Comparison in Education: Exploring its epistemologies and roles as tools of policy

• Education has become comparative.
• As a policy tool ‘educational’, defined through comparison, becomes ‘a system of reasoning’ that makes ‘futures’ and construes ‘new kinds’ of people and situations.

Comparison in education has risen on the policy agenda, as education is increasingly connected to the value of a nation’s human capital and success among ‘competitive global Knowledge Economies’. Comparative surveys like PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS have become agenda-setting mainstay in policy debate. National policy looks for the country with best practices through the lens of comparison.

Simultaneously academic anthropological/ ethnographic comparative studies continue, albeit with changing challenges and funding demands attached to them.

This symposium will explore what type of comparative work is in the ascendency, at what cost etc. What can be said and studied within the emerging ’reason’ of comparison?

In three presentations and a workshop with the audience, this symposium explores the potential of comparison in education as it materializes in international surveys, cross-country comparisons, comparisons over time (historical)…. and as potentiality for thinking and thus enacting the other differently.

The symposium invites you to problematize comparison in education in terms of salient issues like:

• the epistemologies of comparison, the cultural roots of comparison, comparisons as comparative tools of policy
• comparisons as systems of reasoning
• comparison, history of the present and makings of ‘the future’ and ‘new kinds of people’

Program:
10.00-10.15:
Intro: T.S. Popkewitz as an occasion to problematize comparison in education (J.B. Krejsler)

10.15-11.00:
“Performative effects: the case of US vs Europe school policy” (Professor, John Benedicto Krejsler, DPU-AU)

11.00-11.15:
Break

11.15-12.00:
“Theory as fiction, data as writing: comparative education after authenticity” (Associate Professor, Stephen Carney, Roskilde University)

12.00-12.30:
Discussant: T.S. Popkewitz... Questions and Discussion

12.30-13.30:
Lunch Break

13.30-14.30:
Thomas S. Popkewitz: “Comparison as a system of reasoning for making kinds of people”

14.30-14.45:
Break

14.45-16.00:
Workshop with audience: Participants invited to join dialogue concerning comparative education and its current state and possible ‘futures’.

Participation is free, but for practical registration via: https://auws.au.dk/Popkewitz_symposium
Deadline for registration: Tuesday November 14.

Participants come mostly from DPU, but also some from Malmö/Lund, RUC, and KU etc.

Arranged by Department of Education Studie.

Ref. John Benedicto Krejsler (jok@edu.au.dk)