Do we need comparison in Education?

        Have you ever thought why do we need to compare education systems of different countries? Every country has it own history, development background, economic state, structure of governance and cultural context. All these make international educational comparisons very difficult. Even if data are reasonably accurate and adequate for the needs of national data requesters they may not be comparable at an international level (Schleicher, p.217). For example, curriculum for 8 graders is not the same in all countries, also teaching methods and methodology may greatly vary. Moreover, some countries may suffer from lack of funding so that there is no enough number of learning materials. Nevertheless, there are two main reasons why education is compared across the countries.

        The first reason is to integrate countries into global discussions about the education. Secondly, benchmarking and identifying good practices are the usual reasons for comparing (Godfroy, 2010, p.44). This theory comes from the organizations as OECD, World Bank, European Commission and so on, which establish international assessments. For many years they are developing statistical tools to compare the performance of different countries in hope to provide policymakers with appropriate tools so that they could improve education system in a particular country. Moreover, these organizations aim to erase boundaries and create opportunities to everyone in getting knowledge, despite the gender, culture and many others aspects. In this regard Farrell (1979) in his article gives a very good explanation of an adequate comparison. He considers the example of heavy water created in the USA and the same one created in China and states that “the role of comparison is not to compare different samples of heavy water, but to compare heavy water with the behavior of other materials”(p.7). In the study of education it is important to keep in mind that people in different cultures behave differently and have different values.

        Nevertheless both of the reasons may motivate policy-makers and governments of countries to move further, get the best results in comparative and international assessments. They are kind of push to improve on and be on the same level with countries which are successful in educational outcomes.

Reference

Farrell,J.P. (1979). The necessity of comparisons in the study of education: the salience of science and the problem of comparability. Comparative Education Review. 23(1), 3-16. Retrieved from: http//www.jstor.org/stable/1187627

Godfroy, A. (2010). International comparisons in science studies: what and why do we compare? Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 23(1), 37-48. DOI: 10.1080/13511611003791166

Schleicher, A. comparability issues in international educational comparisons. 216-229. OECD, Paris. Retrieved from: http://www.waxmann.com/fileadmin/media/zusatztexte/postlethwaite/aschleic.pdf