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Philosophy, education and comparative education

The papers in this Special Issue explore the contribution which philosophy can and should make to comparative education. The role of philosophy in comparative education has rarely been clearly articulated, but Terence McLaughlin argues in his paper that a comparative approach to education needs a philosophical dimension and that the concerns and techniques of philosophy have an important contributory role to play in the development and flourishing of comparative education. At the same time, he suggests that comparative perspectives may have an enriching effect on our understanding of the nature and scope of philosophy in education, particularly at a time when the hegemony of western liberal values in philosophical discussions of education is seen by some to be under threat and in decline (cf. White, 2003). Two distinct general comparative perspectives and approaches are discernible in the papers which feature in this Special Issue. The first general perspective and approach (expressed in the papers by Paul Standish, Penny Enslin and Mary Tjiattas and Mark Halstead) involves the examination of general philosophical perspectives on education which, in one way or another and from one context or another, call into question the dominant liberal framework of values implicated in the analytical tradition of philosophy of education which has been dominant primarily in British and Anglo-American contexts for much of the second part of the last century. The authors here differ in their attitude to liberalism: Standish and Halstead articulate positions which are in conflict with liberalism in important respects, whilst Enslin and Tjiattas seek to rehabilitate liberalism from prominent lines of criticism. The second general perspective and approach (expressed in the papers by David Bridges, Amare Asgedom and Setargew Kenaw, Penny Enslin and Kai Horsthemke, Rafał Godoń, Palmira Jucevičienė and Zdenko Kodelja, Jin Shenghong and Jau-wei Dan and Naiko Saito and Yasuo Imai) involves the examination of contexts where local philosophizing about education has developed (or is beginning to develop) either independently of western influence or through a complex process of interaction between western, indigenous and other cultural influences.