ABSTRACT
Research in comparative education focused on schooling within a nation-state; rare was the scholar whose work centered on regional variation beyond urban/rural distinctions that were applied to Third World nations and, in the case of a few studies of African nations, beyond ethnically based distinctions. Most research in comparative education focuses on the nation-state, and/or characteristics of nation-states, treated as an autonomous unit. Indeed, much of the field was comprised of studies that applied a method derived from the social sciences to the study of education in a particular nation or that simply described education in a specific country. The research in comparative education tended to focus almost exclusively on the quantitative analysis of educational inputs and outcomes, mostly the outcomes. Weis points out that such scholarship could adopt varying theoretical perspectives, including either structural functionalism or Marxism. In the process of co-optation the very issues initially raised about the necessity of studying women and their education has disappeared.
