational systems to find
out how a people’s values and beliefs affect their educational system and how
to provide suitable education for those people. “
The field is a deep, critical examination of societal values and educational systems of other
countries for the purposes of evaluating one’s own system and refreshing one’s own culture
by adopting progressive aspects from elsewhere on the basis of comparison.
According to Noah and Eckstein, “Comparative Education is an intersection of social
sciences, education, and cross-national study which attempts to use cross-national data to test
propositions about the relationship between education and society and between teaching
practices and learning outcomes” (AIOU, 2009). There is a close relationship between
Comparative Education and other social sciences; it is the discipline where information about
education and other social sciences intersects.
