A Comparative Study On American And Chinese Higher Educational Research

The Chinese higher education is developing quickly, the reaserch teams are growing gradually, the research field is expanding constantly, the research results are increasing quickly. But compared with the higher education powers like America, problems and gap still exist in our country’s higher education research. As a result, using the comparative method to analyze the higher education research of China and America basing on the research orientation, the research topics and research methods and the application of research results,clearing gap and defect of higher education research in our country so that promoting the healthy development of higher education research of our country.First of all, with 12 kinds of education core journals in CSSCI database and eight kinds core journals of education in the United States institute for scientific information(ISI) database published from 2000 to 2013 higher education class paper as the research object, analysising the higher education research topics of China and America by the CiteSpace information visualization software. Clearing the overall distribution of higher education research topics and the exploration of the hot topics. The study found that the research orientation of Chinese scholars is constructing the subject system, the research orientation of American scholars is to solve practical problems. The scholars of our country tend to studying the problems of the macro field and they pay few attention on problems of the micro field. But the higher education research topic in the United States mainly concentrated in the micro level, reflecting the full attention of students and teachers, main research issues are encountered in the teacher and students in the teaching and learning of practical problems and phenomena. Statisticing the usage of research methods of scholars in China and the United States, from the level of methodology, qualitative characteristics of higher education research in our country is still obvious, proportion is as high as 82.1%, qualitative research occupies a dominant position. But the higher education research in the United States is given priority to with quantitative research, empirical research occupy the mainstream. The proportion of quantitative research is 56.83%. The research achievements of scholars in our country is mainly used with policy advice, the research achievements of scholars in American is mainly used with education and teaching reform.Lastly, using the comparative method to analyze the higher education research of China and America basing on the research topics and research methods, clearing the differences and problems in the Chinese higher education research. According to the current situation of higher education research in the United States, putting forward the following suggestions for our country’s higher education researchers: creating more paradigms,strengthening orientation of problem; broadening the research field of vision and updating research topic constantly; applying multi-discipline reasearch methods;increasing the micro empirical research;exploring transformating form of the research results into teaching and education,improving the applying value of the results.