Issues of equity, equality and equivalence are currently a cross-national concern; policy making in education takes importance notice of social and political demands largely associated to different notions of social justice. Conceptualization and empirical studies remains, nevertheless, a controversial endeavor due to the variety of aspects underpinning the discourses on these categories. Cross-national comparative studies however, need a well-defined conceptual and methodological framework. In this article it is argued that the current debate on conceptual and methodological issues could benefit from the contributions of social and cultural reproduction theory and a pluralistic methodological approach to comparative studies. The article contains no answers but perspectives on the various questions and challenges; the purpose of this article is to make an initial contribution to the ongoing debate on conceptualization of these categories and to highlight some of the challenges of cross-national comparative studies in this subject.