Abstract

In the international debate, the thinking about the profile of comparative studies in education – their methods, approaches and main research themes – has always constituted a challenge for scholars, showing a common attention towards an open question and revealing, against the light, the constitutive plurality of this field. With the intention of contributing to this discussion, the article intends to use the concept of time, in the conviction that it can represent a valid interpretative key to look at and understand the multiple faces of comparative education. Therefore, with a detailed historical reconstruction, it will be shown how the meanings, uses and emphases of the idea of time have contributed to defining research traditions, ‘intellectual agendas’ and ‘uses’ of comparative education. On the basis of this historical-conceptual analysis, the semantic richness of this idea and the relevance it can have for a comparative education that wants to be a way of reading complexity will be brought to the fore.