Positivism

This is the second post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at positivism.

Noah, H.J. 1973. “Defining Comparative Education: Conceptions,” in Relevant Methods in Comparative Education: Report of a Meeting of International Experts, ed. R. Edwards, B. Holmes and J. Van de Graaff, 109-117. Hamburg: Unesco Institute for Education.

Very early on in his remarks at the meeting of international experts to whom he was presenting, Harold Noah stated that “the conceptual and practical problems of conducting theory-oriented comparative research are not only not immediately and obviously tractable, but are also being widely aired.”[1] Noah provides a brief overview of how the social sciences were changing at the time and that the “transformation in our thought lies in the attempt inherent in the social sciences to explain and predict, rather than merely to identify and describe.”[2] Noah’s positivistic approach to comparative education is evident as he summarizes his discussion with “the crux of all this is the necessity at some point in the analysis to stop further within-country analysis and to change the level of analysis to incorporate among-country variables. For this is the essential condition for a study to be classified as “comparative”: data are collected at more than one level and analysis also proceeds at more than one level.”[3] Noah’s comments set the stage for later critiques in the ideographic approach to comparative education.

Farrell, J.P. 1979. “The Necessity of Comparisons in the Study of Education: The Salience of Science and the Problem of Comparability,” Comparative Education Review 23, no. 1: 3-16.

Joseph Farrell’s presidential address to the Comparative and International Education Society put forth a positivistic epistemological approach to comparative education. In his work, Farrell states “a basic assumption of my argument is that there is no such thing as comparative methodology. There are comparative data, to which a variety of analytical tools may be applied, the whole enterprise is being constrained by the requirements of the scientific method.”[4] Farrell points out that science is systematic, empirical and comparative and writes that “the object of science is not simply to determine that relationships exist, but to determine the range over which they exist. It is simply not possible to conceive of a generalizing science which is not inherently comparative.”[5] Farrell ends his presidential address by stating “when working with concepts, data comparability is not the apparent problem that it is when working with observables. One uses for the concepts whatever empirical indicators are relevant for each country of time period.”[6] There are just a few of the many statements made by Farrell that place him on the nomothetic side of the spectrum.

[1] Noah, H.J. “Defining Comparative Education: Conceptions,” in Relevant Methods in Comparative Education: Report of a Meeting of International Experts, ed. R. Edwards, B. Holmes and J. Van de Graaff, (Hamburg: Unesco Institute for Education, 1973), 110.
[2] Ibid, 112.
[3] Ibid, 114.
[4] Farrell, J.P. “The Necessity of Comparisons in the Study of Education: The Salience o Science and the Problem of Comparability,” (Comparative Education Review 23, no. 1, 1979), 4.
[5] Ibid, 5-6.
[6] Ibid, 6.