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Problem‐solving in Comparative
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David A. Turner
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North‐East London Polytechnic
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Problem-solving in Comparative Education

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DAVID A. TURNER, North-East London Polytechnic

B. Holmes has set out a clear programme for comparative education [1]. But while
this programme is clearly presented in many of its aspects, there is one area where
it is deficient. This deficiency is not so much in the way it is set out, but in the
limited amount which has been achieved. This paper focuses specifically on
Holmes' use of sociological laws, and puts forward some suggestions for ways in
which they can be developed and used.
The aim of this paper is to present a formulation of what is desirable in
sociological laws and a practical example of how this might be achieved. If we take
Holmes own example of a possible sociological law, "If comprehensive schools are
introduced and become more widespread, social equality will increase" [2], and link
it with Holmes prescription that the initial conditions in different countries should
be taken into account, we are faced with an immediate difficulty. How can the
conditions be linked to the law? There is, as it were, no opening for them to be
introduced into the law. We can imagine nothing beyond statements which say that
the law works only in the USA or Sweden, or in industrialised countries.
The target which I am aiming for is the development of a prototype sociological
law which not only shows how predictions can be made in a comparative context,
but also shows how conditions in different countries are to be incorporated. This
will involve the idea of incorporating conditions in a complex form, and taking
seriously H. Noah and M. Eckstein's objective of replacing "the names of systems
(countries) by the names of concepts (variables)" [3]. It is, however, significantly
different from the goal set by Noah and Eckstein in that it is the conditions which
will be so described as to remove the names of countries from the formulation of
sociological laws.
Before proceeding further with the development of a sociological law of the type
envisaged, I want to review some of the characteristics which Holmes insists such
laws should have. I agree wholeheartedly with these prescriptions, and am con-
vinced that by observing them laws can be presented which are not only more
desirable from the viewpoints of the philosophy of science, but also more effective
in describing human behaviour.
First and foremost, any sociological law must be thought of only as a hypothetical
proposition, capable of testing and refutation at any time. Notwithstanding any-
thing I may subsequently write, I present the sociological laws developed here in
that spirit. I am convinced that they are valuable. I will argue in their favour as

39
 40 D. A. Turner

persuasively as I can. I have spent some time developing them, and would be
unwilling to see that effort go to waste. However, they are subject to review, and I
will be prepared to relinquish them when I am presented with competing sociologi-
cal laws which are equal or better in terms of explanatory content, in the terms
described by K. R. Popper [4], and pass empirical tests which my laws fail. Having
made that point, which should always be borne in mind, I move on to argue my
case on the basis that they are the nearest approximation we have to the truth at the
moment.
The second requirement for a sociological law is that it should have empirical
content, should permit predictions to be made, and should, as a result of that, be
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refutable. This also I hold to be desirable, and have therefore illustrated my case
with empirical evidence drawn from the National Child Development Study [5].
This study deals with children born in 1958 in the United Kingdom, who came to a
crucial decision, whether to leave school or stay on at school in 1974, when they
were sixteen. It is, of course, impossible to 'predict' anything that happened in
1974, without going through an artificial pretence that one is ignorant of something,
and then producing data to cover that previously 'unknown' condition. I have no
intention of making that pretence. The illustration of a sociological law which I put
forward will make it very clear how, were the relevant data available today,
predictions could be made, in any country, about the number of candidates likely to
seek a particular type of education. This is an ambitious project, although the
absence of relevant data makes the test of such predictions impossible at the
moment.
The next important property of a sociological law is that it should not be
deterministic. We recognise in human behaviour features of free will and caprici-
ousness. Especially when dealing with individuals, even individuals about whom we
know a great deal, accurate prediction is often impossible. I may commit myself to
a particular course of action, but implicitly or explicitly will make such a commit-
ment contingent upon continued good health, good weather, reasonable traffic
conditions or the benevolence of God. However, in practice, reasonably accurate
predictions can be made about large groups of people. Social order, and profitable
business, can be based on the relatively accurate predictions of how many people
will gather in Trafalgar Square on New Year's Eve, will wish to fly the Atlantic in
June, or will wish to travel from Sevenoaks to Charing Cross before nine o'clock on
a weekday morning [6]. None of these predictions will make it any easier to tell
whether a particular individual will be in the group identified.
Group behaviour is easier to predict than individual behaviour. This is not
merely an accident of our present understanding of people. It should focus attention
on the fact that, while it is necessary, desirable and unobjectionable that we should
predict group behaviour, the exact opposite is true of individual behaviour. The
assumption that an individual's behaviour can be predicted is equivalent to the
assumption that it is determined, and that undervalues the human qualities of
human action.
Most of the programmes for the improvement of statistical methods in compara-
tive education have ignored this fundamental point. The IEA studies of perform-
ance in various subjects were based on the assumption that for large numbers of
students, abilities could be predicted from a range of variables describing home
background, school environment and so on [7]. Although not markedly effective in
moving towards that goal, some consideration should be given to the consequences
 Problem-solving in C.E. 41

which would follow from the successful accomplishment of that programme. If the
IEA studies had been successful, it would have been possible, from a knowledge of
home and school variables, to make a reasonable prediction of performance. In
short, performance would have been determined. The IEA studies, and similar
multi-variate studies, work on the assumption that group behaviour is best pre-
dicted by making predictions as to the behaviour of a large number of individuals.
This runs entirely counter to the considerations on predictions of group behaviour
set out above.
Arising from these considerations is another of some importance. Human action
is future orientated, towards goals and aspirations. It is not directed towards a
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certain future, but one which is only perceived dimly. However, I take it to be the
case, following Dewey and Popper, that all activities are in one sense 'problem-
solving'. This is not to assume that they are consciously framed within a format
which was described by Dewey or Popper, but that ineffectual behaviour will not
persist: people will learn that they are not getting the results they hoped for.
To summarise, general sociological laws must meet two kinds of requirements.
They must satisfy certain methodological constraints, such as facilitating predic-
tions, having empirical content, being non-deterministic. They must also mirror
certain aspects of the human behaviour they are intended to describe, by being
future orientated.
I believe there are a number of theoretical frameworks available which would
facilitate the formulation of sociological laws which would meet these requirements.
For the present purpose I have chosen to the framework of two-person zero-sum
games against Nature, as developed and applied by W. Davenport [8].

The Case Study

At the age of 16, the earliest at which pupils can legally leave school in the United
Kingdom, pupils must choose whether to leave school or to remain in education.
This paper will deal with choices made by pupils who were studied in the National
Child Development Study. Those pupils, who were born in March 1958, therefore
faced this decision in the summer of 1974.
In 1974, the decision to remain at school generally meant a decision to remain in
an academically orientated sixth form, the object of which was study for advanced
level examinations, or equivalent, and the eventual opportunity to enter university.
There were, therefore, frequently required qualifications for entry into sixth form
courses. For this reason, attention will be directed to pupils who, at the age of 16,
had achieved three or four passes at O-level GCE or equivalent. This group were
qualified to enter the sixth form, although not so well qualified as to make the
pursuit of a university career the obvious choice. They were faced with a real
dilemma as to whether they should stay on at school or leave.
The study will be further restricted to those pupils whose fathers were either
semi-professional or management workers and those whose fathers were skilled
manual workers. The categories used are precise in terms of the job descriptions
used to classify the father's work, but for brevity the pupils will be referred to as
middle class or working class respectively, depending on the work of their fathers.
We are thus looking at the educational choice made at age sixteen by four groups
of pupils; middle class boys and middle class girls, and working class girls and
working class boys. All pupils concerned had sufficient qualifications to continue
 42 D. A. Turner

studying in an academic sixth form if they chose to. However, some chose to stay,
while others chose to leave. How is this to be understood?
The solution which is going to be proposed here is an economic solution. That is
to say that it is supposed that the choice to leave or to stay was motivated solely by
money, and that this can be judged in terms of weekly earnings seven years after the
choice was made. It might be preferable, as had been suggested by some economists
of education, to look at lifetime earnings, but for obvious reasons, these are not yet
available for the study sample. Besides, earnings at age twenty three serve more
than adequately to illustrate the argument here.
First consider the middle class boys, who faced the choice of staying on at school
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or leaving. The mean weekly earnings of those who left school was £84.58, while
that of those who did not leave was £74.44. The pupil who achieved the highest
earnings, £200.00 per week, left school at 16. And the highest earning 5% of leavers
earned substantially more than the highest 5% who stayed (£190.88, compared with
£100.53). At all parts of the spread of earnings, it was more lucrative to leave school
at 16 than to stay on. Yet a minority of students in this group facing this choice
came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to leave.
It should be noted that although the mean salary of those who stayed on at school
from the group under consideration is £74.44, no boy actually chose this salary.
Indeed, few if any of them actually received it. They chose to stay on at school or to
leave, and with this decision they chose, not a particular salary, but entry into a
particular segment of the labour market. Boys who chose to stay on at school
entered a segment of the labour market where the mean salary was £74.44 and the
highest paid 5% earned £100.54 or over. But at age 16 they could not choose where
they would come in that distribution. The actual earnings which they would receive
seven years later depended on many subsequent decisions, some made by the pupils
themselves, some by teachers, others by examiners and yet others by employers,
and none of them open for scrutiny in the summer of 1974. These pupils, therefore,
chose not an average benefit, or a particular return, but a range of returns which
they would fall into somewhere.
It has been shown elsewhere that decision of this sort can be modelled using a
two-person zero-sum game model [9]. The pupil is presumed to be making a
decision in a game, played against a single opponent, who also makes a decision.
The eventual return to the pupils is dependent upon the combination of the two
decisions. Each decision is made without knowledge of, or possible influence from,
the other. For convenience, I shall use two figures, the mean and the 95th
percentile, to describe the range of salaries which the pupil elects into by choosing
to stay on at school or to leave. These four figures are then put into a two by two
game matrix in such a way as to give a game with no saddle points or dominant
strategies [10].
Opponent
Choice 1 Choice 2
Choice 1 £84.58 £190.88 (leave school)
Pupil
Choice 2 £100.53 £74.44 (stay in school)

The pupils can therefore elect for a return of either £84.58 or £190.88 by leaving
school, but cannot choose which. Naturally, if all pupils always choose to stay on at
 Problem-solving in C.E. 43

school, the opponent can reduce their returns to £74.44 by always selecting Choice
2. The model suggests, therefore, that some pupils might be expected to leave and
others stay. In this it is unlike any other economic model, which generally speaking
suggest that all pupils should follow the most lucrative path.
Further consideration will also lead to the conclusion that more pupils would stay
on than leave. This might seem an odd conclusion, when the most lucrative return,
£190.88, can only be achieved by leaving school. However, for that very reason the
opponent will be less likely to play Choice 2, and so long as the opponent is playing
Choice 1 more frequently, staying on at school is better.
The game has a precise mathematical solution, which is that eighty percent of
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these pupils would be expected to stay on at school. But it is also important to gain
a 'feel' for what is happening, and in general pupils will be expected to move away
from areas where risk is high, i.e. where the two figures for the choice are very
different.
The first important feature of this solution is that it suggests that a proportion of
the group would be expected to stay on, and the remainder to leave. A second
feature is that it predicts the larger proportion will stay, in direct contradiction of
the 'common-sense' conclusion which would be derived from the same figures.
Finally, it should be noted that there are no deterministic overtones to the model;
since the conclusions from the model are in terms of proportions of a group making
a particular choice, the model says nothing about the action of any individual.
There is no need to attempt to trace influences on individuals which lead to the
outcome, or to explain any individual's choice in terms of background conditions
or socialisation.
The position becomes clearer if we consider the boys from working class back-
grounds. Here the situation is very different. Remarkably, the mean earnings,
highest earnings, and best income for the top five percent, all result from staying on
at school. It must be remembered that this is the exact opposite of the result for
middle class boys, and that one expects the rewards for staying on at school to be
better for the middle class. But again, staying on at school is riskier for working
class boys, and when the figures are put into a game matrix, the model suggests that
we would expect only 50% to stay on at school. The percentages of each group
considered which would be expected to stay on from applying the model, and the
actual percentages staying, are summarised in Table I.

TABLE I. Predicted and observed percentages of school leavers at age 16, sub-divided by gender and
occupation of father

Anticipated percentage Observed percentage

of school leavers of school leavers

Boys
Middle Class 19.7 38.9
Working Class 50.1 55.1

Girls
Middle Class 44.2 41.9
Working Class 46.1 58.9
 44 D. A. Turner

Conclusion
What has been set out in this paper is an example of how a game theory model may
be developed to satisfy the methodological functions which Holmes has prescribed
for a sociological law. It remains to simplify such an application into a simple
statement of the form, "If comprehensive schools are introduced and become more
widespread, social equality will increase". Such a statement could be, "If a group of
students are faced with an opportunity to enter a particular level or type of
education, they will elect to enter that course in a proportion approximately
predicted by a game theory model". This statement clearly lacks some precision as
to exactly how such a model should be developed and which benefits should be
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incorporated into a pay-off matrix, all of which points are made clear in the
example.
The word 'approximately' in this formulation is problematic, since it could be
used to render the sociological law irrefutable. There seems little doubt that law as
investigated here could be improved upon by considering benefits which are not
purely economic. There are a number of ways in which this might be approached,
and discussion of such improvements will need to wait for further research in a
broader range of conditions. I think that there need not be any serious difficulty in
recognising a sociological law which consistently performs better than the one
discussed here, even with the inclusion of the word 'approximately'.
In this connection it should be noted that according to Popper a commitment to
refutability need not require the absolute acceptance or rejection of a hypothetical
law. It simply requires the ability to choose which of two hypotheses is performing
better [11]. It is the complete absence of competing laws which would have any
success in permitting the prediction of numbers of students entering any particular
course of education which makes it difficult at the moment to assess the law
presented here. It is only to be hoped that the example used here will prompt still
better hypotheses, and that these will rapidly supercede it.
It is important, however, that such hopes for the future should not obscure the
real progress which has been made in developing the sociological law presented
here. A general sociological law has been formulated in terms which permit its
application to four groups who face a similar educational choice, although they are
in different economic circumstances. These different circumstances are reflected in
this case in the different earnings of each group which they can expect after making
the decision. One can relatively easily envisage the extension of this method to
other groups, possibly making similar decisions in widely differing circumstances.
This opens up a whole new prospect for cross-national comparative studies, in the
industrialised countries in the first place, where the data from longitudinal studies
comparable with the National Child Development Study are already available, but
in the longer run in other countries and under very different conditions indeed. The
inevitable failures such a simple sociological law would face in coping with such
cultural and economic diversity might well suggest further improvements.
The example presented here, therefore, not only serves to illustrate how Holmes'
method in comparative education might be extended and improved, it also suggests
an extensive programme through which our theoretical understanding of the oper-
ation of educational systems could be extended.
Correspondence: Dr David Turner, North-East London Polytechnic, School of
Independent Studies, Romford Road, London E15 4LZ, England.
 Problem-solving in C.E. 45

NOTES
[1] B. HOLMES (1981) Comparative Education: some considerations of method (London, Allen & Unwin).
[2] Ibid., p. 79.
[3] Ibid., p. 64.
[4] K.R. POPPER (1969) Conjectures and Refutations, 3rd edn, pp. 217-220 (London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul).
[5] Data on the earnings of individuals who have left school at 16 or remained in school are derived
from the information collected in the National Child Development Study, 1958 Cohort. I am
indebted to the National Children's Bureau for the use of this data, and also to the ESRC Data
Archive and National Child Development Study User Support Group for their cooperation and
advice.
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[6] B. HOLMES op. cit., p. 79, offers some similar examples to illustrate this point.
[7] See, for example, T. HUSEN (1967) International Study of Achievement in Mathematics: a comparison
of twelve countries (New York, Wiley).
[8] W. DAVENPORT (1960) Jamaican fishing: a game theory analysis, in: S.W. MINTZ (Ed.) Papers in
Caribbean Anthropology Nos 57-64, pp. 3-11 (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Publications in
Anthropology).
[9] Ibid.
[10] A general description of two person zero-sum games, including games against Nature, can be found in
A. COLMAN (1982) Game Theory and Experimental Games (Oxford, Pergamon) especially Chapter
Four.
[11] K.R. POPPER, op. cit., p. 215.