Chapter 42
The Role of Comparative
and International Research in
Developing Capacity to Study
and Improve Teacher Education
Maria Teresa Tatto
It has become fashionable among comparativists to argue that innovations in the
“developing”world are due to policy borrowing and that little learning occurs at the
local level. An important assumption of this view is that there are some who have
the knowledge and expertise that is desirable and that others do not have it and thus
see themselves in the role of borrowers. Rather than truly to innovate, it is argued,
policy makers and educators too often look outside their locales for solutions to
complex, unique, and local educational problems. In this chapter, I propose a
different model based on my own work as a Mexican researcher working in Mexico
and internationally, and as informed by my work in comparative research. I argue
that international and comparative research that is collaborative, reflective, rigorous,
capacity building, and policy oriented can allow learning at the ground level and
produce useable knowledge for policy making and implementation and that this
learning and development of expertise can occur within and across settings
regardless of level of development.^1 Moreover, I propose that the mere act of
engaging in comparative and collaborative reflective inquiry already constitutes an
intervention and brings about learning and a notion of normativity to the phe-
nomenon under study, thus challenging the notion that research does not have an
effect and that policy is“packaged”and borrowed. The comparative and interna-
This chapter is a shortened and slightly edited version of the article Tatto, M.T. (2011).
Reimagining the education of teachers: The role of comparative and international research.
Comparative Education Review, 55 , 495–516 (with permission).
M.T. Tatto (&)
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
(^1) The idea of reflective learning is not new and has been extensively explored as a pathway to
individual and organizational learning by Argyris and Schön( 1978 ) and Schön( 1983 ). What is
new in my work is the idea of taking reflective learning to scale by using it as part of my approach
to collaborative comparative research.
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
M.A. Peters et al. (eds.),A Companion to Research in Teacher Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_42
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