President's Message
We live in a time when the world has grown smaller but also a great deal more complicated. We now know more about each other than we have at any previous time in history. And yet, our understanding of each other remains limited. It is in this environment and setting that comparativists work. Their job is to take that which we do all the time – compare – and to make the experience, on the one hand, systematic and rigorous, and on the other, also discerning and careful.
Comparativists who work in education have the special job of reflecting on the multiple differences and similarities, the continuities and discontinuities and the emerging trends and changes in learning and teaching that characterise the different countries and regions of the world. Their task is to explain, inter alia, why some countries are able to produce high levels of school enrolment and learner attainment and others not, why some countries are mired in the difficulties of educational inequality and social conflict and why learning takes particular directions in some places and completely different ones in others.
The role of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) in relation to these features of the global educational system is essentially two-fold: to provide an international forum in which these questions can be debated and to stimulate research through the establishment and nurturing of country- or regional-level scholarly associations. Having been established in 1970, having convened thirteen major international congresses, and with member societies on every continent, the WCCES has gone a long way in fulfilling its mission. It is now amongst the leading international comparative education organisations in the world. Much remains, however, to be done. There is a great deal more organisational work that lies ahead. Important questions need to be raised and returned to. In the midst of this, the WCCES is committed to the development of the field and the scholarship associated with it. Its officers and structures are available to support this cause.
Crain Soudien
Professor, School of EducationUniversity of Cape Town