Noah, Harold J. and Eckstein, Max A. (1998) Doing Comparative Education: Three Decades of Collaboration. Reviewed by Katherine M. Brown

Noah, Harold J. and Eckstein, Max A. (1998) Doing Comparative Education: Three Decades of Collaboration. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Comparative Education Research Center. 351 pp. Reviewed by Katherine M. Brown Loyola University of Chicago $38         ISBN 962-8093-878 March 22, 1999           Doing Comparative Education: Three Decades of Collaboration is a compilation of works that represents, as the title suggests, thirty years of independent and joint authorship in comparative education by two of the field's eminent scholars: Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein. Their work throughout is insightful, informative and impressively consistent in tone and style over the entire course of the collaboration. Both authors possess an engaging writing style that is eclectic in its use of references; from Alice to Ahab to Christopher Wren, Noah and Eckstein clarify their ideas through allusion to the works of those far afield. The volume is made up of book excerpts, articles, reviews, essays, reports and speeches, chosen to represent, in the authors' words, "at least one piece for each type of comparative work we had done, for each problem we had considered and for each area of the world that we had studied." It is a well balanced overview containing about twelve works from each author and twelve works published together. The collaboration is of two individuals from differing backgrounds; a fact which has not deterred them from pursuing a fulsome co-publishing career.           The careful reader can discern each author's particular perspective. Eckstein's humanities perspective predominates in the beginning of the book, speaking to the theory and philosophy, future tendencies, and general state of comparative education. Noah's more "scientific" bent is apparent towards the end of the book in chapters that deal more with policy questions and the use of comparative data gathered within the IEA and OECD.           This is not to give the impression that the authors are waging a tug-of-war throughout the book, with their collaborations ending up suspended in the middle of the methodological rope. Both men are and have, if this book is a full testament to their epistemological orientation, remained positivists throughout their careers. This obviously frames their view of the field as well as the research conducted in it, a perspective that will be addressed later in this review. Whether integral to their writings or not, it is noteworthy that both were born and educated in England, a fact that may contextualize their focus on European sets of issues and, as Foster states in the foreword, may be accountable in part for their excellent writing styles.           The works chosen for the book are not evenly distributed through time. There are more examples of the authors' writings from the 1970s, but that makes sense when one looks at where the authors were in their careers at that point. The book does not overlook the 1980s, however, and it is interesting to note a trend in their writings of the late 1980s and 1990s. Over this time and until today, the authors have focused on the issues of national examinations, national standards, and linking school to work, topics that are timely and have been sustained by comparativists through the years.           Commonly regarded as important contributors to the development of comparative education, Noah and Eckstein's collaborative works took center stage in 1969 with the publication of Toward a Science of Comparative Education, which is featured in excerpt form at the beginning of the volume under review. It contains Noah and Eckstein's views of the field in the late 1960s and their prescriptions for the future, reflecting the positivistic perspective that served them throughout their careers as well as influenced numerous up-and-coming comparativists. According to Foster in the exceptionally well-written Foreword, the intent of Noah and Eckstein for this compendium is to show comparative educators that the social sciences could be a worthy alternative approach to inquiry, but serves better as a supplement rather than a replacement for older traditions of historically-based research.           Consistent with this view, the authors state in the Preface that their selection of pieces would display their long-term commitment to both qualitative and quantitative types of work. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to come away from the volume with the sense that the authors' bias is clearly for positivistic research. To be sure, they make numerous pleas for thoughtful, well constructed research, noting that there are many limitations to "scientific" comparative work along with frequent misunderstanding and/or misuse of results. These concessions aside, however, the authors purport that quantification is the means by which results can best be obtained. This is particularly true of Noah, who, through his dedication to relating research results to policy decisions, looks for valid and reproducible data.           The authors' appreciation for historical, qualitative work is evident in their framework for understanding the chronological development of the field. They hold that quantitative work both stands on the shoulders of earlier, descriptive studies and is an improvement over them. Interestingly, several of the works in this volume fail to move beyond descriptive writing or displays of research agendas calling for further quantitative work.           Noah and Eckstein are consummate teachers, explaining and advancing research, so that this book's most important value may be as a teaching tool for quantitative methods. It begins with the authors' view of the field and its development and connection to the social sciences, and goes on to provide a plethora of ideas to build upon, though there is little specific modeling of quantitative work.           As already mentioned, Noah and Eckstein point to limitations of quantitative research. The best example of this is found in a very early work by Eckstein (1960) in which he speaks of trends in secondary education. The article is peppered with cautions that direct comparisons cannot be made without context. "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish in Comparative Education," by Noah, enumerates many issues with quantification, including the questionable use of cross-national aggregated studies for policy-makers and the reductionist pitfalls of linear regression. Noah states unequivocally that there is value in and a role for quantitative and qualitative work, but his calls for improvement and research clearly express his hope that future anglers will be equipped with better, more sensitive, quantitative hooks. In another article referring to the limitations of linear regression, "A Comparative Study of Outlier Schools in Metropolitan Settings," Eckstein calls for comparativists to do a distinctly non-positivistic thing: to not ignore the possibly fruitful information that can be gained through study of outliers. Finally, the IEA work referred to in this volume is a good example of quantitative work either conducted or utilized by the authors. Though firmly supportive of the overall utility of the findings, they admit that the explanatory power of a whole set of selective quantitative independent variables is so limited that one is then obliged to look at unique historical and cultural traditions as a major causative factor, an insight also brought out by Foster in the Foreword. These examples are not at all meant, of course, to bring discredit to quantitative work, but to point out areas of needed improvement and future work.           It is possible to misread this volume as an overview of the comparative education field rather than as a sampling of Noah and Eckstein's collaborations, because the authors present their perspective as normative. The authors view different ways of knowing and understanding--different "paradigms" if you will--in comparative education as in the social sciences in general, as developing in phases. By doing this they fail to recognize alternative paradigms as independently viable, but instead as stages progressing with greater or lesser success toward a scientific framework. Noah and Eckstein are contemporaries of deconstructionist, Marxist, and post-modernist epistemologies, such as dependency theory. But instead of acknowledging the, at times radically, different ways of conceiving questions and problems within comparative education, the authors see these epistemologies as victims of their own, as yet, imperfect attempts to be objective. In doing this, Noah and Eckstein not only support positivistic work but assert that all research, despite vast differences in approach, strives for the same end. Objectivity is held up as the ultimate goal of all forms of research, the finish line on the long and winding trail through the landscape of comparative education.           Finally, a comment on the organization of the book is in order. This reviewer found the order of chapters at times arbitrary. It would have been easier to follow the development of the authors' ideas within a given subtopic if the works had been arranged chronologically. There were harsh transitions between some chapters. For example, a 1993 article on credentialing and the labor market within the European Community was followed by a 1970 book review on an economic analysis of higher education. On the other hand, the same EC article was preceded by a 1960 paper on trends in public secondary education in Western Europe, allowing for an interesting comparison despite being separated by over thirty years. In order fully to understand the reasoning behind the ordering of works and their inclusion in the compilation, it would have been illuminating to have a short introduction to each section. About the Reviewer Katherine M. Brown Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Loyola University of Chicago Katherine Brown's research interests are in comparative education, specifically in adult education for cultural change, historical development of alternative educational institutions, the folk high school movement, and education in Scandinavia. She is currently writing her dissertation on the evolution, from 1880-1950, of the folk high school movement in Finland among the Swedish-speaking minority.