The others as a learning requirement: Challenge for a social-dynamic approach to Comparative Education

Abstract

In Comparative Education the others must play a leading role. Aspiring to a social-dynamic approach, we believe that this education must comply with the premise of comprehensive learning, which translates into the declared purpose of achieving new knowledge of complex social realities. Comprehensive learning does not tolerate any sort of authoritarianism. Rather, it requires intellectual commitment to assessing the legitimacy of the knowledge produced and raising new questions or using other research methods or techniques. Comprehensive learning integrates and articulates knowledge, it is designed with the process, while searching for meaning in all sorts of information. The others here are not only part of the reality under study, who obviously cannot be ignored. They are also the peers and other people, from different disciplinary, cultural and ideological fields, who tackle the issue, and are the rather active and influential counterparts in the production, regulation and monitoring of the soundness of learning.

Keywords: Comparative Education, social-dynamic approach, plurality and interdisciplinarity.