ABSTRACT
The studies of small island states, the training of technocrats from the Third World, and studies of the relationship between education and the economy in the Philippines represent a contemporary move from traditional geographical foci of scholarship. Focussing on methods is one way in which comparative links to and extends other fields of educational research. Dependency of a different sort, on funds and opportunities, affects the ways in which comparative educators have tended to work, largely outside the system of educational advice and expertise abroad, which may have enabled a more critical perspective to be developed and sustained. Both the fact of size and relative isolation, and of historical differences between the educational systems does place some mark on comparative educational activity. The emergent nature of all the societies in the region, and the transplanted nature of their formal educational systems, could also be expected to be a source of study for comparativists.
