ABSTRACT
The introduction addresses a fundamental epistemological problem of contemporary analyses of educational issues currently being discussed at the global level. The thesis is that there is an unjustifiable pre-occupation with real or supposed phenomena related to “globalization” and that, as a result, the educational strategies of national reproduction and imperial aspiration have been lost sight of. First, it is analyzed how sociology, by virtue of its own conditions of emergence, can function as a particular epistemology that suggests globalization. Then it is shown how a certain form of educational research – here labelled as large-scale test psychology – owes itself to globalized, i.e., in fact largely imperial, world views. Subsequently, it is indicated that, at least in the field of education, there can be little talk of global isomorphism if one actually looks historically and reveals the essential differences which indicate that school systems and curricula have been attuned to the great cultural theses of the respective nations institutionalized in the modern states. Last, research desiderata are formulated at the intersection of education and nationalism that promise to provide a better theoretical understanding of nation, nationalism and nation-state, as well as to expose the educational imperialism of a few nation-state agents.
