COMPARATIVE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL VIEWS IN POSTMODERN TIMES

2024-02-01

Comparative epistemological and methodological views in postmodern times

Editoras: María José García-Ruiz (UNED); L. Belén Espejo Villar (Universidad de Salamanca); Luján Lázaro Herrero (Universidad de Salamanca)

Taking an epistemological look at the trajectory of Comparative and International Education in recent years to understand its current situation and envision its future academic directions is now a major intellectual challenge. This challenge is complicated by the theoretical, methodological, and institutional complexities which, like a compass, nuance and reorient this field of knowledge. “The future is now and cannot be postponed for much longer”, as Cowen (2023) put it (in a posthumous work), trying to emphasise the need to address the future of Comparative Education but from the ground up, that is, revisiting the past to urgently rethink everything that is currently reshaping the epistemic assumptions of Comparative and International Education.

This is the initial sense of the present monograph, which aims to signify the responsibility assumed by this corpus under construction (now more than ever), in which new interdisciplinary models of epistemological theorisation converge with recent lines of thematic interest that extend, and in some cases challenge, the capital that should constitute the scientific knowledge of Comparative and International Education. These views include, in particular, the spectrum of institutional actors that are visible in global political agendas and that are increasingly legitimised (Nóvoa, 2021) as knowledge builders (Cone & Brøgger, 2020; Kim, 2020) in an epistemological narrative that has progressively expanded and that is viewed from innovative, holistic, alternative, non-linear, revisionist and ground-breaking parameters, among others.

These accounts raise the question of whether the comparative discipline is experiencing a successful academic moment or, on the contrary, whether it should shift towards a commitment to reflexive approaches that lead us to constantly question our implicit assumptions and worldviews, as well as the silences identified along the way (Kin Min, 2023). Not surprisingly, continuous disciplinary introspection and reflection have always been elements of a hallmark of this field (Mukuni, 2022). We are therefore faced with a scientific field that is constantly readjusting its epistemological and methodological corpus, a question that is always open (García-Ruiz, 2012, 2019) and that we must address taking into account the scenarios of plurality, heterogeneity and interdisciplinarity through which Comparative and International Education has always moved.

Paradoxically, Comparative and International education has never been more successful (Carney, 2010), but it has never had less to say (idem). This is not due to a failure to read the global, as this Australian comparative scholar claims, but to a lack of attention to the teleological perspective or the human, social and global purpose of this science, without which this discipline loses its guiding and directing quality.

Over the years, Comparative Education has evolved and expanded, seeking a place in the scientific arena to claim its rightful role as a field of study. It has become academically institutionalised, linked, and represented through Global Scientific Societies, and enjoys international visibility through the dissemination of knowledge. However, its configuration as a science is still contested. The historical baggage that accompanies it is not free of banalities, oscillations (Nóvoa, 2021), and moments of dispersion, and even this journey is very much marked by the abuse of using theoretical frameworks from other disciplines to establish basic epistemological elements. The very idiosyncrasy of comparativism (Aullón de Haro, 2019) generates confusion and presents blurred parameters regarding goals and the object of study. This is perhaps its main Achilles' heel, constantly subjecting it to the need to confirm its identity: What is comparative knowledge, what does it do, and what could it be and do? But above all, from the teleological claim of the previous lines: What personal, social, and global world are we heading towards, and do we want to head towards? These are questions that linger, old ghosts of the past that surface in the present future.

From this issue, we call on the academic community to contribute revisionist works that consider, in particular, the relations of the balance and transition between modernity and postmodernity (García-Ruiz and Crespo-Garrido, 2022), and that make visible postcolonial, decolonial and anti-colonial approaches (Fischman and Silova, 2023), the hegemony of political actors, the scenarios they colonise, as well as the accelerated and hybrid drift of their discourses, and other cores invisible to canonical thought. This is an invitation to engage in comparative hermeneutics based on foundational, post-foundational, policy and practice, revisionist, interdisciplinary and emergent theoretical models (Jules et. al, 2021). In short, we seek views that allow us to generate knowledge and redirect its flows and that, as Rodman (2011) suggests, are not limited to observing and interpreting Comparative Education from a single window.

In short, in the epistemological and methodological approaches to be outlined in the comparative field in the current postmodern era, and in this monographic issue of the Revista Española de Educación Comparada, it would be relevant to analyse questions such as the following, by way of example:

  • Counter-hegemonic epistemology of Comparative and International Education: How is the epistemological field of Comparative and International Education being reconstructed based on new transdisciplinary cartographies, the sovereign power of networks and actors that are more diverse but less plural? How does the transfer of fast and soft policies, as well as the utilitarian dimension of international strategic frameworks, affect the configuration of Comparative and International Education?
  • What are the main vulnerabilities of our discipline, from an epistemological and methodological point of view, whose rethinking can put our discipline on a solid foundation for the future?
  • From a methodological point of view, is the unity and support of a recognised comparative method relevant, or the scientific sanction and validity of a plurality of methodological approaches? How is this field of knowledge shaped by expeditious methodologies that push for innovation in Comparative Education? In a context of experimentation with new educational scenarios and formats, is Comparative and International Education oriented towards the construction of an innovative epistemology?
  • Is the strength of our comparative discipline underpinned by the relativisation of orthodox methodologies and the acceptance of the crisis of universalism, complexity, and unpredictability, or by the sanctioning of post-relativist perspectives that assume the existence of Truth?
  • Does the teleological dimension of Comparative Education and the interdisciplinarity it entails mean that the sciences of philosophy and theology need to play a greater role? From a teleological point of view, is global society well guided by the current Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, or is it possible to make an accurate critique of some dimensions of these goals?
  • In terms of epistemological and methodological views, what do the posthumanism, posthistoricism and post-Westernism of postmodernity imply?

Deadline: 15/07/2024

Publication date: 01/01/2025

 

References

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