HBED ECS Value of comparitive education.
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ECS Study Notes
Question 1
Read through chapter 1, 2, 6 in Themes in South African Education and tutorial 103
Read through chapter 7 and 8 in A History of Schooling in South Africa
Question 2 A
The value of Comparative Education as a way of learning...
, ECS Study Notes
Question 1
Read through chapter 1, 2, 6 in Themes in South African Education and tutorial 103
Read through chapter 7 and 8 in A History of Schooling in South Africa
Question 2 A
The value of Comparative Education as a way of learning and generating
knowledge
Comparative education can be used to provide a description. “An accurate description is a
kind of ‘mapping’ of what other countries are doing or not doing, planning, abandoning,
or changing in their educational enterprises”. A description of what others are doing can
assist in shedding light on ones own system and assist in the adjustment education.
Comparative education is one of the disciplines within the field of education. It is a study
concerned with determining similarities and differences between different education
systems of the world. If done correctly, improvements can be made to one’s own
education system. One can study a particular aspect between two educations systems or
many more for example one can compare learner achievement in mathematics in South
Africa and Zambia.
Possible questions:
Define in your own words what Comparative education is all about (5)
Discuss six reasons why you think it is valuable to study Comparative Education
(12)
The facets of comparison
Listed below are some of the aspects that can be compared when studying a particular
education system or systems:
Governance and control structures (who decides? How is the system controlled?)
Legislative frameworks (country’s constitution or law and policies)
Administration and management aspects (how the laws and policies are
implemented and regulated
Financing of education (the degree of responsibility of the state to provide
education, compared with amount of privatisation)
Educational structure (how many years of formal education is provided)
Learners (quantity of learners, teacher-pupil ratio, learners’ diversity)
Teachers (availability of educators, level of training, experience)
Curriculum aspects (how learning is divided into learning areas and levels of
difficulty)
Language aspects (medium of instruction, role of mother tongue)
Religion and culture: how these are recognized or not in the education system)
Support services to education (all additional services made available beyond the
basic school provision such as remedial, medical, social welfare)
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, Assessment and achievement (what counts as achievement? How are levels of
education differentiated and assessed? What and how is it assessed?)
Quality control: What forms of accountability are there to monitor whether levels
of achievement or outcomes are being achieved
Ideological aspects: As education systems are largely a product of their context,
they often reflect the underlying ideology of that society (the way that a certain
set of ideas achieves the power to guide and mobilize the interests of the dominant
groups in society)
Economic aspects: One of the main concerns here is productivity-how to make
sure that resources invested in education produce the maximum economic benefit
Political aspects: because educational opportunity clearly plays a major role in
determining career opportunities, wealth and power, there is great political
competition over educational policy
Change and innovation: The rapidity and uncertainty of change has created a
context in which education appears to be permanently destabilized
The reasons for doing Comparative Education
It shows what I s possible by examining alternatives to provision ‘at home’
Offers a yardstick by which to judge the performance of education systems
Describes what might be the consequences of certain courses of action, by
looking at experiences in various countries
Provides a body of descriptive and explanatory data which allows us to see
various practices and procedures in a very wide context that helps throw light
upon them
Contributes to the development of an increasingly sophisticated theoretical
framework in which to describe and analyse educational phenomena
Serves to provide authoritative objective data which can be used to put the less
objective data of others to test
Has an important supportive and instructional role to play in the development of
any plans for educational reform
Helps to foster co-operation and mutual understanding among nations by
discussing cultural differences and similarities and offering explanations for them
Is of intrinsic intellectual interest as a scholarly activity, in much the same way as
the comparative study of religion or literature
Possible questions:
Give five reasons why and teacher or policy maker could benefit from doing
Comparative Education (5)
Comparative Education and it’s development towards a universally valid science of
education
Pg9
The uses and abuses of Comparative Education
The uses:
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