One challenge for comparative research is providing a convincing and comprehensive account of how social and political value positions translate into situated acts of teaching; or bringing values and practice together to allow teaching embedded in one context to be compared with teaching embedded in another so as to better inform educationalists and policy makers. This can be done through a focus on and comparison of pedagogy. Following a theorisation of pedagogy, this article discusses methodological approaches which allow researchers to identify patterns in complex social practice in order to make comparisons across contexts. Such approaches allow implications to be drawn with some confidence without losing the richness and messiness of real life. The approaches suggested attempt to be relatively straightforward to avoid hindering comparison by adding further to an already contextually complex picture.