2007 Dale Globalisation, Knowledge Economy and Comparative Education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and

comparative education
Roger Dale
University of Bristol , UK
Published online: 18 Jan 2007.
To cite this article: Roger Dale (2005) Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative
education, Comparative Education, 41:2, 117-149, DOI: 10.1080/03050060500150906
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Comparative Education
Vol. 41, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 117149
INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE
Downloaded by [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online UP] at 09:34 09 April 2015
Globalisation, knowledge economy and

comparative education
Roger Dale*
University of Bristol, UK
Comparative
10.1080/03050060500150906
CCED115073.sgm
0305-0068
Introductory
Taylor
202005
41
r.dale@bristol.ac.uk
RogerDale
00000May
andFrancis
&
(print)/1360-0486
Francis
2005
Article
Education
Group
Ltd Ltd (online)
This paper seeks to introduce this special issue by setting out what seem to be some of the major
theoretical and methodological issues raised for comparative education by the increasing prominence of the discourses of the knowledge economy, which, it is argued, represent a particularly
strong version of globalisation and its possible relationships to education systems, and hence an
especially acute challenge to comparative education. It focuses on the possible implications of these
changes for each of the three elements of national education system. In terms of the national it
discusses the nature and consequences of methodological nationalism, and emphasises the emerging pluri-scalar nature of the governance of education. In terms of education, it argues that education is now being asked to do different things in different ways, rather than the same things in
different ways. In terms of system, it is suggested that the constitution of education sectors may be
in the process of changing, with a development of parallel sectors at different scales with different
responsibilities. Overall, the article suggests that we may be witnessing the development of a new
functional, scalar and sectoral (non zero sum) division of the labour of educational governance.
Finally, it addresses the question what is now to be compared and considers the consequences for
both explaining and learning through comparative education.
The articles in this special issue all raise questions, albeit in rather different ways,
about the relationship between globalisation and comparative education. These are,
of course, not new issues. Globalisation has not only become a central and pervasive
element of the comparative education literature, but has been recognised, to the
surprise of some, as giving it a new lease of life, while the implications of globalisation for comparative education have been the focus of numerous publications. How,
then, does this special issue, which introduces the idea of the knowledge economy
into the mix, hope to contribute something new or different to the discussions
around the subject? The fundamental rationale and aim has been to focus on the
knowledge economy (KE) as simultaneously an increasingly common component of
the discourses around globalisation and education, an apparently ubiquitous
*Graduate School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1JA, UK.
Email: r.dale@bristol.ac.uk
ISSN 0305-0068 (print)/ISSN 1360-0486 (online)/05/02011733
2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/03050060500150906
118 R. Dale
phenomenon, a concept that is denotative rather than connotative, and one that
seems intrinsically related to education. The rationale for this concentration is that
by focusing on one such central element, or expression, of the relationship between
globalisation and education it may be possible to reveal more precisely some key
features of the relationship that tend to be concealed when it adopts a broader focus.
In the body of this paper I will go on to argue that in order to achieve that it is necessary not so much to work through, or apply, the apparent relevance of the KE, as to
question and problematise the concept.
The concept is addressed most directly in Susan Robertsons paper, where it is
the dominant question. Robertson demonstrates in a number of ways how the idea
of the KE represents a qualitative shift from the assumptions and policy prescriptions of the 1980s and 1990s. She does this through a detailed analysis of agendasetting documents produced by the World Bank and the OECD on the topic of the
KE, and of some recent attempts in the UK to suggest policy responses to those
agendas. Her paper offers three crucial insights on the meaning and implications of
KE discourses. First, she makes clear that there is not a single KE discourse, but
several, albeit linked by a common basis in emphasising the importance of knowledge compared with production. She illustrates this effectively through a detailed
comparison of work done by the OECD and the World Bank under this heading,
particularly in their different views of the role of markets in bringing about the
required changes. Second, she emphasises that notwithstanding these differences, or
the relative imprecision of the concept, the KE discourse has powerful material
effects. The responses of the major international organisations provide good examples of this, as they both develop and legitimate the discourse and use it to structure
the agenda that their members follow. An example she uses is the readiness of
Ministries of Education around the world to respond to the OECDs scenarios for
future schooling. And third, she makes clear that the implications of the KE for
education systems are extremely far reaching. The changes seen to be required by
the KE would entail the transformation of education systems as we know them;
even radical reform of them would be insufficient to bring about the shift from
education in institutions to learning anywhere, any time and just for me.
David Pangs article approaches the issue from a rather different angle. It offers a
good example of the conversion of education and how it might most obviously
contribute to KEs, from a direct to an indirect mode. He discusses in detail how the
relationship between education in and for Asia is mediated not only, or necessarily
most prominently, through any of the three most frequently mentioned channels: the
transfer or emulation of practices recognised as successful in the case of the tiger
economies; the sale of education as a commodity on the global market; or as part of
an attempt to capture the benefits of brain drain. Rather, in a strange and distorted
echo of the education as legitimation of proper statehood argument (see, e.g.
Finnemore, 1993) he shows how, concurrently, though with little apparent reference
to each other, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA all promoted discourses
and encouraged practices that he places under the generic term education for Asia
literacy, for the purpose of persuading their Asian trading partners that they were
Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education
119
not interested in trade relationships alone, but in getting to know them better
culturally. As he shows clearly, this exercise was not taken very seriously by either
group of potential trading partners; the Asian partners were unpersuaded of the
sincerity of the moves and the western partners never backed up their rhetoric with
either adequate resources or time commitments. All of this leads him to conclude
that the contribution of education to the KE was in this case a rather indirect one,
albeit in somewhat different ways in the four countries, that he is able to compare
most effectively.
In their paper on the ways that UNESCO education statistics have changed over
the past decade, Roser Cuss and Sabrina DAmico establish clearly both that and
how the KE is more than a discourse open to multiple interpretations. They are able
to trace the processes through which the focus, purpose and possibilities of
UNESCOs educational statistics were changed as a result of pressure from the other
main collectors and brokers of educational statistics, the OECD, EU and World
Bank. The objective of this change was clear; to shift the emphasis and basis of
UNESCO education statistics from one that was designed to enable the charting of
progress of nation-states towards achieving education as a human right to one where
it became possible to create indicators on which all nation states could be compared
and against which their progress could be benchmarked. This places great power in
the hands of the agencies setting up the statistical variables that would determine
what the proper outcomes of education should be, and to produce a basis on which
to judge states progress towards the achievement of these normative targets. These
could also be used as a basis for their recognition as proper states that is more
precise and remediable than the kinds of mutual recognition involved in, for
instance, the global isomorphism of curricular categories (see Meyer et al., 1992). In
particular, it enables a set of definitions of education to be established at a supranational levelthat are in this case linked to the achievement of a global KEthat are
distinct from and parallel with existing national definitions and assumptions, but
often equally demanding and important. We will return to this important point
below.
Ka Ho Moks article addresses the fascinating transformation of China over the
past quarter century. In the context of the other articles in this issue, and of the
argument to be advanced below about the relationship of globalisation and modernity, it is notable that the discourse of modernity did not feature centrally in the
transitions he describes, either in education or in governance. We get the sense that
China was to a degree insulated from both the peaking and the apparent decline of
modernity over the past half century. As a result, the forces of capitalist globalisation are not so entwined with the problems of modernity, though, as Mok indicates, the problem of redesigning and reorienting statecivil society relations and
governance structures that had reached their apogee in the Cultural Revolution was
a massive one. At the centre of these changes is the shift from what he calls institutional transition to structural transformation in the Chinese state and its relationship with civil society since it set out on the capitalist road. He argues that this
transition has been an extremely radical one, that has seen not merely an
120 R. Dale
accommodation to the market, or even a market enhancing approach on the part of
the state, but a market accelerationist state, and that this has had very far-reaching
consequences for the governance, and, less directly, the mission and purpose, of
higher education. He shows in detail how economies of knowledge were introduced into higher education, through changes in the processes of governance, that
while they have distinct similarities to those referred to in the west as privatisation,
are inflected by local cultural and institutional forms, such as the minban schools,
which it is difficult to assimilate to, or to describe in terms commensurable with,
those used in the west.
Collectively, these papers provide important evidence on how discourses and practices associated with the KE become globalised. We can see evidence in each of
them for both of the two approaches that have been identified elsewhere (Dale, 2000)
as possessing the three main requirements of adequate theories of the relationship
between globalisation and educationa theory of globalisation; a theory of education; and a theory of the relationship between the two. The main thrust of that paper
was to compare not sets of events, such as national systems of education, but explanations of those events, and specifically to contrast these two approaches, referred to
as Common World Education Culture (CWEC) and Globally Structured Agenda
for Education(GSAE). However, one of the outcomes of that exercise has been the
recognition both that these approaches may have more in common than was elaborated there, and that there is much to gain from recognising that they have different,
but very important, foci, both of which are necessary to an understanding of the
issues currently confronting educational systems, structures, processes and practices
at many levels. It may be worth developing further what they have in common (which
is also in some ways the basis on which the real differences between them can
emerge). The most important feature they have in common in the context of this
paper is their understanding of the relationship between the global/world level and
the level of the nation state, which enables them to focus on the national level without
falling prey to methodological nationalism. For CWEC, both the state and education
systems are intrinsic features of, and endogenous to, the world polity, based on the
values of western modernity, that are not reducible to the intentions or interest of any
individual nation state, which they take as the source of the ideas and processes that
underlie the isomorphism they see between national education systems. However,
they see also see these values, etc., being diffused across nation states, rather than
being endogenously developed within them and hence representing exogenous influences in the case of each individual nation state. The GSAE follows a similar line of
reasoning, seeing the globally structured agenda for education as similarly not reducible to the interests and intentions of any individual nation states, but created by
them collectively, in the common interest of those transnational forces currently
controlling the global economic system, and constructed as external influences on
national systems.
Underlying these arguments is the recognition that rather than merely to a
degree complementing each other, these CWEC and GSAE are offering explanations of two separate sets of phenomena, that are so closely intertwined as to be
121
typically taken as symbiotic. Thus, we might see the CWEC and GSAE as offering separate and overlapping accounts of the distinct but mutually imbricated
and mutually reinforcing structures and processes of modernity and capitalism
respectively.
Modernity, as conceived in the work of the world polity theorists (see, for example,
Meyer et al., 1992, and especially Chabbott, 2003, who provides the most valuable
account for present purposes) has among its most central elements the prominence
of the nation-state, national education systems and the individual. Chabbott points
out that in the CWEC approach, the
repertoire of action or role for actors like nation states (and) international organisations
operating at the global level is severely constrained and heavily scripted by an overarching cultural framework or world culture (which) defines what constitutes rational
alternatives and choices in a relatively narrow way for any given actor. (Chabbott, 2003,
p. 6)
Those values are located in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and are characterised above all by the idea that it was possible to understand the social world rationally and on that basis to improve it; the idea of progress was central. In Chabbotts
account, This culture of rationality materialised in two critical waysthrough the
development of scientific explanations and through rational purposive action, or
organization, to promote progress through science becom(ing) obligatory (Chabbott,
2003, p. 6). Education and the state are clearly central to both of these developments,
and may indeed be seen as the key institutions of modernity, the key symbols and
materialisations of the ambition to shape and improve the social world in a progressive
direction.
Capitalism is an economic system that always requires extra-economic embedding; its fundamental character means that it is unable to provide the necessary
conditions of its continued expansion. (For an attempt to spell out the implications
of this for education systems, in the form of three core problems, of supporting accumulation, ensuring societal cohesion and legitimation, that permanently confront
capitalist states, see Dale, 1989). It is, for instance, necessary for markets, one of the
core elements of capitalism, to be sustained by extra-economic arrangements. This
requirement, is not, however, a prescriptive or determining one; its fulfilment may
take, and has taken, multiple forms. This has resulted in many different state forms
and national varieties of capitalism, for instance, while capitalism has shown itself
able to survive under very different sets of social arrangements, for instance family
forms, and different levels of patriarchy and feminism. A major overlap with modernity occurs in the state, which is not only, as has just been noted, a key institution of
Modernity, but also the key means through which the extra-economic conditions of
capitalism are installed.
It is important to note that these arguments are not taken to imply zero-sum
relationships between either diffusionist and structural approaches, or global-local
influences on education policies. It is clear that processes recognisable as diffusion
continue to make a significant contribution to how states justify or modify their
122 R. Dale
education systems, and that nation states are still responsible for the great majority of
decisions taken about their education systems. However, as will be elaborated below,
the fact that (a) decisions are still taken at national level does not necessarily imply
that that is where the power over those decisions lies (because of the operation of
agenda setting, preference shaping and rules setting at other levels), (b) existing forms
continue apparently more or less unchanged does not alter the fact that new forms,
located at different scales, are coming to exist beside them, (c) existing forms do not
necessarily have the same meaning as they have previously (for example, monarchies)
and (d) the nature and breadth of the areas across which international differences may
emerge is narrowing under the KE. For an example of these processes we need look
no further than the changes taking place in the nature and structures of universities
in response to the KE. Universities are not only becoming more alike, but they are
becoming more alike in ways that are different from those that formerly constituted
the basis of their similarity and comparability. They may still be regarded as global
institutions, but they are global institutions of a kind quite different from the institutions they were in the era of modernity. (see, e.g., Delanty, 2003) It is important to
note here that this is not an argument for a totalising convergence theory. Convergence may occur or not across a wide variety of sites and instances, such as policy or
practice, funding or regulation. The existence of convergence at one level does not
imply convergence at all levels or instances.
Having made the point about the symbiotic relationship between modernity and
capitalism, it is important to point out that this does not mean that both carry equal
explanatory weight in every instance. This is especially so in the case of the KE, where
we might briefly point to two arguments that suggest that capitalism is more significant than modernity in explaining current changes in education systems (see also the
arguments in Dale, 2000).
The first, more modest, argument is that the values and purposes underpinning
the KE represent a considerable narrowing and thinning of the values of modernity
as they are usually expounded. Further, it is difficult to see that this results from
the process of diffusion and reception itself. While the epistemic communities seen
as the agents of diffusion clearly change over time, it is difficult to account for the
rapidity of the move towards a KE, and the associated narrowing of the base values
in terms of such a process. It seems more plausible to accept evidence such as that
provided by Cuss and DAmico, of a structured and focused shift. The more
radical argument has been put forward with particular force and originality by
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2004). He contends that we are currently witnessing
the end of modernity and that the values that characterised it no longer carry the
conviction they have enjoyed for centuries. The ideas of progress, distributive
justice, emancipation, the ability of the stateor any bodyto deliberately engineer change, are all now obstacles to understanding and to improving the lot of
the mass of humanity who have never been able to enjoy their fruits. In particular,
the neo-liberal ideas that drive the KE can be seen as representing what he calls an
anti-utopian utopia, a utopia that finds its telos in the final achievement of its
own project.
123
The argument so far, then, is that the shift to neo-liberalism, reflected in the idea
of the KE, does reflect a particularly strong version of globalisation and its possible
relationships to education systems, and hence an especially acute challenge to
comparative education. Neo-liberalism is a form of accumulation that contains
imperatives for all areas of social life, with education particularly powerfully affected
in its multiple roles of support for accumulation, maintaining cohesion and identity
and legitimating the system as a whole. What we are witnessing is not just changes,
albeit important ones, in the contexts of education, that have to be adequately taken
into account and reflected in our accounts of the relationship between globalisation
and education, but conscious efforts to develop new supranational forms of education that consciously seek to undermine and reconfigure existing national forms of
education, even as they run alongside them, and even in their shadow.
In the remainder of this paper I will attempt to outline and elaborate the double
challenge with which globalisation in the form of the KE confronts comparative
education. This double challenge, which underlies in different ways all the papers in
this special issue on globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education, is
both theoretical and metatheoretical. Theoretically, it provides the intellectual challenge of how to come to terms with what may be seen as a new world for comparative
education (Dale, 1999a), a world that is no longer unproblematically to be apprehended as made up of autonomous nation states, an assumption that had been fairly
fundamental to much work in comparative education, indeed, the basis of the
comparisons it undertook. Metatheoretically, the new world exposed more starkly a
tension over comparative educations main purpose, that has also been a central
feature of work in the area from its earliest times, a tension that may best be described
as existing between learning from comparing and explaining through comparing.
These issues will be discussed in the final section, where I will address the question
what is now to be compared?
In the next part of the paper I will focus on the theoretical issues that globalisation
in the form of the KE, that is not reducible to either existing national or institutional
structures, processes and practices, raises for comparative education. I shall focus on
two issues in particular that derive from comparative educations focus on national,
education, systems. The first involves considering a significant objection to the critique
of methodological nationalism, that despite all the globalisation talk, by far the
majority of education policy decisions are taken at national level. The second issue
involves addressing what might be called the institutional parochialism of comparative education.
Following this, I will address metatheoretical responses to the idea of the KE and
the multiple challenges it represents for comparative education. In particular I will
develop and elaborate what I will refer to as two methodological and theoretical
gestalts that draw on Robert Coxs (1996) distinction between problem-solving
and critical theories. And in conclusion, I will ask What is now to be compared in
comparative education? What are the comparable objects of its research? How
now does it explain? And what is now to be learned from and through comparative
education?
124 R. Dale
Globalisation, knowledge economy, comparative education and

methodological nationalism by default
I have suggested above both that the KE can be seen as a supranational phenomenon and that the basis of much comparative education is predominantly national.
The argument in this section can be briefly and quite simply stated as follows.
Comparative education (along with social science as a whole) has to a considerable
degree (and with significant exceptions such as world-system theorists of various
kinds, and comparative ethnographers whose focus has been on the level of practice
rather than policy) been characterised by, based on, and in its turn reinforced, a
largely unproblematised methodological nationalism and an associated embedded
statism, and its analyses have been systematically shaped and formed by that basis
and association. Though it may be argued that this approach may have been more
justified in earlier eras than it appears in a global era, and that the existence of something referred to as globalisation has been registered and recognised in comparative
education, that recognition has often tended to take the form of acknowledging a
new and significantly altered context for what remain essentially nationally based
studies. The argument being advanced here is understanding the relationship of KE
and education requires moving beyond a field and context approach to one that
recognises and seeks to explore the relationships between different scales of governance.
As will be argued more fully below, the two component elements of methodological
nationalism are tightly linked, arguably to the point of dependence, conceptually
and methodologically, certainly to the point where the national assumption or
basis sets severe limits to any alternative analysis to the comparative. Thus, while it
will be argued that both that the limitations of methodological nationalism are
exposed by globalisation, and that it is especially inappropriate as a means of
coming to terms with issues raised by globalisation, the problems it poses for
comparative education do not begin with globalisation, but are intrinsic to the
approach.
Methodological nationalism
The term methodological nationalism was originally coined by Herminio Martins
(see Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, p. 327). It is usually used to refer to the takenfor-granted assumption that nation states and their boundaries are the natural
containers of societies and hence the appropriate unit of analysis for social sciences,
which is how I will interpret it below. However, it is important in the context of this
introduction to distinguish it from another set of assumptions to which it is contingently related, particularly in comparative education. This set of assumptions takes
the ideas of western modernity and the western nation-state as the norm against
which other arrangements are compared. This is particularly significant in comparative education, since it is often the stance assumed in single nation/education system
studies, where the comparator element of the study is to be found implicitly in the
authors own (typically advanced western) national system. Here, methodological
125
nationalism is not to be regarded as a nationally specific style or approach, as in the

French or German School of work in a particular area or discipline, for instance, but
rather as a form of methodological perspectivism, as exemplified most notably in the
concept of orientalism, seeing the world through a particular (national) conception
of it, and imposing that conception on it.
The basis and background of methodological nationalism (and the frequently associated term, embedded statism, which will be discussed below) are crucial to understanding both its forms and its consequences for social science (in which comparative
education is here included). It is widely recognised (e.g., Taylor, 1996; Wimmer &
Glick Schiller, 2002) that
modernity was cast in the iron cage of nationalized states that confined and limited our
own analytic capacities (and that) the epistemic structures and programmes of mainstream
social science have been closely attached to, and shaped by the experience of modern state
formation. (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, pp. 302, 303)
And they go on,

That nationalist forms of inclusion and exclusion bind our societies together served as an
invisible background even to the most sophisticated theorizing about the modern condition. The social sciences were captured by the apparent naturalness and givenness of a
world divided into societies along the lines of nation states (Berlin 1998). What Billig
(1995) has shown for everyday discourse and practice holds true for grand theorys
encounters with the social world as well: because they were structured according to nationstate principles, these became so routinely assumed and banal, that they vanished from
sight altogether. (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002, p. 304)
Wimmer and Glick Schiller identify three distinct modes of methodological nationalism which they refer to as ignorance, naturalization and territorial limitation. In
the first mode, methodological nationalism ignores or takes for granted the national
framing of states and societies It has produced a systematic blindness towards the
paradox that modernization has led to the creation of national communities amidst a
modern society supposedly dominated by the principles of achievement (Wimmer &
Glick Schiller, 2002, p. 304).
In the second mode they show through brief vignettes of the historical development
and assumptions of disciplines such as international relations, economics, history and
anthropology how the national container assumption has been taken for granted and
treated as an unproblematic resource rather than as a topic to be problematised. Here
it is important to note that the concepts transnational (literally across nations) and
international (literally between nations) commonly used in comparative education,
both assume a national level or basis of activity; their focus is what happens across
and between nations. By contrast, the concept supranational (literally above nations)
denotes a separate, distinct and non-reducible level or scale of activity from the
national (see Dale, 2000). The non-reducibility of interventions or policies to the
activities or interests of any particular nation-state that is implied by the term supranational is one of the characteristics that most clearly defines the qualitative difference
between it and trans- or inter-national, and that indicates a key element of what is to
be understood by globalisation.
126 R. Dale
The clearest example here is that of Europe. The European Union now represents
a distinct scale of political activity, irreducible to the aggregate of the interests of the
member states that make it up. This does not mean that all members have equal
influence on the decisions by which they are all equally bound, but it does entail
recognising the the EU is more than an extension of particular national interests.
Decisions made, and policies agreed, at the European scale are not reducible to, or
explicable in terms of, the intentions and interests of individual member states.
What Wimmer and Glick Schiller refer to as the naturalisation mode of methodological nationalism reinforces and strengthens the approach and its assumptions
through taking the nation as the basis of its accounts and analyses. The focus of social
science, as well as its assumptions, tends to be the national level; it tends to be
national policy and needs that guide research activity. As John Agnew puts it,
The major social sciences in the contemporary Western universityeconomics, sociology
and political sciencewere all founded to provide intellectual services to modern states in,
respectively, wealth creation, social control and state management. It is hardly surprising,
therefore, that they find difficulty in moving beyond a world unproblematically divided up
into discrete units of sovereign space. (Agnew, 1998, p. 66)
More than this, the national is the level at which statistics of all kinds are collected;
methodological nationalism operates both about and for the nation-state, to the point
where the only reality we are able to comprehensively describe statistically is a
national, or at best an inter-national, one. In the case of comparative education, it
might be argued that while it is clear the unit of analysis is most often1 a single
national state/education system, the typical focus on societies/systems other than their
own may tend to immunise its practitioners somewhat from this element of methodological nationalism. However, we need also to bear in mind (a) that the other
societies are frequently implicitly being compared with (and often intended to shed
light on, or provide lessons for) the researchers own; and (b) that it is not unknown,
to say the least, for comparative educationists to work as consultants to national
governments of the societies they are studying, or to various international agencies
with an interest in the policies adopted by those governments.
Further than this, however, historically comparative education has promoted as well
as assumed the nation-state as the basis of analysis, and prescription, through the
close link between the discipline and modernisation theories of development and
(significantly) nation-building. These theories saw modernisation and economic
development dependent on individual states following the path to growth, and adopting the values, that had been adopted by the developed nations. States were, and
frequently still are, seen as the means through which their nations would be built.
And finally, we see the tenacity of methodological nationalism assumptions even in
studies of globalisation. Many such studies posit at least implicitly a zero-sum relationship between the global and the state, or see nation-states implicitly or explicitly
as relays or mediators of the effects of globalisation. The global level is one of the
directions taken by a posited hollowing out of the state (though it is important to
note that this concept does not necessarily entail a zero-sum relationship; it may also
involve a conception of a division of labour between the levels, an idea which will be
127
elaborated further below. Again, the case of the European Union is particularly
instructive here, as the clearest example of the severing of the link between sovereignty and territory, which is an absolutely central feature of the relationship between
supranational and national levels (ibid). Regional law takes precedence over national
law; the European Central bank sets interest rates for all the members of the Euro.
The social science response to this unprecedented change has been to focus above all
on the domestic (nation-state) effects of EU policy. While it is important not to
underestimate the contribution of such work, it is also crucial to recognise that it does
not tell the whole storyfor instance, and very simply, what are the effects of both
nation-states and their relationship with Europe, on the idea and substance of
Europe (see Dale, 2004).
The third mode of methodological nationalism that Wimmer and Glick Schiller
identify, the territorialization of social science imaginary and the reduction of
analytic focus to the boundaries of the nation-state and the correspondingly lost
sight of the connections between such nationally defined territories (2002, p. 307),
may also appear to apply less directly to comparative educationists than to those in
the other disciplines they discuss, given the disciplines explicitly comparative
purpose. There are, though, three important issues raised here.
The first relates to the necessary linking of the national and the comparative. In
essence what is argued here is that the comparison encouraged /required by methodological nationalism represents at best only one, relatively weak, form of elaborating
the connections between nation states that Wimmer and Glick Schiller refer to. The
point is that the limitation of the unit of analysis to the nation-state makes the nationstate serve as the fundamental point of reference against which other structures and
processes are defined (as local, subnational, international, transnational or
global) (Crofts Wiley, 2004, p. 79). This means that social action is seen as occurring primarily within and secondarily across (state boundaries) (Shaw, 2003, p. 37).
What methodological nationalism involved was a slippage from the general to the
particular without bringing into the open the problematic abstraction involved in
isolating the national case (p. 38). This restricts the elaboration of the connections
between states to comparison of the phenomena seen to be common to more than one
of them, while at the same time the unproblematic, unexplicated nature of the state
and society mean that it is not possible to approach the phenomena relationally, for
instance. This is crucial, since nation-states are formed relationally within particular
political-economic structures, and take their much of their coherence and identity
from their relationships with others (see Crofts Wiley, 2004, p. 83). As a result,
when the general pattern of social relations on a world scale came to be represented by
more than a single case, it was by the comparative method. Comparing different particular social forms came to substitute for understanding the relations between them and the
general structures within which these comparisons might be explained. (Shaw, 2003,
p. 38; emphasis in original)
This also, of course, means that the comparability of the phenomena internationally
cannot be assured, since investigation of any basis of comparability beyond the lexical
is precluded by methodological nationalist assumptions (in this case, the naturalising
128 R. Dale
assumption that not only are states the proper object of inquiry but that they are all
the same in all relevant respects).
The second issue concerns the assumption of the unimportance of the territorial
base that has characterised social scientific accounts of nation-states. The argument
about the asocial character of space in social theory, certainly as compared to the
major emphasis on the importance of timeits reduction to a mere platform on
which social processes took placehas been made by many social geographers, but
for our present purposes the account given by John Agnew is especially useful.
At one time it made sense to some to see the path of history or social change as a series
of stages (as, for example, in Rostows (1960) famous account of the stages of
economic growth) inscribed upon state territories. Today, however, economic development and social change are increasingly determined by the relative ability of localities
and regions to achieve access to global networks. In this context, understanding power
as if it is attached singularly and permanently to state territories makes no sense. But
the commitment to an unchanging spatiality of power retains considerable appeal. Not
only does it allow for a restriction of politics to an unproblematic domestic space, it
also provides an attractive intellectual and political stability by equating space with
the fixed territories of modern statehood which can then serve as a template for the
investigation of other phenomena or as the basis for organizing political action. Putting
state territoriality in question undermines the methodological nationalism that has
lain behind the workings of both mainstream and much radical social science. (Agnew,
1998, p. 66 )
The third point is rather different, and more specific to comparative education. It
concerns the homogenising of nation-states, or the flattening of divisions and distinctions that are internal to them. These internal divisions and distinctions are particularly obvious and relevant in studies of education, where, for instance, it is very
common to see references to the American, the Australian, the British, the
Canadian or the German education systems. None of these is a homogeneous or
single national system of education. Education is not a federal, but a regional or
provincial matter in all of them. This might be seen to present particularly attractive
opportunities to comparative educators, with the pre-controlled variables it offers,
but while the recognition of intra-system diversity may be acknowledgedoften in
the form of a caveatit appears to have led to remarkably few studies2 (at least in
comparative education journals) comparing different sub-national education
systems. This may be taken as further evidence of a methodological nationalist framework shaping the disciplineespecially since the countries listed above provide a very
high proportion of the literature on comparative education.
Embedded statism
The concept of methodological nationalism is often coupled with that of embedded
statism, sometimes to the point where they are seen as almost interchangeable; for
instance, Shaw suggests that Taylor (1996), who seems to have coined the term,
means (by it) something similar to methodological nationalism(Shaw, 2003,
p. 39). However, there does appear to be some value in retaining a distinction
129
between them, since while methodological nationalism fundamentally assumes the

coincidence of social boundaries with state boundaries (Shaw, 2003, p. 37), its relationship with statism, the assumption that the state is the source and means of all
governing activity, though it is typically taken for granted, is essentially contingent
not necessary. Thus, it is important to consider the assumption of embedded statism, to question rather than to assume, the ability of the state to act, which is as
much a part of comparative education (and other social sciences) as methodological
nationalism, separately from it.
The core and basis of embedded statism in social science is the post-war socialdemocratic welfare state. While this was pre-eminently a national state, the scope of
state activity was very wide, from intervention in the economy, to the monopoly of
provision of welfare services. The state would mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism and ensure at least a minimum of social protection. It governed, from above,
implicitly alone, and primarily through making policy. What is surprising is that
despite the thorough critiques of this view of the state, some central assumptions
remain, especially perhaps the idea that the state governs through policy; if things
are to be changed, it is to the state that we expect to look to bring about those
changes.
The alternative approach involves a focus on governance rather than the state. By
governance I refer to the coordination of the coordination of the work of governing,
usually, but crucially for the argument of this paper and this volume, at a national
level. This concept of governance rests on the assumption that the work of governing
can be broken down into independent sets of activities, and that these activities need
not all be performed by the state. In the case of education, the activities of governing
might be broken down into funding, provision, ownership and regulation, and these
activities might be carried out by the market, the community or the household as well
as by the state (see Dale, 1997).
However, one useful point that emerges from the discussions of governance is that
they reveal that it is mistaken to assume that there was no governance before
1989 or whenever. Rather, certainly in public sector areas like education, the (statedominated) forms taken by the activities and their coordination that we have begun
to refer to as governance became so familiar as to disguise what lay beneath/behind
them. With the recognition that the state had never done it all, and that at least the
great majority of the activities of governing were not dependent on the state doing
them, the question becomes, as it essentially always should have been, what forms of
governance (as the coordination of coordination) are in place where, and why, and
what is the place and role of the state within them. In a sense, the state is moved
from being explanans to explandum, though it is crucial to note that it is still largely
the state, through its role as coordinator in chief, that determines by whom and
under what conditions government will be accomplished. To put it another way, one
of the benefits to be gained from looking closely at governance is that it reveals
the degree to which we have tended to, in a sense, fetishise the post-war social
democratic state and to see departures from it as pathological rather than trying to
theorise them.
130 R. Dale
A practical rebuttal of the perceived problems of methodological

nationalism
The key point to be addressed here is that, essentially, despite the criticisms that may
be made of methodological nationalism and embedded statism, the focus on the
national level still makes most sense, given the empirical fact that most if not all
decisions about the shape and direction of national education systems continue to be
taken by the states themselves. This is undoubtedly the case, and it is reinforced by
the fact that there is little sign of convergence between nation-states in their decisions
and responses to the common challenges that they face. This is made very clear by
both David Pang and Ka Ho Mok in their contributions to this issue. Pang shows how
a commonly perceived problemthat of the need to enrol their education systems in
the battle for access to burgeoning Asian marketsthough explicitly recognised in
those terms by the education systems in question (those of Australia, Canada, New
Zealand and USA), took quite contrasting forms in those countries, while Mok shows
China following a quite distinctive road, deliberately stepping away from key
elements of the western model.
Does this not suggest, then, that talk of the shortcomings of methodological
nationalism is not only misplaced but misleading? The response to be advanced here
recognises the strength of the challenge provided by the empirical evidence we have,
but sees it as enabling the case to be made more strongly. There are three main
arguments here.
The first suggests in essence that the national is no longer the same in significant
ways. Though what appear to be the same institutions and processes may be present,
they are the same only at the level of perception, rather than that of reality (in the
sense in which it is used by critical realists, to apply to the level at which events (institutions, processes, etc.) are generated; see Sayer, 1997, 2000). Their meaning is
changed by the new set of conditions and circumstances in which they are located,
the most significant of which in this context is the global KE. The clearest example
of this is probably the economy. Though states retain the trappings (institutions
such as Ministries of Finance or Economic Development, processes such as annual
budgets, etc.) that were found in the era when there was a national economy over
which they had some discretion, (a) in an era of globalisation and regionalisation such
discretion is drastically limited; crucial decisions that were once taken at national level
are now taken in supranational fora (e.g., exchange rates and the Euro); and (b) the
institutions themselves are no longer (if they ever were) shaped exclusively by national
path dependencies, but also by their location and roles in global and/or regional
economic interdependencies
The second argument draws on Steven Lukes three-dimensional theory of power.
Lukes (1974) argues that while the power to prevail in decision makingwhich is
essentially what we see in national education policy decisionsis the most obvious
and accessible form of power, it is far from being the most effective or significant. He
posits two other dimensions of power that he argues are more significant. The first is
the power to define the agenda around which decisions are to be made. This, he
131
argues is a more effective form of power than that found in the power to make
decisions, since it determines which issues decisions are to be taken aboutand more
importantly, which issues are not exposed to the decision-making arena. It is very
clear that power operates at this level in the area of education policy, as in other areas
of policy, and always has. However, the point to be made here is that it can no longer
be taken for granted that the power to set agendas for national education systems is
held or exercised exclusively at a national level. The decisions may still be taken at a
national level, but the issues on which they are taken may have been determined at a
different scale. Here, the agenda setting influence of the OECD has been widely
acknowledged (see, e.g., Papadopoulos, 1994; Henry et al., 2001; Rinne et al., 2004),
and it is clear that the EU is in the course, particularly since the Lisbon summit, of
strongly influencing the agendas of member states. (see for an official view, Hingel,
2001). We can also see evidence of Lukes third dimension of power at work in shaping the agendas and decisions of nation-states about education policy. What Lukes
means by the third dimension of power is the ability to set the rules of the game, in
which agendas may be formed and who will be involved in them determined; more
broadly we may see this as setting the rules of what education is about. The clearest
example of this is the development of international education statistics, performance
indicators and benchmarks, which act to frame what is to be regarded as of importance and value in education systems. Roser Cuss and Sabrina DAmicos contribution to this issue demonstrates this dimension of power in action very nicely. They
show how, in changing the basis and scope of its statistics in response to pressure from
other international organisations, UNESCO ipso facto changed its mission and the
conception of what counts as education that it had embraced and promulgated since
its creation, and which had formed the rules of the game and the definitions of the
purposes of education for developing countries especially over that period. The new
rules of the game implied by the changing statistical base will undoubtedly be interpreted and acted upon differently by different nation-states. That is to be expected,
and it may appear that nothing has changed, as agendas are set and decisions taken
at national levels. However, those agendas and decisions are not the same as the
agendas and decisions determined in what might be called pre-globalisation epochs,
because they are framed by the supranational agendas that drive and are given
substance in the changed bases of international education statistics.
This argument does not, of course, as has been pointed out above, mean that
education policy has moved from the national to the supranational level; this is not a
zero-sum, either national/or supranational, game, as may be further illustrated by the
third argument. One way in which this is especially evident is that nation-states themselves are by some distance the most active agents in establishing the supranational
organisations, and in collectively (though with clearly unequal power) setting the
rules of the game and the transnational agendas to which all nation-states will
respond. And it is also important to note that the rules and agendas that are set in
these organisations very clearly reflect the different power of their members; as has
been made clear in studies of the World Bank, OECD, EU, and more recently the
WTO/GATS, as they are involved in education, they may be seen as being made by
132 R. Dale
and in the interests of the already powerful countries, and as mechanisms for setting
the rules of incorporation into the global economy as it impinges upon education.
Once again, however, it is not necessary to posit a wholesale domination of national
education systems by a group of international organisations, albeit one whose
members subscribe to broadly similar aims and goals for the world economy, and
which is dominated by the interests of its most powerful members.
Rather than a zero-sum game, I want to suggest, what we are witnessing is a developing functional, scalar and sectoral division of the labour of educational governance.
The simplest way to indicate what this means is through a diagram (Figure 1) that
encapsulates the arguments about methodological nationalism by default, and
embedded statism, in pointing to the pluri-scalar nature of educational governance.
What the diagram shows is that the activities, or functions, of educational governance
SCALE OF
GOVERNANCE
SUPRANATIONAL
NATIONAL
SUBNATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS
OF
COORDINATION
GOVERNANCE ACTIVITIES
FUNDING
OWNERSHIP
PROVISION
STATE
MARKET
COMMUNITY
FAMILY
Figure 1.
Pluri-scalar governance of education
REGULATION
133
can be divided into four categories (that are for the sake of exposition taken to be
mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive), funding, provision, ownership and
regulation. The diagram also reflects the argument made above, that it is neither
natural nor essential that all these activities are carried out by the state, or by any
other single agency. Rather, they may be carried out by any of the broad set of agents
indicatedstate, market, community and household, either separately or in combinationand this is broadly what is meant by governance here, the coordination of
coordination. The other feature of the diagram, which is the key one in this argument,
is that we can also recognise that especially in a period such as that we currently
inhabit, these functions may also be carried out at a number of different scales; they
are no more confined to the national than they are to the state.
So, the purpose of the diagram is to assist in recognising the pluri-scalar nature of
educational governance, that education policy can no longer be seen as the exclusive
preserve of individual nation-states, and to indicate a basis for addressing and
understanding more clearly the consequences of that. And if we take due note of the
arguments about the relationship between global and national (and subnational)
scales not being zero-sum, we are led to expect and look for some kind of division of
labour between scales. However, on top of that, the diagram also illustrates the
argument that the activities of governance do not comprise a homogeneous whole,
but can be broken down into the categories listed. Hence, we might then expect a
functional, as well as a scalar division of labour. What this means, then, in a nutshell,
is that any rescaling of the governance of education policy is likely to be selective, in
terms of the core problems of education. Thus, we might expect those activities of
education systems that are related to the predominantly national elements of the
embedding of capitalism, such as societal cohesion (social order+national identity)
and legitimation, which comprise a major part of the policies and processes that
education systems have traditionally been concerned with, to continue to be exercised
at national levelalbeit in a context that is itself altered by the shaping power of the
international organisations. On the other hand, we may also expect, in an era of a
supranational KE and the reduced importance of national economies, some of the
activities of education associated with the support of accumulation to be increasingly
governed at a supranational level, in response to the globally structured agenda for
education. But even here, as we have suggested above, we should not assume that
national states and governments will play no role; they will necessarily be involved in
interpreting and translating into nationally appropriate forms and priorities the consequences of the shaping rules of the international organisations.
Figure 1. Pluri-Schiller governance of education
Institutional parochialism
In an earlier paper (Dale, 1994a) I referred to what I called disciplinary parochialism
as one of the factors inhibiting the development of the study of education policy. By
this I meant the tendency to base the study of education policy on approaches from
within the field of education. The problem with this is that it leads to analyses of
education policy that assume or share the definition of the topic with those within the
134 R. Dale
field; this leaves little space for problematising education theoretically, on the basis
of approaches from other disciplines. One illustration of this tendency was the relative
paucity of references to books, journals or articles that did not have education in
their title. By institutional parochialism I refer to the tendency within all education
studies, including comparative education, (a) to make existing education systems,
institutions and practices in isolation the dominant focus of their analyses, and (b) not
to problematise these systems, institutions and practices, but to assume that lexical
equivalence is sufficient guarantee that the objects being studied are sufficiently
similar to make them comparable without further investigation.
There are three issues here. The first concerns the floatingness of education as a
signifier. One of the things that makes it difficult for there to be effective dialogue on
education, within as well as between countries, is that it carries so many different
meanings and connotations. One response to this has been to suggest attempting to
find a basis for commensurability, or a technique of translation, between and across
different uses of the term in the form of a list of education questions. These will be
elaborated in the final section of this paper, but for the purposes of this section they
entail asking two questions concerning what are the boundaries and responsibilities
of the education sector in any given nation-state; what processes and practices fall
under the administrative heading of education? and how are the responsibilities
associated with education defined and allocated, administratively? It might seem that
the answers to these questions should be either the same or very close, but empirically
it is clear that there is a range of different answers. In terms of the first question, for
instance, Ministries of Education have a variegated range of associated responsibilities, including the Church, Employment, Healthand if we move to the European
level, Culture, Sport and Multilingualism. And in terms of the second we find
significant differences in what are defined as educational responsibilities and how
they are allocated. One notable and important example here is the conception of the
relationship between education and social policy, which varies from very close (e.g.,
UK) to non-existent (e.g., Germany; see Allmendinger & Leibfried, 2003). The point
is clear; assuming that education sectors are comparable across nation-states may be
misleading.
The second point follows from this. If there is a range of answers to the questions
posed above, it presumably follows that if different education sectors do not have the
same meaning from one country to the next, but are part of societally specific patterns
of government/divisions of labour of governing, they will enjoy different relationships
with other sectors. And given this, the scope, priorities and responsibilities of education sectors, and their structures and processes, will be shaped by those relationships.
Or, to put it more simply, we cannot understand education sectors and their workings
in isolation.
Both these points suggest that caution is required in attempting to compare education sectors cross-nationally. However, that conclusion is a general one, and not
specific to the relationship between comparative education, globalisation and the KE.
The third point addresses this question, in suggesting that the concept of education
sector itself may be being both redefined and rescaled in response to the demands of
135
the KE. We see elements of this in all the papers in the issue. It is most explicit in
Robertsons emphasis on the perceived need to transform or reconfigure existing
education systems. Cuss and DAmico show both how this is currently being
brought about through the statistical redefinition of what is to count as an education
sector and the potential of such redefinition. Pang shows it in his account of the
extension of the responsibilities of the education sector to include foreign policy. And
Mok shows it in what might be seen as a step change from a communist system to
one that does not follow many of the orthodox parameters of education sectors as
shaped and reflected through international organisations such as UNESCO and
OECD.
The argument I wish to advance here is that both the national and the institutional
(sectoral) features of existing education systems are under severe scrutiny in respect
of their contribution to the continuing development of the KE . Discussion of the
changes sought is currently somewhat speculative, but (a) the ambition to bring them
about is sufficiently evident, and (b) the effect of that ambition on existing arrangements is sufficiently recognised to suggest that comparative educationists need to be
aware of it now in their analyses. Robertsons paper provides a full account of the aims
and processes of the OECD, and I will consider briefly the somewhat contrasting case
of the EU as an institutional driver of these changes. The two organisations are
somewhat different in their goals and processes (see Noaksson & Jacobsson, 2003;
Marcussen 2004a, b) but they share a basic critique of existing education sectors that
is based largely in their perceived inability to respond to what are seen as the needs of
current and future economic developments. It should be emphasised here that my
focus is on what I take to be criticisms of the intrinsic shortcomings of the orthodox,
and taken as universal, form of education sectors of individual nation states, rather than
of particular policies advocated or adopted; indeed, it is at the system/sector level that
most of the work of the two organisations is concentrated.
In the case of the EU, the Lisbon declaration (see European Council, 2000), with
its call for Europe to be come the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based
economy in the world, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion,
heralded a major shift in the status of national education systems within the Union.
Previously, education had been assumed to be, under the European treaty, an exclusively national responsibility, but the Lisbon statement included the promulgation of
sets of Concrete Future Objectives for Education Systems, and stated that these
could only be met at the level of the Community and not by individual Member States
(MS). This was followed by the publication of a detailed working programme
designed to ensure that education and training systems achieve what is required of
them by 2010 for the achievement of the Lisbon goals and especially the competitiveness agenda .While these do contain clear policy features they also contain clear
implicit assumptions of deficits in individual national education sectors that can only
be remedied by a collective Community programme.
More recently, MS education systems have been castigated for their backsliding
and the slow pace of their response to the goals set them by the EC, with the explicit
threat that this endangers the achievement of the Lisbon goals (Commission of the
136 R. Dale
European Communities, 2003). The emphasis placed on the importance of the
European level, with its implication of a separate sector, is an especially notable
feature of the Commissions paper, though it must be acknowledged that that emphasis is somewhat weaker in the Councils paper on the same subject.
We should also note that the responsibility for reaching these goals is not divided
by sector but is clearly, if quite implicitly, regarded as a cross-sector problem as well
as being regarded as a European level problem, whose solution cannot be reduced to
the aggregated responses of individual MS. Thus both the scale and the sector of the
response are shifted from the national level. Susan Robertsons article reinforces this
view, and makes plausible the idea that what may be emerging is a European KnELL
(Knowledge Economy and Lifelong Learning) sector that overlaps with but is separate from and not reducible to the institutional forms, discourses and practices of any
individual national education sector or any combination or distillation of them. This
essentially emphasises new discourse over old institutions. Many elements of that
new discourse are present in the list below. Collectively, they show that the European
KnELL sector is a qualitatively different creature from national education sectors; for
instance, it covers education from cradle to grave as a single system, rather than
following such traditional distinctions as those between primary and secondary levels.
These elements are further developed through the discourses around ICT as the
medium, message and symbol of what ails existing sector concepts, institutionally as
well as discursively, and of the direction that it is necessary to take, a direction that
cannot be followed by existing education sectors.
Similarly, Life Long Learning discourse undermines some fundamental features
of existing sector assumptions, including that education sectors are age-related and
to a degree, age-defined.
In very brief summary, it might be suggested that the hypothesised European
KnELL sector would differ from the national education sectors in several respects
with emphases on:
Learning not education

Competence not content
Particular (just for me) not universal
The nature of its involvement of/with ICT
Specific, employment related, focus, rather than comprehensive social policy,
nation building, etc., scope.
On the basis of Robertsons account of the OECD strategies (and of some responses
to them being developed in the UK) and this brief analysis of EU activity in the education field, it does not seem too far-fetched to suggest both that existing education
sectors are seen as obstacles to the necessary development of educations contribution
to learning societies and knowledge economies, and that moves to improve that contribution will entail changes to education sectors as currently conceived. And even if
these shifts are difficult to discern at present, the discursive force of the arguments
discussed above do reinforce the suggestion that the integrity of education sectors as
we have known and assumed them is something that now needs to be problematised.
137
What is now to be compared?

The overall theme of this issue is that globalisation, especially in the form of the KE,
seems set to radically change our conceptions of education as a topic. In this concluding section, I want to consider the implications of this change for comparative education, and how comparative education might help us to explain and learn from those
changes. I have suggested that as a result of the development of the KE, two of the
fundamental assumptions of comparative education, its national base, and its topical
focus, education, may be altering in highly significant ways. These changes are
reflected in changing scales and changing sectoral definitions, respectively. The challenge they present to comparative education, then, is essentially contained in the
question, What is now to be compared? If we cannot assume sufficient stability and
coherence in either the topical or the locational base of our activities, how should we
go about the work of constructing categories that are comparable in the ways that we
have assumed heretofore that national systems and education sectors are comparable?
This is a question that requires a response based on solid and coherent theoretical
grounds. I shall try to address it in two stages. In the first I will set out in tabular form,
without significant elaboration, the theoretical and metatheoretical bases on which
the response will be based. In the second part I will seek to demonstrate in more detail
how relevant theory might be articulated to provide a possible answer to the question
of what now is to be compared, and a possible means of organising answers to that
question.
The basis for this attempt is developed through an attempt to articulate by means
of a contrasting set of theoretical and metatheoretical gestalts, that expand on some
of the insights contained in Robert Coxs classic distinction between problem-solving
and critical theory. Cox outlines the distinction thus:
(problem solving theory) takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power
relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the given framework for
action. The general aim of problem solving is to make these relationships and institutions
work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble. Since the general
pattern of institutions and relationships is not called into question, particular problems can
be considered in relation to the specialized spheres in which they arise. Problem-solving
theories are thus fragmented among a multiplicity of spheres or aspects of action, each of
which assumes a certain stability in the other spheres (which enables them in practice to
be ignored)when confronting a problem arising on its own. the strengths of the problemsolving approach lie in its ability to fix parameters to a problem area and reduce the
statement of a particular problem to a limited number of variables which are amenable to
relatively close and precise examination. The ceteris paribus assumption, upon which such
theorizing is based, makes it possible to arrive at statements of laws or regularities which
appear to have general validity but which imply, of course, the institutional and relational
parameters assumed in the problem-solving approach.
(critical theory) is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the
world and asks how that order came about. Critical theory, unlike problem-solving
theory, does not take institutions and social power relations for granted but calls them
into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in
the process of changing. It is directed toward an appraisal of the very framework for
action, or problematic, which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters. Critical
138 R. Dale
theory is directed to the social and political complex as a whole rather than to the separate
parts. As a matter of practice, critical theory, like problem-solving theory, takes as its
starting point some aspect or particular sphere of human activity. But whereas the problem-solving approach leads to further analytical sub-division and limitation to the issue to
be dealt with, the critical approach leads toward the construction of the larger picture of
the whole of which the initially contemplated part is just one component, and seeks to
understand the processes of change in which both part and whole are involved. (Cox,
1996, pp. 8889)
It is suggested that the critical set offers considerably more theoretical purchase than
the problem-solving set, and the proposal below is based on that setoff assumption.
The critical assumptions are based heavily in a critical realist (see, e.g., Sayer, 1997,
2000; Danemark et al., 2001) metatheory, and are associated with the attempt to
develop a theory of the relationship between globalisation and education that draws
on the ideas of a globally structured agenda for education and a functional, scalar and
sectoral division of the labour of educational governance.
What is now to be compared? (i) Explaining through comparing

In seeking to answer this question I am guided by the recognition that it reflects both
the issues for comparative education that I mentioned initially, explaining through
comparing and learning from comparing. The first issue contains two separate
requirementsdetermining the proper objects of comparison and ensuring that they
are cast in forms that are comparable.
I will seek to develop the proper objects of comparison by elaborating and exemplifying the approaches contained in the right hand column of Table 1, which contain
the essential metatheoretical basis for so doing. The first point insists that both the
problem and the solution must be made problematic. This is a crucial issue, since it
requires us to define what the problem we are addressing is. This sounds obvious,
but, as the papers in this issue demonstrate, that is far from the case. In a very clear
sense, all of them made the problem they addressed rather than taking it (Seeley,
1971). Pang showed that what was at issue was not so much education policy but the
implications for education policy of it being incorporated into foreign policy. Cuss
and DAmico classically make the issue of education statistics topic rather than
resource. Mok declines the possibility of seeing Chinas new education patterns as a
step on the road to development as conceived in the west and instead treats them in
their own terms. Robertson shows how misleading are interpretations of the KE that
take it at face value and base their analyses on determining how far it has succeeded
in its assumed objectives.
The second and third points in Table 1 essentially concern the question of learning rather than explaining and will be considered below, but the next two items, on
the place and importance of structure are central to defining the proper objects of
comparison. The first suggests that we need always to bear in mind that agency is
never entirely voluntary but always takes place within structures, that need to be
investigated separately. An interesting example here is the question of convergence,

Table 1.
Methodological and theoretical gestalts
PROBLEM SOLVING
THEORY
Relationship between
Problem and
Solution*
theory and action
frameworks for action
and actions
structure and agency
Nature of social
structure
139
Solution considered from

within framework that defines
problem
Theories and actions seen as
discrete, disconnected
activities
Frameworks for action remain
constant overtime
Agents autonomous of
structures
Tends towards equilibrium
through change (systems/
functionalism)
Level of Abstraction
Level of Focus
Level of Analysis
Dimension of Power
Empirical generalisation
Actual
Education Politics
Decision making
Scalar assumptions
Methodological nationalism;
Embedded statism
Evaluation of
consequences
Directly policy-related
Outputs; Effects on;
Programmes
Consequences for
Comparative Study
(from Theret, 2000,
p. 111)
Comparison of elements
Comparison of systems at the
surface of the institutional
forms but
Comparison of these
structures not only according
to the modalities of their own
historical development
CRITICAL THEORY
Both problem and solution made
problematic
Theories generate frameworks for
action
Frameworks for action change over
time and according to interests
Structures shape conditions/contexts
for agency
Inherent contradictions in structures
open possibility for new agents
and forms of agency, and
transformation
Concept formation
Real
Politics of Education
Agenda setting
Rules of the Game; Preference
shaping
Society not confined to national;
functional scalar and sectoral division
of labour
Outcomes; broad conception of
consequences;
Focus on relational issues
Analysis of emergent properties;
contingent/unintended consequences;
Programme Ontologies
Comparison of relations between these
elements and the autonomous systems
of these relations;
Comparison at a level of abstraction
which makes it possible to clarify
underlying structures common to these
multiple forms;
but also their synchronic assembly in
communicational systems producing
societal coherences.
*The first set of five premises about the metatheoretical assumptions of Coxs account are taken from
Robertson (2000)
140 R. Dale
especially perhaps as observed through the processes of the EU in the area of social
policy. Here, the means of bringing about convergence, the Open Method of Coordination (Dale, 2004), seeks explicitly to bring about convergence with diversity
regional convergence on targets, benchmarks, etc., but national diversity in how
these are achieved. Agency is positively encouraged, but within a broader structure
(that is itself located within the overall goals of the EU), which means that none of
them separately can be a proper object of comparison. The other point about structure is also very important. It insists that that structures are never static and that we
need to look for contradictions within them, which is crucial, but more importantly it
refers to their emergent propertiesthe range of potentials that they contain but
which are not necessarily realised. KE itself may be seen both as an emergent property and as containing a very significant set of potential emergent properties.
The levels of abstraction, focus and analysis, and the dimension of power that is
selected to explore, are all crucial to both determining the proper objects of comparison and that they are comparable. They all assume that the facts, what we observe,
and how it is conventionally understood, cannot be taken at face value, but are as they
are by dint of their relationship with underlying structures and mechanisms that
generate them. Thus empirical generalisations, such as correlations, or constant
conjunctions of events, or accounts at the level of the actual, do not explain anything,
and thus are not proper objects of comparison, but rather lead us to formulate
concepts, hypotheses and theories that enable us to identify what are proper objects
of comparison. The examples of the CWEC and GSAE that were described above
demonstrate clearly what is involved in constructing a proper object for comparison
based on these assumptions.
I have already devoted some space to the contrasting methodological nationalism/
embedded statism with the idea of the functional and scalar division of the labour of
educational governance, and also to the limitations of an effects on approach to
evaluating outcomes, but it may be useful to elaborate briefly on the idea of
programme ontologies, since it speaks very directly to all three of the issues considered in this section. The distinction made by Ray Pawson (2002) between
Programmes and Programme Ontologies very helpful. Pawsons immediate
purpose in that paper was to devise an approach to the evaluation of social intervention projects, such as those to do with road safety, discouraging smoking and so on,
in such a way as to be able to indicate more clearly not just whether and to what
extent, but also why and under what circumstances they worked. Briefly Pawsons
argument is that in attempting to find a basis for generalisation of successful (or
rejection of unsuccessful) social interventions and innovations, such as anti-crime
initiatives, for instance, it is crucial to distinguish between what he calls the
Programme and the Programme Ontology. Basically, the Programme is the intervention, or policy, or innovation, that is being introduced or implemented with a
view to bringing about beneficial changes in some social phenomenon. The
Programme Ontology, by contrast, accounts for how programmes, policies, etc.,
actually work. It is essentially the theory of the programme as opposed to its content
(and the theory is as likely to be implicit in this case as in most others). As Pawson
141
puts it, It is not programmes that work; rather it is the underlying reasons or
resources that they offer subjects that generate change. Causation is also reckoned to
be contingent. Whether the choices or capacities on offer in an initiative are acted
upon depends on the nature of their subjects and the circumstances of the initiative.
The vital ingredients of the programme ontology are thus its generative mechanisms
and its contiguous context (2002, p. 342; emphasis in original). While there are
clear substantive differences between Pawsons evaluation project and an attempt to
specify more closely the relationship between supranational and national levels in the
area of education policy, his arguments do point to what may be seen as a crucial
element of a proper object of comparison.
Finally, the contribution from Bruno Theret that completes Table 1 constitutes a
very useful bridge between the proper objects of comparison and the means of making
them comparable. In a sense, it acts as a summary for the former and a stimulus to,
and framework for, the latter.
The means I propose to address the second part of the question, ensuring that the
proper objects of comparison will be cast in forms that are comparable, is a considerably modified version of the Education Questions (EQs) that I have used to try make
conceptions of education commensurable (see, e.g., Dale, 2000, where the education questions were introduced as a means of making it possible to compare the
CWEC and GSAE accounts of the relationship between globalisation and education). The problem of commensurability of meanings of education is a major and
unfortunately neglected one.3 This neglect means that it is always difficult to know
whether different accounts of education are actually addressing a comparable category. This was a sufficiently large issue before the era of globalisation, but one of the
consequences of the incursion of the KE, with, as the articles in this issue have shown,
a more or less clear intent to alter the meaning if not the vocabulary of education, has
been a qualitative exacerbation of the problem. And it is this that has been the immediate stimulus for this revision of the EQs.
The basic idea behind the EQs is that rather than assuming/accepting that we all
mean the same thing when we are talking about education, we pose a set of precise
questions that can frame discussions and provide a basis for coherent discussion and
systematic comparison. These questions are set at four levels (both to reflect the range
of meanings that might be attached to education and to make clear the complexity
of the questions, none of which can be answered from within a single level alone).
These levels are those of educational practice (who is taught what, by whom, etc.);
education politics (how and by whom are these things decided, governed, administered, managed, etc.); the politics of education (on what bases and in whose interest
are these things determined, controlled, and with what relationships between other
sectors and scales, etc.); and the level of outcomes (with what public, private,
personal consequences, etc.).
However, the need for this revision is not confined to updating the problem of
commensurability. It is also made necessary because the changes made in response to
the KEfor instance, the emphasis on learning anywhere, any time, in any organisationare such as to require a substantive modification of the content of the education
142 R. Dale
questions, in order to reflect the changing assumptions about educational practice
and its organisation, as well as the scale and scope of the politics of education. In
addition, some revision of the EQs was necessary to remedy shortcomings and
lacunae in the original formulations that have become apparent as a result of changes
such as are signified by the KE.
Finally, it needs to be stated that the EQs still assume a national basis for education. This is because that is the level at which empirically we still find the greater
part of the activities that come under the heading of education taking place. This
does not mean adopting a wholly, or exclusively, national focus, however. Nor does
it mean that the national is the only or the most important scale of analysis. Nor
does it entail any assumption of comparability between national levels; it is still
important to problematise the comparability of the categories we use within and
across levels and scales. With those caveats I will now set out the EQs that are
intended to enable us to show what is now to be compared and a basis for carrying
out such comparison.
Level 1: educational practice
Who is taught, (or learns through processes explicitly designed to foster learning),
what, how and why,4 when, where, by/from whom, under what immediate circumstances and broader conditions, and with what results? How, by whom and for what
purposes is this evaluated?
Level 2: education politics
How, under what pattern of coordination (funding, provision, ownership, regulation) of education governance, and by whom, and following what (sectoral and
cultural) path dependencies, are these things problematised decided, administered,
managed?
Level 3: politics of education

What functional, scalar and sectoral divisions of labour of educational governance are
in place? In what ways are the core problems of capitalism (accumulation, social order
and legitimation) reflected in the mandate, capacity and governance of education?
How and at what scales are contradictions between the solutions addressed? How are
the boundaries of the education sector defined and how do they overlap with and relate
to other sectors? What educational activities are undertaken within other sectors?
How is the education sector related to the citizenship and gender regimes? How, at
what scale and in what sectoral configurations does education contribute to the extraeconomic embedding/stabilisation of accumulation? What is the nature of intra- and
inter-scalar and intra- and inter-sectoral relations (contradiction, cooperation, mutual
indifference?)
143
Level 4: Outcomes
What are the individual, private, public, collective and community outcomes of
Education, at each scalar level?
What is now to be compared? (ii) Learning from comparing

Having sought to outline an answer to the question of how might comparative education help explain the KE, I will turn finally to considering how comparative education
as a basis of learning might be affected by the latest form of globalisation. The
comparative education literature makes frequent reference to the long history of the
exchange and diffusion of educational ideas and practices, and of what countries
can learn from each other and about themselves through international comparison. It
is not wholly a caricature (see, for instance, the list of what might be learned from
comparative education in Phillips, 1999, pp. 1516) to describe such learning as
international, problem-solving, mimetic and focused at a system level. The
arguments made above suggest that it may be necessary to revisit each of these
assumptions in the light of the development of a global KE. The need to do this is
recognised clearly in the volume in which Phillips paper appears, largely on the basis
of the generation and misuse of international comparative indicators of educational
achievements, which Alexander (1999) describes in his introduction to the volume as
downright dangerous (p. 9).
I want here to trace through some of the consequences of the global KE for this
kind of approach summed up by Phillips list (again, it must be emphasised that these
are not seen as zero-sum alternatives; what I will discuss should be seen as running
alongside (and in some cases undermining) the existing approaches and assumptions). I will do so under four headings: the relationship between problems and
solutions; the scales at which and from which we may learn; the need to recognise
discourses as well as practices; and the nature of the learning taking place.
The relationship between problems and solutions
This relationship is altered in the KE in the relative priority given to problems and
solutions. Most learning from comparing has tended to focus on learning solutions to
problems perceived as common to, or comparable between systems. Associated with
this is the assumption that the learning will be initiated by the receiving system (see
Dale, 1999b). The global KE has altered this in quite profound ways. In a nutshell,
(a) the onus shifts towards a concentration on systems learning about the nature of
the problems confronting them, rather than what might constitute a useful solution to
problems that are identified by them, and (b) the source and initiation of this process
shifts from national to supranational scale. A good example of this is the EUs Open
Method of Coordination, where the problem confronting MS is constructed by the
European Commission at the European level, and where also the Commission acts as
the broker in chief of what will count as a common solution; the fact that it is made
144 R. Dale
very clear that these solutions will be implemented through nationally diverse means
further reinforces the nature of the shift.
Differences of scale
I have already made a number of points around this topic and I will not revisit them
here. In particular, I will take as read the arguments around the focus on the national
scale. It is, however, clearly important for what we may learn from comparing that the
advance of the global KE may mean that we cannot have the same confidence in the
integrity or the scope of activities of national systems, respectively the issues of sector
and scale of governance. What we are seeing is not only a reorientation of national
systems, where they respond to new sets of challenges, but their partial reconstitution
under the processes of a scalar reallocation of responsibility for some activities and the
construction of new parallel sectors of activity that include education. The consequences of these changes for what we might learn from comparing are many. They
include, for instance, comparing what elements of education systems are rescaled, or
allocated to new sectors, and comparing all the scales of activity and not just the
national. In this latter case, Susan Robertsons article provides a good example of
what may be involved, through her comparison of the ways that the OECD and the
World Bank deploy and seek to implement rather different concepts of the KE. It is
also important to consider the scale of educational activity at which learning is
assumed to take place. As has been pointed out quite clearly by Michael Crossley
(2002), most comparative educationists tend to make national systems the focus of
their comparisons, rather than educational practices. This has particular importance
for the concept of convergence, which is often invoked in discussions of the consequences of the KE. What such discussions often overlook is what is taken to be
converging; for instance, is it policies, processes or practices, which can vary quite
independently of each other? The tendency to combine these different activities as if
they were one is perhaps another legacy of the focus on the national system, typically
taken as a homogeneous, coherent and integrated whole, but it is one whose limitations become evident as the national assumptions are weakened.
Discourses and practices
As noted above, Robin Alexander emphasised the need to see pedagogy as a discourse
as well as a practice and this becomes especially important across the board as we
move into a KE. He also (Alexander, 2000) demonstrated the importance of going
beyond the typically national focus and assumptions of comparative education, where
educational discourses, if they were explicitly recognised at all, were assumed to be
highly local and based in largely implicit elements of culture and values, in exposing
the nature, sources, extent and consequences of the differences between them. It
could, though, still be maintained that their effects remained essentially local, but
this, too, has changed with the KE, which itself is taken in Susan Robertsons paper
as a bundle of overlapping discourses with sufficient unity to re-inscribe the meanings
145
of educational activities at all scales. This also enables us to move away from the
effects on calculation of discourses and policies, in that it makes it possibleand
shows that it is desirableto ask questions not (only) about the effectiveness of, for
instance, network or market solutions, but about the circumstances in which such
solutions are invokedfor the point about the discourses is that they suggest solutions as well as framing the problem. Once again, then, what we may learn from
comparing is about the construction of the problem as well as about its solutions; this
is again exemplified in both Cuss and DAmicos article on the changing bases of
what is to count as education, and Robertsons article, through the comparisons of
the World Bank and OECD discourses of the KE.
Forms of learning
One of the interesting issues around changes in what might be learned from comparing is that it involves something similar to what Giddens (1984) referred to as a
double hermeneutic; as is clear from the previous examples, what we learn from
comparing often involves changes in what systems learn. This is especially evident
in this case, where what can be learned from comparing concerns how systems learn
(this section draws in part on Dale, forthcoming). One useful starting point for this
discussion is DiMaggio and Powells (1983) distinction between three forms of
organisational learningwhat they refer to as mimetic, when the learning is based on
the emulation of existing practices, normative, where the learning is based on
accepted norms or principles, and coercive, where learning results from one or other
form or degree of external pressure. It seems plausible to suggest that in most of the
learning from comparing literature, the assumption is that learning will take place
through mimesis. There are, of course, well-rehearsed arguments (see Dale, forthcoming) to suggest that such direct policy borrowing or transfer is unlikely to be
successful. The point here, though, is that the existence of models to be emulated
can no longer be taken for granted, as both the nature of problems changes and the
scales at which they might be addressed multiply. What we are witnessing, it may be
suggested, is the development of forms of learning that might fall under the broad
heading of coercion. The best example of this is again the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), often referred to as a form of soft governance that contributes to the
subtle transformation of states (Jacobsson, 2002). This involves mechanisms such
as benchmarking, peer review and the development of best practice, where in each
case a European rather than one or more national definition is used, constructing an
alternative and distinct model to be followed that is common to all MS and at least
sits alongside all national models (Jacobsson (2002) provides one interesting empirical account of this process and of the multiple ways in which it impinges on national
programmes). And while there is little evidence so far on the effectiveness (in the
narrow sense used above) of the OMC in changing domestic policies and practices,
the issue may be more about the wider effect of the strategy. One argument advancing
this point is that of Claus Offe, who talks about the OMC as a means of MS unlearning their domestic solutions, and suggests that such unlearning may be the hidden
146 R. Dale
curriculum of the OMC (see Offe, 2003). What this suggests for learning from
comparing is a focus on the mechanisms of learning themselves, as well as on the
range of responses to them (especially when, as was pointed out above, in the case of
the OMC there is an explicit commitment to a diversity of means of achieving the
collectively agreed objectives).
Conclusion
In this paper I have sought to point to some possible consequences of the spread of
discourses of the knowledge economywhere knowledge takes over from production as the key driver and basis of economic prosperityfor comparative education
and the kinds of contribution it may make. These consequences appear to be both
radical and far reaching, and to require a matching response from comparative
educationists.
Based on analyses of the nature of the changes implied, I have attempted to indicate what may be some components of that response. Underlying the arguments I
have advanced has been a conception of the need to problematise anew what we
mean by education and comparison, as well as the knowledge economy as a form of
globalisation.
One of the main arguments I have advanced has concerned the value of the
national as the appropriate basis and scale of analysis for comparative education,
and the state as the exclusive actor in governing education. While recognising that
these assumptions are not adopted by all practitioners of comparative education, the
nature of the changes associated with the knowledge economy may be too radical to
be accommodated under even weak or modified forms of methodological nationalism. It is not just a matter of recognising that both that the association between
territory and sovereignty is no longer to be taken for granted and that the action now
takes place at other levels than the national state, important though that is, but of
reflecting that knowledge economy discourses are, as Roser Cuss and Sabrina
DAmicos and Susan Robertsons papers in particular show, currently driving efforts
to develop new understandings of education that consciously seek to undermine, and
to a degree replace, existing national forms and understandings of education. The
projects of the supranational organisations are different from and not reducible to the
education systems of national stateswhich is not to say, as has been repeated several
times in this paper, that there is a zero-sum relationship between national and supranational scales in the governance of education. The point therefore, is to focus on the
relationships between the scales, to problematise and examine the nature of the
differences between them, and to investigate the nature of the functional and scalar
division of labourwhat gets done where and whybetween them.
There are similarly radical implications for the understanding of what education now
means. I have discussed this through the device of the Education Questions, but it is
important to recognise that the nature of the questions as well as the to-be-expected
nature of the answers have changed in major ways; education is being asked to do different things in different ways, and not just the same things in different ways. It has also
147
been suggested that another element of the change required of education is in what
constitutes an education sector. Though their constitution has always differed nationally, raising difficult issues of comparability and commensurability, national education
sectors have all, in different ways, as Chabbott (2003) points out, both accepted a
broad mandate, and been organised in particular ways, to deliver a common education experience based on the values of western modernity, such as universalism. What
we may see emerging alongsidenot in place ofexisting national education sectors,
are projects like the hypothesised KnELL, that cross existing national sectoral boundaries in pursuit of goals for which those boundaries are an obstacle. And this may
produce different and distinct, but mutually linked and interdependent, sectors where
the activities and practices of education are framed and carried out.
What all this may mean for comparative education is far from clear. What is clear
is that comparative education may expect some considerable upheaval in the nature
of its topic and focusbut also that this may be accompanied by renewed intellectual
excitement for comparative education as explanation, and extended practical value in
what may be learned through it.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
See, for instance, Broadfoot (1999, p. 23).

The work of the Edinburgh-based David Raffe on Home Internationals is one example of
intranational comparison. See Raffe (1999).
One major exception to this neglect is Robin Alexanders brilliant tour de force, Culture and
pedagogy (Alexander, 2000), where he goes deeply into the different meanings and connotations of education and of pedagogy in the five countries he studiedEngland, France, India,
Russia and the USA.
The formulation how and why is intended to catch Alexanders distinction between pedagogy
as discourse and teaching as an act, though they are inseparable; pedagogy then encompasses
both the act of teaching and its contingent theories and debates (Alexander, 2001, p. 513). See
also the discussion of the concept of the Irreducible Minimum of pedagogic discretion in the
teaching-learning transaction in Dale (1994b).
Notes on contributor
Roger Dale is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Universities of Auckland and
Bristol. He is Co-editor of Globalisation, Societies and Education.
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2007 Dale Globalisation, Knowledge Economy and Comparative Education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy, comparative education and

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

nationalism is not to be regarded as a nationally specific style or approach, as in the

And they go on,

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

between them, since while methodological nationalism fundamentally assumes the

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A practical rebuttal of the perceived problems of methodological

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Pluri-scalar governance of education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

Figure 1. Pluri-Schiller governance of education

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Learning not education

Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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What is now to be compared?

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What is now to be compared? (i) Explaining through comparing

Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

Methodological and theoretical gestalts

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Solution considered from

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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Level 3: politics of education

Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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What is now to be compared? (ii) Learning from comparing

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Globalisation, knowledge economy and comparative education

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