Why Theory

Abstract

There are numerous reasons why one might be averse to using social theory when investigating comparative and international education (CIE) issues. As educational concerns are generically grounded in social practice, manymight wonder why it is a worthy pursuit to immerse oneself in knowledge domains that are conventionally construed as occupying independent spaces, whose positioning is separate and distant from the social practices to which they are then applied. Even in his classic text The Reflective Practitioner (1984), in which Donald Schön reiterated the importance of thought and practice as a continuum, practice was certainly viewed as foundational in giving direction and substance to acts of reflection and higher order thinking, rather than the two entities comprising equivalent importance. The multidisciplinary character of CIE as an academic field creates additional challenges to the creation of coherence and unity, two characteristics not always associated with CIE but factors that the theoretical is designed to potentially provide. Indeed, the degree of fragmentation within the field extends beyond what constitutes appropriate curricular and disciplinary subjectmatter to include differences with regard to the determination of an optimal scale of analysis, the type of methodological approach to be employed, and the authenticity of representation as determined by the constructed relationship between researcher and subject. Skeptics might argue that even if an embrace of theory was desirable in the abstract, such fissures within the field mitigate against its potential utility. However, there are strong counterarguments to these assertions. First, the assumption that theory occupies a space separate from that of practice can be contested. There is no reason to think of the creation and application of theory as being anything other than a specific form of practice. The process