Abstract

The paper offers a critical re-reading of some of the main strands of comparative education, highlighting the rationale behind them and then discussing the most recent reflections reconsidering the interrelations between states and ‘globalization’. The paper then proposes an approach that, in addition to comparative education as a field of study, affirms the role of an educational comparison: which is not intended to be a play on words, but a conscious reversal of perspective, acknowledging the properly educational nature of these studies, reconnecting theory, practice and values, coessential to educational thinking and action.