Features of formation and modern trends in the development of methodology and methods of comparative educational research

Introduction. The main research problem of the article is the need to obtain up-to-date knowledge about the trends in the development of methodology and methods of comparative educational research during the period of changing the vector from globalization to a multipolar world. The purpose of the article is to present the results of investigating the features of the formation and modern trends in the development of methodology and methods of comparative educational research which affect the improvement of the quality of studies into education systems in different countries. Materials and Methods. The identification of trends in the development of methodology and methods of comparative educational research was conducted on the basis of: 1. analysis of changes in the main paradigms of social sciences (as a theoretical basis for comparative education); 2. historical analysis of the formation of the methodology of comparative education (changes in the methods and goals of comparative studies); 2. I. R. Lugovskoy’s parametric approach, which involves the study of the content and organizational component of comparative educational research. Theoretical research methods involved theoretical analysis, synthesis, and classification. The analytical review of studies by Russian and international authors over the last five years has been conducted. The article summarizes the results of studies conducted by Russian and foreign researchers in 2019-2024, presented in leading Russian journals: "Problems of Education", "Science for Education Today", "Higher Education in Russia", "Integration of Education", "Education and Self-Development", "Pedagogy". The content of publications on modern international comparative studies presented in GOOGLEBOOKS is analyzed (350 sources from 1960 to 2024 have been found). The problems of current dissertation research on comparative education, defended in the 2000s in the Russian Federation, have been studied. Results. The authors of the article: - have summarized the features of comparative educational research in the context of its historical development, the task of which was to provide reliable information in different historical periods about educational systems in foreign countries for the purpose of ‘knowing others’, ‘understanding others’, ‘building others’, ‘measuring others’, searching for the effectiveness and quality of education; - have substantiated the importance of the historical, philosophical, sociological, cultural approaches in the methodology of comparative educational research; - have explained the possibilities of applying various algorithms for organizing comparative educational research, including: - description, interpretation, comparison, proposals, generalization, conclusions; - identifying the problem, analyzing the problem, proposing its solutions, clarifying the context of the problem, comparison, conclusions; - collecting information that has practical significance for application; its analysis; studying the results of ongoing educational research; searching for methods for forecasting the development of education, etc.; - have revealed the most common modern research methods in comparative education: the comparative-contrastive method; methods of theoretical analysis, observation, as well as surveys, questionnaires, formalized interviews, event analysis along with scientific measurement methods (statistical, content analysis, thesaurus, graphical analysis), mathematical methods of data processing, etc. Conclusions. The analysis that was undertaken allows the authors to conclude that comparative education, as an interdisciplinary area of scientific research, having its theoretical basis in the field of social sciences, has not developed its own universal research methodology and the discourse on the search for the most appropriate method in comparative studies continues. At the same time, nowadays, general trends in the development of methodology and methods in foreign and Russian comparative studies are determined: - the leading methodological approaches, most often used, are the historical, philosophical, sociological approaches, which can be associated with the holistic paradigm of the surrounding world as an integral system; - the development of the methodology of social sciences has led to significant shifts in the methods used in comparative education. General scientific methods of theoretical analysis, comparative-historical, parametric analysis and other methods can be combined with sociological methods of survey, interviewing, questionnaires, methods of expert assessment, inventory analysis.