An American Construction of European Education Space

The construction of the European education space has typically been attributed to European education policy makers, institutions, and networks. Rarely do scholars consider the role of outside, non-European actors in shaping the terrain of European education thought and practice. This article considers the construction of the European education space as a borderless project with multidirectional flows of ideas, policies, and academics. While this project has created an intellectual space for the emergence of new theoretical insights and policy instruments within Europe, it has also had inevitable consequences for the study of comparative education outside Europe. This article explores how American scholars have attempted to influence the development of comparative education as a field in the United States by purposefully constructing specific notions of European education during the cold war (1969-85). Drawing on content analysis of comparative education scholarship in Western European Education - a journal published in the United States - this article discusses the role of journal editors in the construction of European education spaces in order to advance not only a marginalized geographical area of study within the expanding American field of comparative education, but also a methodological vision for the future of comparative education, one free of positivist techniques, quantitative methodologies, and modernization ideologies. The construction of the European education space has been typically attributed to European education policy makers, institutions, and networks, or what Lawn & Lingard (2002, p. 290) referred to as 'a new European class of education system actors' and European 'policy elites'. While these actors exert tremendous power in constructing and (re)negotiating the boundaries of education inside Europe, their voices are neither uniform nor unambiguous. Language differences alone among the nations of Europe result in multiple definitions and conceptualizations of educational space, allowing the possibility for scholars to retreat 'into their national or language- based societies' (Cowen, 1980, p. 103). Furthermore, various 'internal intellectual logics and external pressures' (Cowen, 1980, p. 108) among these national and regional actors within Europe contribute to the emergence of multiple European education spaces, which are constantly evolving and shifting. Consequently, (re)negotiating the relationship among the network of regional and language-based groupings in the fields of education throughout Europe means one 'European voice' is often uncommon. Adding to this complexity are the voices of outside, non-European system actors who filter the multiple conceptions of education inside Europe to create (imagined) boundaries of the European education space for foreign audiences. The role of these outside actors is frequently overlooked in the discussions of how the European education space is produced, negotiated, and redefined. Highlighting the complex interaction of both the internal and external sorting of the spatial boundaries of education, this article considers the construction of the European education space as a borderless project, which has encouraged a multidirectional flow of ideas, policies, and academics across Europe and the globe. While this borderless project has created an intellectual space for the emergence of new theoretical insights, research agendas, and policy instruments