17 European Education, vol. 41, no. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 17–31. © 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1056–4934/2009 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/EUE1056-4934410101 IVETA SILOVA The Changing Frontiers of Comparative Education A Forty-Year Retrospective on European Education European Education (originally known as Western European Educa- tion) may no longer be directly associated with the field of compara- tive and international education, yet its establishment in 1969 was an attempt to make a direct contribution to the academic debates about the future of comparative education. The journal emerged at a time when comparative educators in the United States were engaged in a complex process of reexamining historical foundations of the field, exploring its methodological and theoretical directions, and expanding its geographic boundaries. While the debate on comparative education theory and method was often polarized into two extremes—advocating for either cross-national, quantitative research or single-case, historical studies— Iveta Silova, Ph.D., is assistant professor of comparative and international education at the College of Education, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. Dr. Silova’s research focuses on the study of globalization, democratization, and policy “borrowing” in education. Her most recent three books are How NGOs React: Globalization and Education Reform in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2008; with Gita Steiner-Khamsi), Education in a Hidden Market- place: Monitoring of Private Tutoring (New York: Open Society Institute, 2006; with Mark Bray and Virginija Budiene), and From Sites of Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism: Re-conceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia (Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2006). Email: ism207@lehigh.edu. The author thanks Alexander W. Wiseman, Audree Chase-Mayoral, William C. Brehm, Gita Steiner-Khamsi, and Mark Bray for valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.