The Content of Educational Psychology: an Analysis of Top Ranked Journals from 2003 Through 2007

Abstract

Educational psychology as a field of study has encountered a lack of distinction by overlapping with other fields of study or disciplines. Consequently, educational psychology continues to have difficulty claiming jurisdiction over bodies of research knowledge and has been encroached upon by other more crystallized disciplines. The purpose of this study is to examine the research literature published across top-ranked educational psychology journals to identify the common ground and current trends in research content and to identify those areas that can be reclaimed by the discipline as its own. Overall, 758 articles published in six journals from January 2003 through December 2007 were included in this study. A combination of statistics-based and linguistics-based methods were used to determine how frequently terms occur in the data and establishing a semantic network which created a probabilistic analysis of the co-occurrence of terms resulting in a constellation of terms showing the relationship and relative importance of the categories of terms. The results showed a consistency of research categories suggesting that in spite of reports to the contrary, there is a collective agreement among educational psychologists demonstrated by the empirical research in the field. Keywords Educational psychology . Citation analysisAcademic research journals serve an important function within and across scholarly disciplines. Journals offer scholars a forum where they can communicate ideas, stimulate discussion, and share information in the form of empirical research findings, thoughtful literature reviews, and academic essays. They are the barometers of change, indicating shifts of theoretical, ontological, or epistemological trends. Research journals document the historical influences and shifts within a discipline and define a field of study.As compendia of research, lack of attention to specific areas in the core literature suggests that those in the field are not being made aware of certain aspects of their

Research trends in social network sites’ educational use: a review of publications in all SSCI journals to 2015

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Technological adoption and use after mass market displacement: The case of the LP record

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Characteristics of educational sciences research activity in European post-socialist countries in the period 1996 to 2013: Content analysis approach

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