Terra Invicta: Comparative and International Education: A Field of Scholarship Testing Unprecedented Frontiers in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape humanity’s education response in various parts of the world. “Context” as a perennial threshold concept in Comparative and International Education is explicated. It will then be explained how, during its long historical evolution, scholars in the field each time had to contend new contexts, or reconceived the notion of “context” in a new way. Subsequently the problems of an overly fixation on the historical and the present, to the detriment of the future, and inertia are extant in the field, will be explained. The unprecedented, seismic changes currently impacting on the societal context worldwide, will then be enumerated. These changes can be subsumed under the collective name of globalization. The concept globalization is then clarified, and the take of the scholarly community on the impact of globalization on education is then mapped and interrogated. The authors’ stance on this is stated, namely that a dynamic interplay between global focus and contextual realities shape education in various parts of the world. It is in this theoretical frame that the remainder of the chapters of the volume is presented, combing out the main features of education development in each part of the world, as a dialectic between global forces and contextual imperatives.

Citation

Wolhuter, C.C. (2022), "Terra Invicta: Comparative and International Education: A Field of Scholarship Testing Unprecedented Frontiers in the Twenty-first Century", Wolhuter, C.C. and Wiseman, A.W. (Ed.) World Education Patterns in the Global North: The Ebb of Global Forces and the Flow of Contextual Imperatives (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 43A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792022000043A001