An other self? Education, foreignness, reflexive comparison and capability as connection

Abstract

The article is an attempt to explore through the lens of my identification as a foreigner, a number of different themes around work in comparative education, particularly aspects of the question of method, and some reflections on the relationship with education and international development. The discussion begins with some reflection on internal or external foreignness, and the ways in which these identifications within my autobiography are heterodox, not singular and co-constructed with many relationships, changing over time. Some different formulations of pluralism and engagements with the capability approach are discussed drawing out some of the resources they provide for exploring approaches in comparative education. In the final section some features of the idea of reflexive comparison as a methodological resource are sketched. An other self: Internal of external foreignness?From a certain viewpoint I can position my work as marked by particular forms of personally claimed or socially ascribed foreign-ness. I can note I am a woman, from a particular location, class and race inflected background, working on gender in comparative and international education. These are disciplinary areas where key works have largely been written by men. Women's rights and gender analysis are areas of specialist, not mainstream, concern. Here I am foreign by what I am not. This has internal effects on some of what I write, how I write, and external effects on the political dynamics of how this writing is viewed. These two processes, which are both heterodox, and not simply one thing for all time, are also interconnected. This has implications for thinking about method, as I discuss below.

Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical analysis

“…We combine all four approaches, making explicit that, in addition, we draw from postcolonial, decolonial and feminist anti-racist scholarship, and insights generated from Terri Kim's (2014Kim's ( , 2020 work on biographies and writing in and about comparative education as foreigners. Methodologically we have drawn on Unterhalter's (2020) approach, termed 'reflexive comparative education', considering analyses formulated by our late colleague at IOE, Jagdish Gundara (2000Gundara ( , 2014, to combine insights from comparative education and education and international development, deploying methods that are 'heterodox and multivalent, translocational, and critical' (Unterhalter, 2020: 15).…”