Quantitative and qualitative approaches to comparative education

Among the many approaches to research, a broad classification distinguishes between the quantitative and the qualitative. Boundaries may be difficult to determine, and the approaches may not be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, the two approaches deserve focus because they permit different types of insights.
The chapter begins with a description of the characteristics of the approaches and how they differ with regard to purposes, structures and theories. It also addresses questions of objectivity, values, and relationships between researcher and researched. The chapter next turns to quantitative and qualitative approaches to research on one prominent topic within the field of comparative education, that of literacy. It first reviews how researchers on literacy coming from the two traditions present the advantages of their respective approaches. It then argues that among the goals of both quantitative and qualitative research on literacy is to seek answers to the same four fundamental questions while differing in their approaches to doing so. The questions are how literacy can be accurately defined and depicted; where variations in literacy lie; what leads to literacy; and what the consequences of literacy are. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches to answering these questions are compared, using specific examples from published research. Copyright © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.