ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors show how particular issues which arise out of local concerns are contributing to the growth and change of comparative theory and methodology. The issues include the legitimation of educational knowledge; critical reflections on comparative education, race, ethnicity and gender; youth, the new vocationalism and post-compulsory education; international agencies; education and development; and reconceptualising the role of education. Like many other subjects, comparative and international education is a heterogeneous field, and even the association of comparative with international in the title is more grounded in convenience than in epistemological necessity. Individual comparativists may contribute, and it may be splitting hairs to ask if they do so as comparativists or simply because they have the opportunity to do a particular job and revert to another discipline or selectively borrow theories and methods to do so.
