The article is a critical sociological analysis of current transnational practices on creating comparable measurements of dropout and completion in higher education and the consequences for the conditions of scientific knowledge production on the topic. The analysis revolves around questions of epistemological, methodological and symbolic types…

Research that elucidates the complexities of gender balance is itself a controversial field. This article examines challenges and limitations in quantitative as well as qualitative research on gender balance in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Cross country comparisons of male and female participation in the ECEC workforce are often…

Despite the value of the comparative perspective for the study of higher education is widely recognised, there is little consensus about the specific methodological approaches. Quantitative tools outlined their relevance for addressing comparative analyses since they are supposed to reducing the complexity, finding out and graduating similarities…

Asserting that the development of educational theory requires scientific study based on comparative data, the author analyzes the objections to data comparison between societies and finds this to be a nonissue. This is the Presidential Address, delivered to the Comparative and International Education Society, Mexico City, March 1978. (SJL)

This article discusses some of the methodological problems involved in determining indices for the level of education in the Soviet Union. (KM)