What Can Be Compared in Educational Research

What Can Be Compared in Educational Research

Written by Mark Bray et al in Comparative Education Research Approaches and Methods. Comparative Education Research Centre.2007.

Today's posting discusses about the topic for comparison study. In educational research for comparison study, some fields can be chosen as your topic in proposal of thesis or skripsi. The fields below are the most common comparing fields that can be your own topic.

1. Comparing Places
Comparative education analyses have traditionally focused on geographic entities as the unit of comparison.

2. Comparing System
A great deal of comparative education research has focused on systems of education. Sometimes, however, this focus has been implicit rather than explicit, and the units of analysis have not always been clearly defined.

3. Comparing Culture
Life in schools and classrooms is an aspect of our wider society, not separate from it: a culture does not stop at the school gates.

4. Comparing Educational Achievements
Comparing achievement implies that there is a common understanding on the nature the subject(s) being compared. It also assumes that comparable groups of students or schools are being compared.

5. Comparing Policies
The word policy is commonly used in government documents, academic writings and daily conversations. However, the nature of policy and the ways in which it can be researched, interpreted and produced are open to debate. The literature that might assist in this matter is diverse, divided and to some extent inconclusive.

6. Comparing Curricula
Many stakeholders in education undertake comparisons of curricula.Governments increasingly compare their states’ curricula with overseas models when searching for new initiatives and when attempting to enhance
international competitiveness; parents compare the offerings of schools in order to choose suitable institutions for their children; students look at the range of courses available when they select electives; and all parties except possibly the pupils make comparisons between current curricula and those which operated in earlier historical periods.

7. Comparing Ways of Learning
Students' way of learning keeps improving. It may be the best hope to provide the basis for developing training programmes suitable for improving the quality of learning outcomes in different cultures.

8. Comparing Pedagogical Innovations
Innovation seems to be a constant – and necessary – theme in education. In the contemporary era, a common underlying rationale is that changes in education of all levels and types are necessary to prepare citizens for life in the knowledge society, which is characterised by increasing globalisation,progressively shorter half-lives of knowledge, the increasing importance of knowledge creation in sustaining development, and economic competitiveness which requires increased collaboration in the workplace.