Educational research means the organized collection and examination of the
data related to education. It is a scientific study that examines the learning and
teaching methods for better understanding of the education system. It is an
observation and investigation in the field of education.
Research is done in search of new knowledge or to use the existing knowledge in
a better way. It helps to acquire useful knowledge and solve the challenges faced
in education. Research tries to get a better understanding of education.
Literature review means the overview of the works published previously on a
subject matter. It is the summary of the work done by other authors on a topic.
Literature review will help a researcher in understanding how to carry on the
research and what needs to be covered.
Related literature and studies are important in research because we need to
understand what other researchers have done and have found before we can
plan our own literature.
For example, let’s say I was curious about whether how teachers treat students
(whether kindly or unkindly) affects student performance. If I didn’t look at
previous research on this subject, I might end up simply repeating research that
had already been done, which might be a waste of my time. By looking at
previous research and related literature, I can determine what questions related
to my own interest have already been explored. For example, I might find studies
that show that treating students harshly is associated with worse student
performance (such studies were done in the 50s, though I’m not going to look
them up at the moment). These studies open up more questions for us, though
— did these students perform worse because of how harsh their teachers were,
or were the teachers harsh in response to how their students were performing /
behaving?
What we can see from this example is that there are always more and new
questions to explore to more fully understand a subject. If a great deal of
quantitative research has been done on a subject, there might be room for
qualitative research that can illuminate those quantitative results (as in the
example above). Similarly, if a great deal of qualitative research has been done
on a subject, there might be room for quantitative research which could help
researchers generalize in ways they can’t from qualitative research. There is
always more to learn, even if our review of the literature means that we have to
rethink the questions we were hoping to explore in our own research!
DIFFERENCE AND SIMILARITIES
 Related literature is done from books, professional journals,
newspapers, magazines, and other publications. Related studies consist
of theses, manuscripts, and dissertations.
 After literature review, the individual tries to develop his/her own opinion
on the topic. Review of related studies is obtaining answers from what
has been studied.
 Related literature focuses on the opinions and ideas of one’s own on a
particular topic. Related studies analyze the work of other researchers
and focus on the results received by them.