Empowering Educational Researchers through Effective Data Presentation Methods: Balancing Clarity, Accuracy, and Interpretability

This study used bibliographic analysis to validate the research trends of technology-enhanced digital storytelling (DS) in education and educational research published from 2005 to 2022, reviewing the literature found in the Web of Science (WoS) databases. The study investigated trends in learning domains in DS by primarily analyzing the top published journals and the most frequently cited DS-related articles, countries, publishing authors, occurring keywords, research methods, and application domains in the field. This paper mainly used bibliometric analysis and examined the relationship between keywords using the VOSviewer software. Four thematic clusters were identified: DS, education, technology, and literacy. The results show that Robin’s study is the most frequently cited DS-related work in the education and educational research field. Important findings in the literature about the main application domains in DS research are that activity is dominant, there is no specific domain, followed by the application of language, and next by position studies. The results highlight the research trend of technology-enhanced storytelling education, and recommendations are provided for future research. For field researchers, the analysis serves as a map to explore the indiscernible relationships among DS research trends, providing new avenues for DS researchers to investigate further.

Like other Nordic countries, Denmark is a mixed-economy welfare society, where capitalist production and market logics coexist with public policy having social cohesion and equality as important priorities. Educational and pedagogical research, which is a main knowledge base for policy and practice in schools and the education system, is also seen as a field of public responsibility, carried out mainly in universities and other public research institutes. In recent years, however, a number of private actors have engaged in funding research related to education and learning. The actors include private organizations doing research in connection with product development and privately established foundations initiating research and development projects. The interplay between public and private funding and management can promote quality research combining new general knowledge with societal relevance; but it can also lead to narrow criteria for topics and methods, unsettling important balances in the field of educational research. The article examines and discusses these developments, especially the role of private foundations, as well as the conditions for fruitful interaction between the public sector and private actors in educational research.

How do policy instruments generate new ones? Analysing policy instruments feedback and interaction in educational research in England, 1986-2014

Educators, scholars, and policy makers agree that quality research is needed to improve teaching and teacher education (Boote & Beile, 2005; Grossman, 2008; Levine, 2007; Young, 2008). This is especially true in the current climate of increasing pressures to produce research that can guide policy making in an age of standards-based reform and teacher accountability. As pressures to enhance student achievement and teaching practice mount, so too does the demand for better and more rigorous empirical educational research that can inform policies and practice. Critical to this improvement is the preparation and training of educational researchers in doctoral programs. It is often presumed that teacher educators who have completed doctoral programs possess the knowledge and skills to conduct research that can contribute to the knowledge base of teaching and teacher education. It is also expected that the academic work produced by these teacher educators be useful in informing teaching practice, teacher education, and policies. However, much has been written about the lack of rigor and weaknesses in work produced by educational researchers in general and teacher educators in particular. Questions about the value of some contributions to the collective knowledge about teaching and teacher education have been raised (Grossman, 2004, 2008; Lagemann, 2000; Levine, 2007; Lin, Wang, Klecka, Odell, & Spalding, 2010; Mitchell & Haro, 1999; Wilson, 2006; Wilson & Tamir, 2008; Zeichner, 2005). Differences in traditions, purposes, design, and foci among different doctoral programs engendered, in part, by the lack of consensus about standards of good research and complicated by the multiple disciplinary traditions within the field of educational research (Levine, 2007; Metz, 2001) as well as the lack of distinction between PhD and EdD degrees (Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Garabedian, 2006) have not helped matters. Although recently some discourse has occurred around improving the preparation of educational researchers in doctoral programs (Labaree, 2003; Levine, 2007; Neumann, Pallas, & Peterson, 2008; Pallas, 2001, Schoenfeld, 1999; Wilson, 2006; Young, 2001; Zeichner, 2005), research about teacher educators and their research preparation in doctoral programs is understudied and in its infancy. (1) Much is still unknown about the links between teacher education programs and subsequent teacher performance and student achievement. A similar gap exists between researcher preparation and the subsequent quality of educational researchers. There is much to be learned about how best to prepare teacher educators in the midst of enduring charges of low-quality research and increasing demands for research that can inform policy and practice. The principal aim of this editorial is to provoke thought and dialogue about how to prepare better teacher educator-researchers in research-focused doctoral programs and propose possible research areas that may be useful to strengthening or rethinking their preparation. Although we recognize that being prepared to be a good teacher educator-researcher in academe encompasses more than simply being prepared to conduct high-quality educational research, such as learning to be a strong teacher and mentor (Chauvot, 2009), we focus our discussion on the research preparation component in doctoral programs to stimulate deeper thought about better practices for preparing and training teacher educator-researchers. We frame our discussion around three questions: What should be learned about research? How should candidates learn to do research? How can learning about and doing research be sustained beyond doctoral programs? What Should Be Learned About Research? Learning about research encompasses many aspects. It is expected generally that in doctoral programs, aspiring educational researchers learn to understand the complexity of research issues from multiple disciplinary traditions of theory and method and situate their work so that it contributes to the collective understanding of the field (Boote & Beile, 2005; Metz, 2001; Golde, 2007; Shulman, 2003; Towne, Wise & Winters, 2005). …

As a doctoral student at Stanford in the 1970s, I was fortunate to be able to observe up close the beginnings of a radically new approach to the study of matters educational. This was the period in the career of my advisor and mentor, Professor Elliot Eisner, during which he was imagining a place for the arts within the fields of educational research and evaluation.Of course, within these olden, if not golden, days of educational research orthodoxy, any questioning of social science as the exclusive methodological wellspring was widely regarded as heretical. Nevertheless, no doubt encouraged by certain developments in the larger intellectual counterculture, Eisner managed to disrupt the prevailing monolithic mindset, successfully challenging the taken-for-granted notion that the scientific method provided the only useful avenue for enhancing educational policy and practice.Over time, Eisner has been joined in his efforts by increasing numbers of converts and disciples, including yours truly. Of course, the legitimacy of non-scientific approaches to educational research remains contested, with the nostalgic notion of a gold standard having been recently resurrected in the United States through policy initiatives at the level of the federal government. Nevertheless, it is primarily due to the groundbreaking work of Eisner that today's traditional methodologists in the academy find it more difficult to dismiss those of us who look to the arts for both a process of researching educational phenomena and a means for disclosing what we find.A presence within the educational research community has indeed been established-through conference sessions, journal articles and books, theses and dissertations, university courses, workshops and institutes, special interest groups, electronic listservs, websites, encyclopedia and handbook entries, newsletters, and so on. The literature that suggests rationales for, and addresses pertinent issues related to, artsbased research has burgeoned. An untold number of examples of artsbased research have found their way into print, and others have been read/displayed/performed at scholarly meetings and conferences. Entire journal issues have been devoted to the topic. And its thoughtful and provocative contents make this issue of Studies in Art Education among the most notable of them.Enclosed are essays by several important scholars who are currently working within (what is by now) the tradition of arts-based educational research. The first of these is Eisner himself, offering a brief, up-to-date commentary on the status and possible future of arts-based research. Five other essayists move to describe, endorse, reinscribe, challenge, and extend some of the premises and practices that have come to be associated with this approach.Indeed, these articles suggest a rich harvest from a methodological field first claimed, cultivated, and planted by Eisner so many decades ago. They reveal nothing less than a bumper crop of theoretical notions regarding arts-based inquiry and of actualizations of the approach in specific projects. While acknowledging Eisner's early spadework, these authors suggest expansions of the original boundaries of arts-based research, and even alterations-some slight, some more pronounced-of its identity. Indeed, a motif of sorts can be found in the (sometimes tacit) homage paid by one author after another to the legacy of Eisnerian-style arts-based research, even as they suggest alternate labels-aesthetically-based research, a/r/tography, arts-inspired research, arts practice as research-for what seem to be, in most cases, newly designated species within an established genus.Indeed, each of the approaches described and exemplified here distinguishes itself as an important addition to the earlier contributions of Eisner and other arts-based research pioneers. The ideas within the essay by Liora Bresler are perhaps most strongly reminiscent of that earlier literature. …

The field of graduate medical education (GME) research is attracting increased attention and broader participation. The authors review the special ethical and methodological considerations pertaining to medical education research. Because residents are at once a convenient and captive study population, a risk of coercion exists, making the provision of consent important. The role of the institutional review board (IRB) is often difficult to discern because GME activities can have multiple simultaneous purposes, educational activities may go forward with or without a research component, and the subjects of educational research studies are not patients. The authors provide a road map for researchers with regard to research oversight by the IRB and also address issues related to research quality. The matters of whether educational research studies should have educational value for the study subject and whether to use individual information obtained when residents participate as research subjects are explored.

The relevance of the study of generational relations of educational communities in Russian universities is determined by the increasing influence of the generational factor on various aspects of academic life and by the insufficient development of the theoretical-methodological foundations of such research. To understand the state of generational interactions between students, research-teaching staff and administrative-managerial personnel, it is necessary to develop the subject field of generational research in higher education. Such work will help to develop theoretical-methodological approaches, which today are reduced almost exclusively to the concept of W. Strauss and N. Howe, and to expand the list of research questions. In the sociology of higher education, there are no systematic ideas about the subject field of generational research of educational communities, its boundaries, structure and segments. The article aims at reconstructing this subject field and assessing the possibilities of extrapolating its structure to the sociology of higher education. The authors identified four fields in the generational approach: generational structure of society and the dynamics of generations; generational self-awareness; intergenerational relations and interactions; their regulation. This approach can be extrapolated to sociological studies of interactions between university educational communities. The authors proposed the following structure of the subject field of generational research in higher education: generational structure of university community (demographic, age, qualification, organizational and managerial substructures) and its dynamics; generational self-awareness (ideas about one’s generation and its differences from other generations, generational self-identity, values, interests and stereotypes); generational interactions in university community (from exchange, agreement, consensus, dialogue to conflicts, breaks, value split); regulation of intergenerational relations (social-cultural and managerial mechanisms). The conducted study contributes to the development of the sociological theory of generations and generational research in the sociology of higher education.

This bibliometric analysis illustrates how, between 2020 and 2024, technology has impacted educational decisions. Using the Web of Science Core Collection, 371 English-language publications in the field of education and educational research were analysed. In VOSviewer, assessments of performance, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence were carried out. Six thematic clusters emerged: (1) qualitative research and pedagogical frameworks; (2) technology acceptance and behavioral theories; (3) e-learning, learning analytics, and pandemic adaptation; (4) artificial intelligence, ethics, and mixed-method evaluation; (5) active learning, diffusion of innovations, and learning efficacy; and (6) social cognitive and motivational perspectives on STEM pathways. The corpus is worldwide in scope and has strong ties to analytics-informed leadership, policy responsiveness, and teacher practice. The findings demonstrate a growing interest in evidence-based education, data-driven leadership, and AI governance – all of which are consistent with Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education). This study's thorough intellectual map connects adoption, pedagogy, analytics, and governance while offering helpful recommendations for institutional and policy decision-making on curriculum, funding, and capacity building. The bibliometric analysis updates to track this rapidly evolving topic and spot a clear research gap: the requirement for multi-theoretical, equity-sensitive models that integrate analytics and artificial intelligence with institutional decision-making processes.

As qualitative research methodologies continue to evolve within the field of educational research, the significance of understanding individual and collective stories has never been more important and the opportunities to develop more sophisticated and nuanced methodological approaches are within reach. This chapter focuses on two related approaches, Narrative Inquiry and Educational Biography, and offers new ways to think about the implications of methodological interplays which are the interactions, blendings, or mashups between different research methodologies, paradigms, or approaches. By examining the interplay between Narrative Inquiry and Educational Biography, social science researchers can better appreciate how these approaches contribute to deepening our understanding of educational practices and experiences. And, for those engaged in teaching and preparing educational researchers this examination offers new opportunities for designing learning.

Situated as a Ph.D. student in university mathematics education, I present some of my considerations about my identity as a researcher in this field. I discuss the larger global and local societal issues and their connections to educational research in university mathematics. My discussion goes beyond personal considerations and touches upon the structures and ideas that are both internal and external to university mathematics education. I discuss the different political projects that I can identify from my personal experiences across the fields of educational research, practice, and policy in university mathematics. I place myself firmly within the tradition of critical education, but also draw on postmodern theories. The results of the discussion are the identification of challenges for a postmodern critical mathematics education, with a focus on university mathematics.

Over the past half century there has been a rapid growth of professions and occupations which require college training. The future need for college trained persons must be filled from a group of young people which is smaller in pro portion to the total population than at any time in recent his tory. To be short on quantity in this group from which our leaders will emerge makes it more important than ever to make the most of the quantity available. Society looks to organized education for whole new fields of specialized training as well as refinements and extension of existing programs. Much greater emphasis will have to be placed upon learning as a lifelong process. To do the educational job America needs will call for substantial reorganization and expansion of school plant and facilities and bold and imaginative efforts to make tools of instruction more effective. The dimensions of opportunity which lie before us in the field of educational research are practically boundless but research in education to date has been meager. It is obviously going to take great sums of money and all of our ingenuity and effort as a nation to make the necessary progress to fill the trained manpower needs in every capacity.

This article describes the theoretical reasons and empirical operationalization of a multidimensional social origin measure. It is assumed that different parental resources are linked to social inequality through distinct mechanisms. This social origin variable can be used for the analysis of status inconsistencies as well as cumulating and compensating effects of social origin resources on inequality of opportunity. The proposed measure is easy to operationalize and to apply in cross-sectional, longitudinal or cross-national research. A great methodological advantage of the proposed origin measure is that it avoids the problem of multicollinearity that is prevalent in analyses that include various parental resources as separate covariates into a statistical model. To illustrate this social origin measure, we apply it to the field of educational inequality research and use data from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany. However, the approach can be easily generalized to other sociological or economic studies where social inequality is of interest (such as labor market, demographic, political, migration or ethnic research). The illustrative example combines the information of three family resources (parental education, parental class and parental status), but it can be extended to include further family resources such as income or wealth measures.

Scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the need to approach their teaching with the same expectations for evidence that they use in their science. They are coming to recognize that, just as in science research, research on undergraduate science education has a literature as well as standards for practice. I (M.L.L.) am a recent convert to this way of thinking. I taught for 30 years using mostly a lecture style and believed myself quite revolutionary when I used projected images to make cell biological points in class. I now teach using the results of discipline-based education research (DBER) and do my best to use instructional strategies that are demonstrated to improve student learning.

This paper reflects on the use of critical reviews as a form of research synthesis in educational science. The analysis is based on 20 critical reviews conducted in the field of digital education including different areas of education, from early childhood education to adult education. By investigating the individual steps involved in a critical review, the paper explores what methodologically defines this type of review and to what extent standards can be applied to it. Additionally, it examines whether the approach aligns more closely with other review types, such as systematic reviews. The findings provide insights into what is critical about critical reviews, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses associated with this review type. Critical reviews offer the potential to respond to heterogeneous research fields and dynamic subject areas in educational research. They also allow researchers to contextualise findings within a comprehensive literature search. On the other hand, challenges include a reduced emphasis on assessing the quality of individual studies and the difficulties in comparing literature. As a result of these findings, this paper concludes that critical reviews in the analysed examples proved to be particularly suitable for developing broader overviews in a field of educational research.

This paper introduces a literature from outside the field of education research and policy that we argue has potential to enhance both policy and practice. This field, behavioral genetics, has amassed highly replicable findings spanning more than half a century. Although no necessary policy implications follow from the evidence we review here, taking a “genetic lens” may offer education researchers and policy-makers an opportunity to look at existing research in a fresh way; and to ask new questions and design new solutions. Incorporating evidence from behavioral genetics into interpretations of education and policy data can help researchers and decision makers better understand why some education policies have worked while others have not, and inform broader discussions of equality, fairness, and disadvantage in education.