The literature review is a pivotal component in educational research studies, serving as a bridge between existing knowledge and the research being undertaken. This article examines the multifaceted role and function of the literature review from a pragmatic perspective, highlighting its significance in advancing knowledge and informing…

In the realm of education, there has been an increasing emphasis on developing analytical thinking (AT) in the past few years. This systematic review focuses on an analysis of journal publications that have explored AT within the context of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. This analysis investigated four primary…

Systematic reviews have been gaining attention as a research methodology and are among the most frequently cited sources in educational sciences. However, best practices for conducting systematic reviews in educational sciences are still evolving. We conducted N = 12 qualitative interviews to learn from experienced systematic review researchers…

This review of recent scholarship (RRS) paper is a follow-up of the first, published in this journal in 2014. For this RRS paper, we identified and included 304 mixed-methods research (MMR) papers published in 20 top-tier applied linguistics (AL) journals. We used a six-pronged quality and transparency framework to review and analyze the MMR…

Children's fears have received scholarly attention for well over 50 years. A considerable amount of literature has focused on such fear variables as fear intensity and fear prevalence scores and age and gender differences. We used meta-analysis to systematically review the findings related to gender differences in children's fear intensity scores…

Identifying gifted students in today's complex context requires precision in both the definition of the concept and its constituent characteristics. However, there are discrepancies worldwide in the instruments established to diagnose gifted students. This study undertook a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify the most representative…

Scholarly efforts to identify core design features for effective teacher professional development have grown rapidly in the last 25 years. Many concise lists of design principles have emerged, most of which converge on a consensus of 5-7 presumably 'effective' features (e.g. collaborative tasks, active learning, focus on content). The…

As the number of articles on postsecondary topics expands, new methods are required to quantitatively understand the literature. Previous scholars looking at the higher education literature use manual coding, which limits the number of years that can be studied, or network analysis of citations and words, which does not yield groupings of articles…

In this article we propose a taxonomy describing various types of literature review or theoretical/conceptual articles. We distinguish each article type based on how well they address the "summary" and "advocacy" arguments inherent in all secondary scholarship. Understanding this taxonomy of review/theory scholarship is…

This systematic review synthesizes recent trends in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research, examining 149 empirical studies published in Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) journals between 2014 and 2023. Employing a six-dimensional coding framework, we investigated participants, pedagogical methods, research methods, research foci,…

This research reviews 56 robots in science education (RSE) research articles published in SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) journals in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The analysis results showed that there were three clusters of RSE studies: robots in elementary science education, robot-based STEM activities, and robot-facilitated…

Concept maps have been used widely in various subjects of K-12 and higher education for diverse purposes. Digital concept maps (DCM) provide even more benefits, such as higher efficiency, expanded canvas, and multimedia integration. The present paper sought to analyze the research and application trends and issues in DCM research and practices…

There is an increasing interest in the integration of computational thinking (CT) in the K-12 curriculum. By integrating CT into other disciplines, the aim is to equip students with essential skills to navigate domain-specific challenges. This study conducts a systematic review of 108 peer-reviewed scientific papers to analyze in which K-12…