COMPARATIVE EDUCATION AS A SCIENTIFIC STUDY.

The article discusses the contribution of comparative education in the understanding of education system in Great Britain. Among comparative educationists there is a continuing preoccupation with the problems of methodology. Methodological debates in comparative education may draw attention to the more obvious dangers of applying uncritically social science techniques in cross national studies of education. In comparative education, the distinction between induction and the hypothetico-deductive method is relevant to contemporary debates. Philosophers of science have also debated relationships between theoretical concepts and measurement. While a crude operationalism that maintains concepts can be unambiguously defined only in terms of measuring operations is unsatisfactory, the divorce of measurement from conceptualization is equally unacceptable. This is as true of the social as of the natural sciences. It raises pertinent questions in comparative education about the possibilities of constructing internationally valid tests. In short there are real difficulties associated with ensuring construct validity.