Roles of Comparative Education Revisited: Tasks and Prospects

This article relates to an international workshop on comparative education at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in October 2002. The workshop was prepared, organized and managed by Shenyang Normal University, China and KUL. The main theme was Comparative Education between East Asia and Western Europe, and most participants from Western Europe showed a keen interest in the relationship between globalization and the newly emerging ethno-centered nationalism. On the other hand, most Chinese delegates from Shenyang, an expanding city in the northeast of China, were concerned with the urgent tasks of development of quality education and some crucial issues thereof, such as teacher education innovation, examination reforms, curriculum development, lifelong learning and so forth. What was common to all participants was an increasing interest in the expanding knowledge society as a whole.