The National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) is hosting a webinar on Friday, September 25, at 12:30 PM EST on Revealing knowledge bases of educational research, presented by Kristine Lund. Dr. Lund is a CNRS Senior Research Engineer in the ICAR language sciences laboratory at the University of Lyon and served as the vice-director of ICAR for 4 years (2007-2010). An English-French-Finnish trilingual, she is also currently Chief Scientific Officer at the www.Cognik.net company and one of its three co-founders. CogniK personalizes and adapts multimedia content for specific audiences.
Abstract:
Educational research covers a diverse area of topics ranging from psychological principles of learning and the role of language in cognition to the history of educational institutions and education’s economic impact. Such diversity presents integration challenges and questions how research can be connected so that collective knowledge may advance. We used a scientometric analysis to examine the knowledge bases of educational research and present a global map that consists of 18 research clusters or subfields that are connected by distinct sets of references. The nature of these sets of references varied, breaking down differently into theory-based, method-based, domain-based, empirical and consensus document references. Five of the clusters are centrally focused on research in education in that they appear to concentrate on teaching and learning directly.
Five other clusters are more peripherally focused on research in education because they also work on other topics. A comparison of the clusters with AERA Divisions and SIGs show some close one-to-one matches and we argue that this gives evidence for clusters grouping articles in way relevant to communities of practice. Lastly, we examined the place of educational research within research in social sciences and found that educational research is distributed across diverse fields, actively incorporating and connecting multiple disciplines. Our interactive on-line maps of research in education can be used by students, researchers and practitioners to explore the collectively built knowledge bases of research in education.
To join the webinar, please register here by 11:59pm EST on Thursday, September 24, 2015.
