Comparative and International Education & History of Education

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to tease out the caveats in the much vogue exercise of drawing lessons from foreign systems of education -- the theme of this book, with the final objective that this will point to the parameters appropriate for the discourse and for the reader when reflecting on the topics touched upon in this book. The paper commences with a survey of the historical evolution of the field of Comparative and International Education, demonstrating how the motivation for extracting "lessons" from other education systems has been a key feature of the field, and increasingly so in contemporary times. The caveats to exercise, related to the salience and complexity of context, to the nature of the act of education, and to the undermining of the professional autonomy of the teacher are then pointed out. These parameters should be respected in any discourse on taking education lessons from around the world. At the same time, these parameters present scholars of Comparative and International Education an opportunity to prove their value in the twenty-first century world.