HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE STUDIES BE IMPROVED?
It is important to conserve and accumulate whatever knowledge and experience is needed for the betterment of future comparative international studies. In particular, since advancing the science and technology of cross-national comparative education research is a legitimate end in itself, both theoretical and empirical research aimed directly at methodological improvement should be encouraged. To improve the way such knowledge is gathered, interpreted, and used, a number of topics that require attention are discussed in the sections that follow: research design, data analysis, and dissemination; methods for assessing current and desired outcomes of education; comparability across nations and ways of interpreting differences within varying contexts; use of ethnographic and historical studies to strengthen investigations using statistical analysis and to provide in general a deeper, richer sense of what education is, can, and should be; quality control and monitoring; and accumulation, sy
