Comparative Research In Education Research Paper

1. The Field Of Comparative Education

The field of comparative education has identified as its founding father, Marc-Antoine Jullien, whose seminal study l’Esquisse et ue preliminaire d’un ou rage sur l’education comparee, which was published in 1817, emphasized the collection of documents, objective observation, thoroughness in recording, and systematic analysis. This study established a strong research perspective in comparative education that has been maintained over time. Nevertheless, the ease of travel during the latter half of the twentieth century, together with greatly increased opportunities for communication, has led sometimes to superficiality rather than scholarly work in which comparisons are systematically examined, with sound theoretical foundations.

Leadership in comparative research in education has come traditionally from outside the USA, al-though the World Bank which is based in the USA has more recently supported the collection of information on the provision of education across developed and developing countries. Moreover, nongovernmental foundations as well as governmental agencies in the USA have supported financially the conduct of cross-national research studies. UNESCO, as a central organization, has sought directly to collect information on the provision of educational services across the world and its institutes, the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) in Paris, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) in Geneva, and the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Ham-burg have maintained for over half a century a research orientation in their studies of education across both the developed and developing world. Likewise, the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), which is established within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, has examined educational issues within and between the developed countries that are members of OECD. In the closing decade of the twentieth century, OECD sought to provide a stronger database through the calculation of educational indicators for use in its member countries and its publications ‘Education at a Glance’: OECD indicators have provided a valuable start in the provision of soundly based information.

Two publications from UNESCO, Learning To Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow (Faure et al. 1972) and Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors et al. 1996) have provided and are providing a basis for debate both within and between nations on the future of education from a world perspective. These publications emphasize the idea of lifelong learning in a world context that includes both developed and developing countries in which the seven tensions:

(a) between the global and the local,

(b) between the universal and the individual,

(c) between tradition and modernity,

(d) between long-term and short-term considerations,

(e) between the need for competition and concern for equality of opportunity,

(f ) between the extraordinary expansion of knowledge and human beings’ capacity to assimilate it,

(g) between the spiritual and the material

are very conspicuous in a world in which globalization is taking place rapidly (Delors et al. 1996). The monitoring of change in education across the world during the critical years of the first half of the twenty- first century is a major challenge for comparative research in education. Only with soundly based information on the magnitude and direction of change that could be provided through strong and well- recognized indicators can policy making and planning be carried out in all corners of the world to avoid the major catastrophies that could be caused by nuclear war, a population explosion, degradation of the biosphere, and widespread death from disease and famine.

2. Comparative Methods In Research

Research and scholarly inquiry in education uses two different strategies of investigation. One strategy is a holistic or systemic approach in which the characteristics or the parts are viewed with respect to the whole to which they belong. Within this strategy the pattern of relationships between the parts and the processes operating within the whole are examined. The issues involved in inquiry are whether an elementary part or characteristic can be considered to exist and whether a model of the whole built from the parts is an adequate representation of reality. The second strategy is a comparative approach in which the characteristics or the parts are compared across two or more research situations. If a difference is found between the two situations, with an adequate degree of likelihood or probability, then the origin or cause of the difference is sought. Moreover, if a difference is not found, then the reasons for the similarity may be of interest to the researcher. The comparative method is primarily concerned with the second strategy. However, the establishment of the existence of a characteristic, a part, or a relationship must precede the making of a comparison, although it might be argued that the detection of a difference through comparison can be considered to be evidence for the existence of an entity, a characteristic, or relationship.

Comparative research in education may be under-taken from either a scientific or humanistic perspective, where the former involves measurement and statistical analysis and the latter is largely descriptive or ethnographic. Furthermore, comparative research in education may draw on one or more of the major disciplinary fields, such as history, philosophy, sociology, and social psychology. There are, however, four specific ideas regarding the methods and nature of comparative education that must be considered to be fallacious.

First, there is the fallacy advanced by Holmes (1965) in his study, Problems in Education: A Comparative Approach, that there is a single scientific method for comparative research in education. He drew on the writings of John Dewey and advanced a sequence of eight major steps as a method of investigation that led to the production of new knowledge in education. While such systematic inquiry may be desirable in certain problem-solving studies, research in comparative education draws on more than one disciplinary field and their methods of investigation and cannot be constrained to a particular sequence of steps in inquiry.

Second, there is the fallacy that investigation in comparative research in education involves a choice between a quantitative or a qualitative approach or even a combination of the two approaches (Rust et al. 1999). The distinction between quantities and qualities is misconceived, when they are taken to be clear alternatives. Complex statistical procedures are now available for the rigorous examination of categorical or qualitative data, where information is recorded in terms of two or more categories that does not involve any attempt to measure, but merely employs classification. The advantage of measurement is that the improved precision increases the likelihood of detecting or rejecting a hypothesised relationship.

Third, there is the fallacy of making a clear-cut distinction between policy-oriented research and discipline-oriented research, or between decision-based research and conclusion-based research in comparative education. Holmes (1965) recognized that comparative education provided a strategy of inquiry that led to a greater understanding of educational systems as well as providing information for the planned development of an educational system. However, the undue emphasis shown by politicians and administrators on the ‘horse race’ aspects of international studies of educational achievement, to the neglect of developing a greater understanding of the operation of the systems through comparative research, would seem to involve a serious misunderstanding of the nature of social action and the power of ideas. It assumes that research findings in the social and behavioral sciences, including education, are applied in the same way as the findings of research in the physical and biological sciences through technology and applied science. Consequently, there is a need for the UNESCO Institutes, The World Bank, and for the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to provide international forums for the discussion and debate of the findings of comparative research in education in terms that policy makers can understand and subsequently apply in both policy and practice.

Finally, there is the fallacy that comparative re-search in education is not concerned with the outcomes and products of education but only with the processes that are in operation. Nevertheless naive input–output models of education provide little of value for the making of policy or the improvement of practice, as does undue emphases in simplistic terms on achievement outcomes that are evident in the media presentations of the findings of some international studies of educational achievement.

3. Paradigms And Theories In Comparative Research In Education

Altbach (1991) has argued that in the late 1980s the theoretical frameworks employed in comparative re-search in education shifted away from a central role for sociology and from structural–functional and statistical paradigms towards greater heterogeneity. Paulston (1994) has more recently identified four world views in a taxonomy of knowledge perspectives in scholarly writings on comparative and international education. These four world views are (a) functionalist, (b) radical functionalist, (c) radical humanist, and (d) humanist perspectives. These four perspectives have been mapped by Paulston in a two-dimensional space with the many general theories involved in comparative and international education located with-in this two-dimensional map. The macromapping of paradigms and theories makes clear the multiplicity of general perspectives that, at the end of the 1990s, were present in the field of comparative and international education. Through the use of this map the broader movements that influence scholarly work in the field of comparative education are presented in a way that indicates the dynamic but adventitious nature of the field at a time when issues of globalization and the cross-national transfer of ideas and knowledge are being greatly facilitated by the new information technology. The challenge for comparative social theory is to make sense of the rapid changes that are occurring in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

4. The Many Methods And Approaches Of Comparative Research In Education

There can be no argument about the fact that there are many different tactics and strategies being employed in comparative studies in education. Each of these different approaches has considerable utility in a field of inquiry that is actively pursued around the world, particularly along economic, social, and political dimensions. Of particular importance are the contributions that comparative research in education can make to the economic development, social development, and political development of a particular country, especially in those countries that are classified as developing countries.

In addition to those studies that might be classified as theory building and that address issues related to the structure of both knowledge and inquiry in the field and are sometimes described as theoretical or conceptual studies, there are studies that employ methods of inquiry derived from particular disciplines. These disciplinary studies involve historical, demo-graphic, linguistic, economic, political, or other perspectives as they relate to education. There are, however, comparative research studies in education that extend across disciplines and that would seem to fall into one of three types: (a) descriptive studies, (b) developmental studies, and (c) analytical, relationship, and process studies.

4.1 Descriptive Studies

An important task in comparative education is to provide a descriptive account of how education is conducted in different countries, with generally only one country under survey in each study. However, the national systems of education of more than 130 countries are presented in the International Encyclopedia of Education (Husen and Postlethwaite 1994) and the derived Encyclopedia of National Systems of Education (Postlethwaite 1996) in a way in which education in each of the different countries is described within a common framework. Such descriptive studies serve an important purpose since they provide relatively concise accounts of educational policies and practices in each particular country and thus assist in the building up of an understanding both within that country and elsewhere of the different systems of education that have been developed in different con-texts across the world.

The comparative value of these descriptive statements is limited by the existence of many problems. The major problems involve: (a) the lack of a list of key educational indicators which have been agreed on by scholars and administrators in all countries, so that accurate and consistent data are collected; (b) the cost and practical difficulties of assembling data from many sources; (c) the lack of comparability of the data collected, in spite of efforts to maintain uniformity; (d) the tendency of ministry officials in each country to present the conditions of education within their country in the best possible light and as a consequence to withold data that are unfavorable; and (e) insufficient analysis and presentation of context without which the data recorded have only limited meaning.

4.2 Developmental Studies

The influence of the social and behavioral sciences is effected not through technology and direct application, but through the power of the ideas and relationships that arise from research, which are disseminated and debated and which give rise to collective social action. The contribution of education to this process of promulgation and discussion of ideas and relation-ships is greatly underestimated, and the nature of social action in democratic societies across the world is only gradually being understood. As a consequence, many of the societal developments that have occurred in different countries of the world and that have their origins in education still remain to be examined and reported.

Some attempts have been made to account for both changes in education and social life. Hans (1949), for instance, argued for a level of generality with the identification of factors influencing educational development: namely, (a) religious factors (Anglican, Catholic, and Puritan); (b) natural factors (racial, geographic, linguistic, and economic); and (c) secular factors (socialism, humanism, nationalism, and democratic ideals). Nevertheless, these factors do not provide an explanation in terms of the common or universal factors that have influenced the spread of educational provision across the world, and would seem to involve the unique factors which might explain why countries now differ with respect to educational provision in particular ways. Mallinson (1957) suggested that educational development within a country was influenced by a national mental constitution that had formed over time within the country. While this might help to account for particular features of German and Japanese education it would not seem to explain the marked growth in education that has taken place in so many countries since the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Meyer and Hannan (1979) have contended that the thrust for universal primary education must be seen in a cross-national context, and that the powerful ideas are to be found in the Darwinian theory of evolution, and the impact of Marx’s ideas, particularly in China and the USSR. There is much more work to be done to explain the common developments in education that have occurred cross-nationally during the twentieth century.

4.3 Studies Of Relationships And Processes

The systematic study of relationships and processes in comparative research in education has emerged only during the second half of the twentieth century. These studies seek to increase understanding of how variables relate to one another, to explain better the dynamics of teaching and learning and educational change, and to investigate how such relationships and processes vary across countries. Nevertheless, cross-national studies of educational achievement are difficult and costly to conduct because extensive cross-national consultation is required. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has been the major pioneer of this type of investigation into the factors influencing achievement outcomes across the countries of the world.

5. The Research Program Of IEA

In the late 1950s a group of educational research workers meeting at the UNESCO Institute for Education in Hamburg saw the need for comparative studies of the relationships and processes operating to influence the educational outcomes of achievement and attitudes. They recognized that there was generally insufficient variability within a particular country to detect the effects of specific factors on the outcomes of learning, using existing methods of statistical analysis. They argued that if research studies could be under-taken between countries, as well as within countries, then the greater variation that existed across countries and the different school systems within countries would permit the identification of common factors of importance which influenced learning outcomes.

The feasibility of conducting research studies across countries into factors influencing educational achievement was tested in a pilot study. The success of this study led to the establishment of the IEA. Over a period of nearly 40 years IEA has carried out a sustained program of research studies, which have in the main been survey and cross-national investigations, into factors that have an effect on educational achievement, participation rates, and attitudes towards school and school learning. The data collected have been examined across countries, between schools within countries, and between students within countries, and where possible relationships have been tested after controlling for other factors that might affect the educational outcomes under consideration. The specific relationships that have been tested fall into one of several types, namely: (a) relationships between predictor and criterion variables across countries; (b) similar common relationships between predictor and criterion variables at the levels of between students and schools within countries; (c) relationships between predictor and criterion variables at the levels of between students and between schools that are unique to a particular country or a small group of countries; and (d) the absence of an observable relationship where current opinion has hypothesized that such a relationship should exist.

Before the systematic examination of processes between students, between schools, and between countries can take place advances must be made along three fronts. First, it is necessary for theory to be developed and models formulated of specific processes of school learning. Second, it is necessary for data to be collected that are sufficiently comparable across countries, so that the testing of models in a comparative manner is worthwhile. Third, statistical procedures for the testing of models must be developed in order to provide strong estimates of effects and efficient estimates of error for the examination of statistical significance and effect size.

Several theoretical frameworks have guided the development of models in IEA research studies. From the Granna Workshop conducted in Sweden by IEA in 1971, which examined in detail the seminal work Handbook on Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning (Bloom et al. 1971) came the theoretical view of curriculum implementation that has been tested in several IEA studies. In this model the curriculum can be considered to exist at three levels: (a) the intended curriculum, (b) the implemented curriculum, and (c) the achieved curriculum, which are influenced by the antecedent and contextual factors as well as the learning conditions in the schools and teaching practices. A second highly influential model in IEA research has been Carroll’s (1963) model of school learning, which was tested empirically with respect to the study of learning French as a foreign language, and has formed the basis for causal models in several IEA studies. A third model that has guided IEA research has been a cross-national model of educational achievement in a national economy advanced by Dahllof (1967). Of particular interest for policy making are the frame or structural variables. Moreover, their dependence on (a) the environment and the economy, (b) demand for personnel, (c) curriculum content, and (d) the objectives of the school system, is argued on theoretical grounds by Dahllof. However, only limited aspects of this theoretical model have been tested in either primary or secondary analyses.

IEA studies have consistently recorded the marked differences in levels of achievement between developed and developing countries, with much lesser variation between the countries within each group. Further-more, it has been shown that a causal model, which explained well the influence of individual student factors on reading achievement at the 14-year-old level in developed countries, was less than adequate in two developing countries, India and Iran. These findings suggest that there are different processes in operation influencing educational outcomes in developed and developing countries.

As statistical procedures for the testing of models of causal processes have been developed, IEA has remained at the forefront of statistical analysis and has advanced and tested complex models to generate an understanding of the processes that operate to influence educational outcomes. It is noteworthy that such analytical procedures as blockwise regression analysis, partial least squares path analysis, and linear structural relations analysis were developed in collaboration with scholars at the Institute of International Education in Stockholm, who were working on the analysis of IEA data. Likewise, the advancement of procedures for the improvement of the measurement of educational outcomes in large-scale surveys, with equating across levels of test administration and over time owes much to the work of IEA.

6. The Key Findings Of The IEA Studies

The IEA studies taken together have involved millions of students in testing programs, hundreds of thousands of schools, and thousands of research workers in the field of education from a very wide range of countries. In 1999, over 50 countries were members of IEA and its headquarters remained firmly established in Europe, although substantial financial support has been received from time to time but not exclusively from agencies and foundations in the USA. The school subjects involved in IEA testing programs have included mathematics, science, civic education, reading, French as a foreign language, English as a foreign language, computing, literature, and writing. In addition, there have been studies in preschool education.

There are marked differences in average levels of achievement between the students in school in the more developed countries (MDCs) and those in the less developed countries (LDCs). This occurs in spite of the fact that in the LDCs less than 100 per cent of the relevant age groups are enrolled in school.

The average level of achievement within a country at the terminal secondary school stage is inversely related to the proportion of the age group enrolled at school or participating in the study of the subject under survey.

At the terminal secondary school stage, when equal proportions of the age groups are compared, there are only small differences in levels of achievement, ir-respective of the proportions of the age groups retained at school. The best students do not suffer with increased retention rates.

Student achievement in mathematics, French as a foreign language, and science is positively related to the time given to the study of the subject at school, both in comparisons across countries and between students within countries.

The achievement of students is related to the time spent on homework after other factors influencing achievement have been taken into account.

The average level of student achievement across countries is positively related to the opportunity that the students have to learn the content of the items tested.

In LDCs the use of a textbook has an effect on student learning. However, the same effects have not been reported from studies in MDCs.

The level of reading resources of the home is positively related to student achievement, as are other indicators of language usage in the home, such as the use of a dictionary in the home, and whether or not the language of the home is the language of instruction.

Measures of the socioeconomic status of the home are positively related to student achievement in all countries, at all age levels, and for all subjects.

Although the effects of home background variables are similar across subject areas, the effects of the learning conditions in the schools differ between subject areas, and in some subject areas are equivalent to or greater in the size of their influence than the effects of the home.

For more detailed accounts of these 10 key findings from IEA studies and the more specific findings from particular studies, the report by Keeves (1995) should be consulted. Nevertheless, it is important that the vision of those who founded IEA for the advancement of research in a cross-national context is sustained at a time when the increased visibility of international educational achievement studies gives rise to serious misunderstandings, disputable conclusions for policy and practice, and undue emphasis on the rank ordering of national achievement (Beaton et al. 1999).

7. Research In Comparative Education In The Future

From an examination of the Delors report (Delors 1996), seven critical world issues emerge for which education would seem to provide the major contribution to their resolution. These problems involve:

(a) the feeding of the growing population of the world;

(b) the containment of population growth;

(c) the sharing of the world’s wealth between the developed and the developing countries;

(d) the advancement of technological development in the poorer countries in order to raise standards of living;

(e) the building of schools and the training of teachers to achieve universal primary schooling;

(f ) the establishment of greater equity between the sexes; and

(g) the establishment of greater equity between different social and racial groups.

Not only must comparative education help to monitor change with respect to these problems, but it must also play an active part in their resolution through the spread of knowledge. The rapid expansion of knowledge during the twentieth century demands the worldwide development of the learning society. The new information technology opens up new ways in which the learning society might operate. The field of comparative education provides the links across the countries of the world, but the exact manner in which comparative education through research might con- tribute is unclear. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognize that the world’s problems involve not just the wealthy and more highly developed nations, but all nations irrespective of size and wealth.

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