The authors Colin Brock and Nafsika Alexiadou are Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and Professor of Education at the University of Umea, Sweden, respectively. …show more content…
The first chapter is began by posing a question, “What is education for”. Then they state that comparative education is important because education is important. This opening helps to bring to light that education involves two activities: learning and teaching (pg 1). The authors in this line state that education is both informal and formal education; organized, controlled, administered, funded, and evaluated. They do state that in all countries, non-formal education contributes to systematic learning and teaching through agencies that are not part of the system- organized system. In this chapter, they also introduce ‘comparative education” by introducing different players in the field by narrating their histories. They are Marc-Antoine Julline, Isaac Kendel, Joseph Lauwery, Nichol Han and Michael …show more content…
Their introduction gave a good background to why the field of comparative education is so important to study. There was also a good flow and build up of the topics, from an easy topic to a more complex one, with such a vast section of references for further reading which I immensely appreciated especially if I want to know more of the subject. The authors proved to have read widely before compiling the book. Lastly, the authors provided an index to easily find a subject.
In as much as it was a good read, the 205 paged book tried to cover so much information and detail that affect education, and it proved too much for the reader also considering that the material targeted new people interested in the field. As mentioned, there are 8 chapters each with a different theme though all related to education, I would have preferred if the book was of a larger size to give the reader a better reading than being overloaded with information that will need time to