New theories and theory-based methodological approaches have found their way into Comparative Education – just as into Comparative Social Science more generally – in increasing number in the recent past. The essays of this volume express and critically discuss quite a range of these positions such as, inter alia, the theory of self-organizing social systems and the morphogenetic approach; the theory of long waves in economic development and world-systems analysis; historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge; as well as critical hermeneutics and post-modernist theorizing. With reference to such theories and approaches, the chapters – written by scholars from Europe, the USA and Australia – outline alternative research agendas for the comparative study of the social and educational fabric of the modern world. In so doing, they also expound frames of reference for re-considering the intellectual shaping, or Discourse Formation, of Comparative Education as a field of study.

Jürgen Schriewer is Professor of Comparative Education and Head of the Comparative Education Centre at Humboldt University, Berlin. His particular research interests include the comparative social history of education, issues of globalization and world-level interconnection in education, as well as the history and methodology of cross-cultural research in education and the social sciences. A former President of the Comparative Education Society in Europe, Jürgen Schriewer has been actively involved in interdisciplinary networks focused on cross-cultural social and historical research which have been set up at Humboldt University, since the mid-1990s.

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