William Brickman

This article discusses William W. Brickman’s contributions to the field of comparative and international education. Through archival research of Brickman’s collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, interviews with his former colleagues, students, and family members, and a content analysis of his publications and the two journals he edited, the authors examine Brickman’s role in founding the Comparative Education Society, his notion of comparative education scholarship, and his service to the larger academic community through a lifelong career as journal editor. In addition to his contributions to advancing historical research and qualitative methodologies in comparative education, Brickman should also be remem- bered for his relentless efforts to protect academic freedom by encouraging epistemological and methodological diversity of the field. Brickman’s role as a scholar, educator, and editor can therefore be best understood through his unyielding love of knowledge—like the philosophers of the past.

This article chronicles the history of the journal European Education since its establishment in 1969 by placing it within the larger context of geopolitical changes of the twentieth century and the historical debates on theory and method in the field of comparative education. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 40 journal volumes (158 journal issues and 1,176 articles), the article explains how the journal attempted to return comparative education in the United States perspective to its original geographic epicenter, Western Europe, and provided a space for cross-national comparisons on pedagogical issues like curriculum. The article also demonstrates the various geopolitical pressures on the journal within a cold war and later a postsocialist framework. It concludes by looking at the future of journal by understanding its original purpose and the contemporary debates within comparative education.

"European Education" (originally known as "Western European Education") may no longer be directly associated with the field of comparative and international education, yet its establishment in 1969 was an attempt to make a direct contribution to the academic debates about the future of comparative education. The journal emerged at a time when comparative educators in the United States were engaged in a complex process of reexamining historical foundations of the field, exploring its methodological and theoretical directions, and expanding its geographic boundaries. While the debate on comparative education theory and method was often polarized into two extremes--advocating for either cross-national, quantitative research or single-case, historical studies--the journal created an opportunity for comparative educators to engage in a comparative analysis that is both cross-national and contextual. The journal's founding editor (Ursula Springer) and advisory board members (George Bereday, Torsten Husen, Brian Holmes, Saul Robinsohn, and others) envisioned comparative education as an interdisciplinary area of study that would at once capture the importance of the historical context and advance the use of social science methods in comparative research. The journal's task became to translate this vision into reality. Common to all of the journal's editors (and their journal advisory board members) was their commitment to exploring alternative visions in the polarized debate on comparative theory and method in education. It is within the context of these comparative education debates that this study attempts to trace the journal's history. The fortieth anniversary of the establishment of "European Education" provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the journal's role in shaping the contours of comparative education during the past four decades. Through content analysis and interviews with former editors and advisory board members, this study discusses the context within which the journal emerged, its original goals and changing vision during the past forty years, as well as its role in the field of comparative and international education.