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Abstract: The article investigates the lack of a generally accepted term for the concept of “educational research activity”, in particular, in the documents of the GEF NGO. It is suggested that formulating a structural model of the abstract concept of “educational research activity” will help to specify the appropriate term in order to provide the necessary guidelines for all participants of the educational process. In this study, 32 definitions of “educational research activity” belonging to 19 authors and 12 definitions of “scientific research activity” given by nine authors were analyzed. All definitions were divided into structure-related and content-related. To identify the features of the educational research activity as a specific activity, a projection of the General model was built. For this purpose, the structural elements of the activity model, as a generic concept, necessary for this study were identified. Such elements included: aim, object, subject, conditions, means and result. The article deliberately does not consider the content or composition of the actions that make up the activity, as this issue has been extensively covered in other pedagogical publications. Features of similarity and difference of the concepts of educational and scientific research activity were investigated. The composition of the subjects of the activity is considered to be substantially different. The phenomenon of the presence of two subjects in educational research activity forms the basis of the proposed model. This phenomenon determines the duality of goals and results of the studied activity. An important element of similarity between scientific and educational research is the same means of activity — the scientific method. Knowledge of the facts of similarity and difference facilitates the specification of tasks and the role of participants in the educational process. Built on the basis of the General model, the structural model of educational research activity contributed to the clarification of the structure-related definition of the concept.