Research Methods and Methodologies in Education

Your #1 resource for carrying out educational research as part of postgraduate study.

High-quality educational research requires careful consideration of every aspect of the process. This all-encompassing textbook written by leading international experts gives you a considered overview of the principles that underpin research, and key qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods for research design, data collection and analysis.
This fourth edition includes four new chapters on:

• Doing a literature review
• Measurement and validity
• Using R (with RStudio & Tidyverse)
• Data transparency, reproducibility, and replicability

In addition, across the book, authors touch on the emergent use of generative AI tools as part of the educational research process. Also, chapters have been reordered to better reflect the research process and to emphasise commonalities between methodological approaches and tools.

This is essential reading for postgraduate students on education courses and early career researchers looking to sharpen their research practice.

Robert Coe, Director of Research and Development at Evidence Based Education, Senior Associate at the Education Endowment Foundation and Honorary Professor of Education at Durham University.  His research interests focus on the application of research to supporting improvements in educational practice, drawing on experience as a university professor and high school teacher, with particular expertise in evaluation methodology and educational assessment.Dr Michael Waring, Griffith Institute for Educational Research, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Australia. He sits on the executive of the Society for Educational Studies, and is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Educational Studies and Higher Education Pedagogies. His research interests focus on the development of inclusive participatory pedagogy, assessment feedback, research literacy and the use of learning technologies as part of distance and blended learning in higher education and initial teacher education contexts. Generally, and as part of the exploration of this personalised learning agenda, he is interested in the use and innovative development of qualitative research methodology.Larry V. Hedges is one of eight Board of Trustees Professors at Northwestern, the university’s most distinguished academic position. He holds appointments in statistics and data science, psychology, education and social policy, and medical social sciences. Previously, he was the Stella M. Rowley Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He received the Yidan Prize in Education Research in 2018 and the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education from the World Culture Council in 2023 He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Statistical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Educational Research Association. He is also a member of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, which established an annual endowed lecture in his honor. He was selected to give the inaugural Hedges Lecture in 2016. Hedges was nominated by President Barack Obama to the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in June 2012, and was elected Chair of the Board in 2016. Widely published, he has authored or co-authored 250 journal articles and 13 books including Coe, Waring, Hedges, & Day Ashley, Research Methods and Methodologies in Education, 3rd edition (2021, Sage London). He has also co-directed  research training institutes on research design  funded by the US Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation for the last 20 years.Dr Laura Day Ashley, University of Birmingham, Lecturer and Co-Head of Research and Knowledge Transfer for the Department of Education and Social Justice. She has a background in social anthropology and comparative and international education, with a particular interest in alternative, informal and non-state forms of education provision beyond, or at the margins of, mainstream state schooling. Her research on private and non-state schools in low and middle-income countries has achieved significant and sustained policy impact. She has particular expertise in case study research in multiple contexts, and the development of rigorous literature reviews that assess bodies of evidence derived from both qualitative and quantitative research. 

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