International Comparative Adult Education Research. Reflections on theory, methodology and future developments

In 2016 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the beginning of comparative education. Marc-Antoine Jullien, also known as Jullien de Paris, laid the foundation stone of comparative education as an academic discipline with the publication of a standardised questionnaire of 266 questions partly published in the ‘Journal d’éducation’ in 1816 and 1817. Furthermore, the ideas of Marc-Antoine Jullien not only stimulated and influenced the development of international comparative education, but also had an impact on comparative adult education studies. In fact, Charters and Siddiqui consider the “introduction of the Jullien Plan to the Anglophone world through its publication” in 1917 to be the first key event in the development of comparative adult education studies (Charters & Siddiqui 1989, p. 20).