Methodological Approaches to Comparing Pedagogical Innovations Using Technology

Faculty Research Seminar
Co-organized by the Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC),
Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE) and
Office of Research

The study of educational innovations has become increasingly important in education research as many countries around the world have embarked on education reforms that aim to change both the goals and practices in education. There is also a general expectation that such innovations can be leveraged or supported by the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the learning and teaching process. However, comparative studies of innovations are relatively rare. SITES M2, as an international comparative study of innovative pedagogical practices using technology involving 28 participating systems, thus faced important methodological challenges in developing viable methodologies for the research, which was an innovation in itself. This seminar examines the methods of analysis used and the kind of research findings that resulted from the work of three research teams that had conducted comparisons of the case studies of innovation collected from SITES M2: the SITESM2 International Coordinating Center (ICC), the national research teams for SITES M2 in Israel and in Hong Kong respectively. Even though all three teams attempted to examine similarities and differences across the case studies, the analysis conducted by the ICC looked for characterizations of the innovations while the other two studies attempted to look for ways of analyzing the cases into level of innovation across a number of dimensions. This paper discusses the methodological differences across these studies. In particular, it addresses the issue of whether and how one could compare different innovations in terms of their level of innovation and the methodological implications for studying innovations involving the use of ICT.