Introduction
All of the databases and tools in this guide are of potential use to research in comparative education. However, there are a few additional tips, tools, and sources that might be of particular value to those doing international research. Those are listed and linked here with a few tips regarding their peculiarities, in so far as I can determine them!
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International Organizations & Agencies
These organizations and agencies are some of the larger of the many that exist with important information on comparative education. I tried to include valuable tips regarding their use.
- International Institute for Educational PlanningPart of Unesco. Contains a wealth of resources. Click on LIBRARY & RESOURCES to get to country reports, policy briefings on important issues, and a link to their many series of publications. You can browse and search.
- OECD Education Working PapersThese papers cover a wide variety of timely topics. A very recent one looks and how different countries allocate instruction time, for example.
- OECD PISA in FocusThis is a series of monthly "hot topics" really, but through a comparative education lens.
- Teaching in FocusThese are policy briefs using data from OECD's Teaching & Learning International Survey (TALIS).
- Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)PISA "... is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. To date, students representing more than 70 economies have participated in the assessment." (from About) Coming out very soon is a special round of testing just done on 15-year-olds in 72 countries.
- World Bank Documents & ReportsThe World Bank has a lot of reports on education issues. The best way to search is from this page. You can browse by country for reports related to education in that country. You can also search in that search box or go to the Advanced Search where you can enter keywords and also limit by years, geographic areas/countries, language, type of document, and more.
Statistics
- OECD Education at a GlanceThis link is to 2016. Others are available on this site, too. Claims to be THE authoritative source on the state of education in the world!
- Education Policy & Data CenterThis is part of the nonprofit international development organization FHI360, focusing on collecting and analyzing educational statistics. Great source of data on developing countries in particular.
- World Bank EdStatsThe World Bank collects a lot of data related to education, and this is the place to look for it!
- NCES International Activities ProgramThe NCES does collect international comparative data on a wide variety of education topics, and this is where to find them.
- UNESCO Institute for StatisticsIncludes country comparison tables and the ability to create customized tables in the Data Centre (link in the left column). Many different reports and publications are available on this site. Some data goes back as far as 1975.
- Eurydice: The Information Network on Education in EuropeIncludes descriptions of education systems in each country as well as comparative studies. Data online goes back to 1999.
Very Important Journals
These are a few really core journals in the field. You will come across articles in them when searching the big education databases, ERIC, Education Source and Education Fulltext as well. But, sometimes browsing can be illuminating as well!
- Comparative Education (1964-2008)This link will give you access to issues of this important, very expensive, British journal from 1964 to 2008. You can browse or search from here. See the next entry for tips on accessing more recent issues.
- Comparative Education ( from 2009 forwards)You can search and browse recent issues on the publisher's website. Some articles are free. For the others, you can use the library's interlibrary loan service to request a PDF. They come in a day or two!
- Comparative Education ReviewThis takes you directly to the journal on the U of Chicago website. It has all the issues back to 1957. You can browse by issue or click the little search icon in the top right to get to basic search or advanced search.
- Current Issues in Comparative EducationThis is an international, online, open-access journal from Columbia Teachers College. Notice the links to access CURRENT or PAST issues, back to 1998.
- International Education Journal: Comparative PerspectivesThis is the biennial journal of the Australian and New Zealand Comparative and International Education Society. You can browse it freely on their website.
- International Review of EducationThis website gives you browsing and searching access back to 1997. If you want even older ones, back to 1955, you can find them through JStor at this address: https://login.libproxy.scu.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/journal/interevieducinte
- Research in Comparative and International EducationYou can search and browse all the issues of this journal at this website.