Bereday and Hilker: origins of the ‘four steps of comparison’ model

Abstract

The article draws attention to the forgotten ancestry of the four steps of comparison model (descriptioninterpretationjuxtapositioncomparison). Comparativists largely attribute this to George Z. F. Bereday [1964. Comparative Method in Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston], but among German scholars, it is mostly attributed to Franz Hilker [1962. Vergleichende Pädagogik. München: Max Hueber]. Who, then, is the rightful author of the model? This article attempts to answer this question. The methodological approaches of the two authors will be compared and contextualised in respect to their academic lives, especially through the 1950s and 1960s. Hilker and Bereday both referred to each other's publications on several occasions, which indicates a close communication between them. In contrast to the Anglophone dominance of scientific journals today, their way of practising comparative education was multilingual. Their cooperation with the nascent national academic associations of those times is also examined. Finally, the epistemological characteristics of the four steps model, including its limitations, and value for the field of comparative education today, are evaluated.

Comparison as a Method for Geography Education

“…One of the first, and most common, models for undertaking comparative research was developed by Franz Hilker [64] and Georges Bereday [65] (Adick [24] offers a discussion about the connections between Bereday's schematic and Hilker's model). The model of comparative analysis consists of four steps: description, interpretation, juxtaposition, and comparison.…”

“…One of the main questions raised in academic discussion about comparison as a scientific method is what can be compared at all: How do you make sure that two or more entities are comparable? The answer often given is that two or more entities have to share at least one property-the tertium comparationis [24,67,68]. For choosing the entities, two different designs are common, mainly in political sciences.…”

“…Additionally, further concerns of scholars have previously been expressed with regard to what can be compared. A point of criticism often identified is the focus of nation states on the subject areas identified for comparison [15,24,59]. In the majority of cases, research designs focused on comparison are designed for international comparisons of states, as was the model of Hilker [64] and Bereday [65] presented previously.…”

“…For example, comparison plays an important role in ongoing discussions about comparative urbanism [3][4][5]. However, it is not only in Geography that comparison is a commonly used method, and a matter of debate: with its own disciplinary traditions of comparison likewise exist in other academic fields such as Social Sciences [6][7][8], Cultural Studies [9][10][11], Political Sciences [12][13][14], History [15][16][17], Religious Studies [18][19][20], Communication Studies [21][22][23], or Comparative Education [24][25][26], and are even discussed transdisciplinarily [27][28][29]. However, none of these studies used, tested, or studied the transferability of comparison to school education.…”

George Z. F. Bereday (Zygmunt Fijałkowski) and his comparative method in educational research

“…However, other authors attribute this invention to Franz Hilker, explaining that he could be possibly forgotten, as his works were published in German and he was not able to become popular in English-speaking community of researchers [41]. Bereday was familiar with Hilker's book entitled Vergleichende Pädagogik of 1964, as he in his letter to Hilker clearly referred to this matter, informing Hilker that the book was going to be reviewed for "Comparative Education Review" by William Brickman.…”