This article enters into contemporary debates regarding methodology and training in comparative and international education by addressing epistemological questions about what can be known of the world and how it can be known through comparative research.We contend that debates over qualitative versus quantitative methods or area studies versus cross-national studies miss the mark as they address only superficial differences in the field when much deeper divisions exist over the nature of comparative knowledge.Based on our view of comparative knowledge, we propose the vertical case study as a means of comparing knowledge claims among actors with different social locations in an attempt to situate local action and interpretation within a broader cultural, historical, and political investigation.We also put forth a program of study that would enable students of comparative and international education to conduct research promoting full and thorough knowledge of multiple levels of comparison within a single vertically-bounded case.Comparative and international education: Fifty years of debate The 50th anniversary of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) provides an ideal opportunity for students and scholars of comparative and international education to reflect on the debates that have shaped the field and continue to define its contours.These debates come to life in the recently-completed oral history of the field, Comparatively Speaking, a documentary in which past presidents of CIES discuss the origins of the Society, the tensions among its members, and their visions of the future for comparative and international education.Some of the most memorable footage comes in response to questions about the principal divisions in the field for many decades: the distinction between comparative education and international education; the theory/practice divide; and the meaning of "comparative methods."From our vantage point at Teachers College, the latter issue constitutes the most contentious contemporary debate.Cast as deliberations over qualitative versus quantitative methods or as case studies versus cross-national studies, we believe these debates over methods miss the mark as they address only superficial differences in the field when much deeper divisions exist over the nature of comparative knowledge.In this article, we seek to move several issues of current debate from the more common terrain of methodology and methodological training to the less familiar landscape of epistemology.We contend that students and scholars of comparative and international education need to pay greater attention to epistemological issues related to what can be known about the world and how it can be known through comparative research before attending to the rules and procedures-the methods-used to gain such knowledge.As Masemann argued in her 1990 presidential address, "… our conceptions of ways of
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