Comparative and international educations: Histories, ideologies, contestations and the International Review of Education

Abstract Based on readings from the archives of the past 70 years of the International Review of Education (IRE), this article considers how some of the divisions in the field of comparative and international education (CIE) have played out in its pages. It focuses on questions of purpose, methodology and discipline, and of context, coloniality and power. The article draws on the concept of epistemic communities to map some of the dividing lines, and it situates these contestations in a wider discussion of the current nature of CIE as a field. It considers how IRE both reflects and illuminates these debates, and how its particularities as a journal might have shaped this role.