ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenges of investigating causal relationships in the complexity of education. The concept of causal relations reaches the field of educational research in the early 20th century. The concept seems to be generated in the physical sciences to explain the chain reaction between phenomena or events. Educational systems are organized and operate based on educational objectives, academic policies, and administrative structures that delineate the direction of teaching work in schools, establish the functioning of the components and define the causal relationships between their constituents. For some scholars and researchers, designs with random samples, such as the experimental design, are considered more powerful to study causal relationships in the field of education because they allow control of study variables. The use of statistics facilitates the creation of mathematical models of these relationships, which can then be accurately controlled and measured through experimentation.
