摘要：The Teachers College Symposium invited scholars to rethink culture, context, and comparison in educational research. In his res ponse to these questions (this volume), Joe Tobin promoted comparative ethnographies to understand how social, cultural, and political processes play out across multiple locations and time periods. He urged careful empirical studies of how and why globally circulating ideas are made manifest in local practices. Specifically, Tobin recommended diachronic, video - cued multivocal ethnographic methods. In such an approach, video excerpts function as interviewing cues, prompting educators to reflect on what is sh ared and what is variable in educational practices that differ by time or location, as well as how cultural beliefs and practices were shaped by economic and political forces. Thus, Tobin and his colleagues invite participants themselves to explain the imp act of culture on their own practices, and they fruitfully mine the basic human impulse for comparison in order to elicit contrasts in practices.
