ABSTRACT
Brian Holmes was instrumental in the development of a number of national and international comparative education societies and had wide interests in international and comparative education and alternative philosophies of education. Holmes’s main contribution to the theory of comparative education was his problem-solving approach, set out in two books, Problems in Education published in 1965 and Comparative Education: Some Considerations of Method published in 1981. The foundation of Holmes’s work was critical dualism. Holmes regarded the best method for comparative education to be the problem-solving method. By confounding individual norms with national norms, Holmes created a difficulty in his method, a difficulty that repeated reference to mental states was needed to overcome. Holmes emphasised the separation of individual norms and societal institutions, which is an important first step towards understanding the links between those two spheres. With a selective reading of his work, Holmes provides a framework that facilitates the study of policy issues in a comparative context.
