This course reviews and critiques two of the most ambitious exercises in cross-national qualitative comparison conducted in recent years: Tobin et al’s Pre-school in Three Cultures (2nd ed. Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, 2009), and Robin Alexander’s Culture and Pedagoy (2000). It focuses especially on the challenges of comparing across cultures, and the relationship between culture and conceptions of the fundamental purposes of education. Using videos as well as readings from the two books, it introduces students to the methods used, as well as the findings relating to the various societies analysed (China, Japan, and the USA in the case of Tobin; England, France, the USA, Russia and India in the case of Alexander).
Lecturer: Dr. Edward Vickers, Dept of Education