LAUSR

ently so firmly rooted in British academic culture, becomes notable in France. In contrast to similar work on ‘transfer’ in comparative education, the first small shock provided by the Sapiro book is that ‘movement’ has to be demonstrated empirically by counting articles, books, conferences, etc.Measures of importation and impact have to be created. In contrast, in comparative education, when an educational institution ‘moves’, it is usually highly visible: for example, the ‘German’model of the university being imported in the late nineteenth into the USA or polytechnical education in its socialist mode becoming a policy in China or ‘East Germany’. In the analysis ofmobile ideas within the Sapiro book, themotives of the ‘movers’ are given very careful analysis. In comparative education, the current cases which are of urgent interest (e.g. reforms of curriculum or new responsibilities for teachers in terms of standards and teaching styles) are normally very visible in the mass media. Hence the new and banal phrase ‘PISA shock’ which is now part of academic discourse and not merely a headline that has been used in newspapers in several countries. Thus, investigations of ‘transfer’within comparative education can usually identify quickly and easily motives for importation. The motives are political, obvious, and public – they are often made explicit at governmental level partly because comparative education spends a lot of effort looking at ‘policies’ in education. Thus it is the subtlety of the analyses in the Sapiro, Santoro and Baert book which is attractive, in addition to the intrinsic interest of learning about the travels – and the terms of acceptance and redefinitions – of the ideas of writers and academics (such as Said or Foucault) whose work is fascinating and disturbing in its own right. There is also another question which gradually becomes clear later while reflecting on this text. How do these processes work for the field of study of comparative education? The histories of comparative education give clarity to the field of study, but it is a linear clarity. Comparative education grew and got better. But what about the subtler themes? Which ideas of German-speaking comparative educationists moved, internationally? Did the ideas of George Bereday working in New York leave the United States and if so, where did they go? And within comparative education now: are neo-institutionalism, the Global South, and post-colonialism, ideas which are travelling and, if so, who issued their passports and organised their itineraries? Research of the kind illustrated very well in the Sapiro, Santoro and Baert book becomes very relevant, indeed exemplary, if such questions are to be pursued.