research topics related to teaching and learning

Research Topics & Ideas: Education

170+ Research Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

If you’re just starting out exploring education-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research topic ideation process by providing a hearty list of research topics and ideas , including examples from actual dissertations and theses..

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . To develop a suitable education-related research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Education Research Topics

• How to find a research topic (video)
• List of 50+ education-related research topics/ideas
• List of 120+ level-specific research topics 
• Examples of actual dissertation topics in education
• Tips to fast-track your topic ideation (video)
• Free Webinar : Topic Ideation 101
• Where to get extra help

Education-Related Research Topics & Ideas

Below you’ll find a list of education-related research topics and idea kickstarters. These are fairly broad and flexible to various contexts, so keep in mind that you will need to refine them a little. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

• The impact of school funding on student achievement
• The effects of social and emotional learning on student well-being
• The effects of parental involvement on student behaviour
• The impact of teacher training on student learning
• The impact of classroom design on student learning
• The impact of poverty on education
• The use of student data to inform instruction
• The role of parental involvement in education
• The effects of mindfulness practices in the classroom
• The use of technology in the classroom
• The role of critical thinking in education
• The use of formative and summative assessments in the classroom
• The use of differentiated instruction in the classroom
• The use of gamification in education
• The effects of teacher burnout on student learning
• The impact of school leadership on student achievement
• The effects of teacher diversity on student outcomes
• The role of teacher collaboration in improving student outcomes
• The implementation of blended and online learning
• The effects of teacher accountability on student achievement
• The effects of standardized testing on student learning
• The effects of classroom management on student behaviour
• The effects of school culture on student achievement
• The use of student-centred learning in the classroom
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student outcomes
• The achievement gap in minority and low-income students
• The use of culturally responsive teaching in the classroom
• The impact of teacher professional development on student learning
• The use of project-based learning in the classroom
• The effects of teacher expectations on student achievement
• The use of adaptive learning technology in the classroom
• The impact of teacher turnover on student learning
• The effects of teacher recruitment and retention on student learning
• The impact of early childhood education on later academic success
• The impact of parental involvement on student engagement
• The use of positive reinforcement in education
• The impact of school climate on student engagement
• The role of STEM education in preparing students for the workforce
• The effects of school choice on student achievement
• The use of technology in the form of online tutoring

Level-Specific Research Topics

Looking for research topics for a specific level of education? We’ve got you covered. Below you can find research topic ideas for primary, secondary and tertiary-level education contexts. Click the relevant level to view the respective list.

Research Topics: Pick An Education Level

Primary education.

• Investigating the effects of peer tutoring on academic achievement in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of mindfulness practices in primary school classrooms
• Examining the effects of different teaching strategies on primary school students’ problem-solving skills
• The use of storytelling as a teaching strategy in primary school literacy instruction
• The role of cultural diversity in promoting tolerance and understanding in primary schools
• The impact of character education programs on moral development in primary school students
• Investigating the use of technology in enhancing primary school mathematics education
• The impact of inclusive curriculum on promoting equity and diversity in primary schools
• The impact of outdoor education programs on environmental awareness in primary school students
• The influence of school climate on student motivation and engagement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of early literacy interventions on reading comprehension in primary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student achievement in primary schools
• Exploring the benefits of inclusive education for students with special needs in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of teacher-student feedback on academic motivation in primary schools
• The role of technology in developing digital literacy skills in primary school students
• Effective strategies for fostering a growth mindset in primary school students
• Investigating the role of parental support in reducing academic stress in primary school children
• The role of arts education in fostering creativity and self-expression in primary school students
• Examining the effects of early childhood education programs on primary school readiness
• Examining the effects of homework on primary school students’ academic performance
• The role of formative assessment in improving learning outcomes in primary school classrooms
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic outcomes in primary school
• Investigating the effects of classroom environment on student behavior and learning outcomes in primary schools
• Investigating the role of creativity and imagination in primary school curriculum
• The impact of nutrition and healthy eating programs on academic performance in primary schools
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on primary school students’ well-being and academic performance
• The role of parental involvement in academic achievement of primary school children
• Examining the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior in primary school
• The role of school leadership in creating a positive school climate Exploring the benefits of bilingual education in primary schools
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in developing critical thinking skills in primary school students
• The role of inquiry-based learning in fostering curiosity and critical thinking in primary school students
• The effects of class size on student engagement and achievement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of recess and physical activity breaks on attention and learning in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of outdoor play in developing gross motor skills in primary school children
• The effects of educational field trips on knowledge retention in primary school students
• Examining the effects of inclusive classroom practices on students’ attitudes towards diversity in primary schools
• The impact of parental involvement in homework on primary school students’ academic achievement
• Investigating the effectiveness of different assessment methods in primary school classrooms
• The influence of physical activity and exercise on cognitive development in primary school children
• Exploring the benefits of cooperative learning in promoting social skills in primary school students

Secondary Education

• Investigating the effects of school discipline policies on student behavior and academic success in secondary education
• The role of social media in enhancing communication and collaboration among secondary school students
• The impact of school leadership on teacher effectiveness and student outcomes in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of technology integration on teaching and learning in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of interdisciplinary instruction in promoting critical thinking skills in secondary schools
• The impact of arts education on creativity and self-expression in secondary school students
• The effectiveness of flipped classrooms in promoting student learning in secondary education
• The role of career guidance programs in preparing secondary school students for future employment
• Investigating the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student autonomy and academic success in secondary schools
• The impact of socio-economic factors on educational attainment in secondary education
• Investigating the impact of project-based learning on student engagement and academic achievement in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of multicultural education on cultural understanding and tolerance in secondary schools
• The influence of standardized testing on teaching practices and student learning in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior and academic engagement in secondary education
• The influence of teacher professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of extracurricular activities in promoting holistic development and well-roundedness in secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models on student engagement and achievement in secondary education
• The role of physical education in promoting physical health and well-being among secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of gender on academic achievement and career aspirations in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of multicultural literature in promoting cultural awareness and empathy among secondary school students
• The impact of school counseling services on student mental health and well-being in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of vocational education and training in preparing secondary school students for the workforce
• The role of digital literacy in preparing secondary school students for the digital age
• The influence of parental involvement on academic success and well-being of secondary school students
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on secondary school students’ well-being and academic success
• The role of character education in fostering ethical and responsible behavior in secondary school students
• Examining the effects of digital citizenship education on responsible and ethical technology use among secondary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of educational technology in promoting personalized learning experiences in secondary schools
• The impact of inclusive education on the social and academic outcomes of students with disabilities in secondary schools
• The influence of parental support on academic motivation and achievement in secondary education
• The role of school climate in promoting positive behavior and well-being among secondary school students
• Examining the effects of peer mentoring programs on academic achievement and social-emotional development in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of teacher-student relationships on student motivation and achievement in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning programs in promoting civic engagement among secondary school students
• The impact of educational policies on educational equity and access in secondary education
• Examining the effects of homework on academic achievement and student well-being in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of different assessment methods on student performance in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of single-sex education on academic performance and gender stereotypes in secondary schools
• The role of mentoring programs in supporting the transition from secondary to post-secondary education

Tertiary Education

• The role of student support services in promoting academic success and well-being in higher education
• The impact of internationalization initiatives on students’ intercultural competence and global perspectives in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of active learning classrooms and learning spaces on student engagement and learning outcomes in tertiary education
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning experiences in fostering civic engagement and social responsibility in higher education
• The influence of learning communities and collaborative learning environments on student academic and social integration in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of undergraduate research experiences in fostering critical thinking and scientific inquiry skills
• Investigating the effects of academic advising and mentoring on student retention and degree completion in higher education
• The role of student engagement and involvement in co-curricular activities on holistic student development in higher education
• The impact of multicultural education on fostering cultural competence and diversity appreciation in higher education
• The role of internships and work-integrated learning experiences in enhancing students’ employability and career outcomes
• Examining the effects of assessment and feedback practices on student learning and academic achievement in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty-student relationships on student success and well-being in tertiary education
• The impact of college transition programs on students’ academic and social adjustment to higher education
• The impact of online learning platforms on student learning outcomes in higher education
• The impact of financial aid and scholarships on access and persistence in higher education
• The influence of student leadership and involvement in extracurricular activities on personal development and campus engagement
• Exploring the benefits of competency-based education in developing job-specific skills in tertiary students
• Examining the effects of flipped classroom models on student learning and retention in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of online collaboration and virtual team projects in developing teamwork skills in tertiary students
• Investigating the effects of diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus climate and student experiences in tertiary education
• The influence of study abroad programs on intercultural competence and global perspectives of college students
• Investigating the effects of peer mentoring and tutoring programs on student retention and academic performance in tertiary education
• Investigating the effectiveness of active learning strategies in promoting student engagement and achievement in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models and hybrid courses on student learning and satisfaction in higher education
• The role of digital literacy and information literacy skills in supporting student success in the digital age
• Investigating the effects of experiential learning opportunities on career readiness and employability of college students
• The impact of e-portfolios on student reflection, self-assessment, and showcasing of learning in higher education
• The role of technology in enhancing collaborative learning experiences in tertiary classrooms
• The impact of research opportunities on undergraduate student engagement and pursuit of advanced degrees
• Examining the effects of competency-based assessment on measuring student learning and achievement in tertiary education
• Examining the effects of interdisciplinary programs and courses on critical thinking and problem-solving skills in college students
• The role of inclusive education and accessibility in promoting equitable learning experiences for diverse student populations
• The role of career counseling and guidance in supporting students’ career decision-making in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty diversity and representation on student success and inclusive learning environments in higher education

Education-Related Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic in education, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses in the education space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of education-related research projects to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• From Rural to Urban: Education Conditions of Migrant Children in China (Wang, 2019)
• Energy Renovation While Learning English: A Guidebook for Elementary ESL Teachers (Yang, 2019)
• A Reanalyses of Intercorrelational Matrices of Visual and Verbal Learners’ Abilities, Cognitive Styles, and Learning Preferences (Fox, 2020)
• A study of the elementary math program utilized by a mid-Missouri school district (Barabas, 2020)
• Instructor formative assessment practices in virtual learning environments : a posthumanist sociomaterial perspective (Burcks, 2019)
• Higher education students services: a qualitative study of two mid-size universities’ direct exchange programs (Kinde, 2020)
• Exploring editorial leadership : a qualitative study of scholastic journalism advisers teaching leadership in Missouri secondary schools (Lewis, 2020)
• Selling the virtual university: a multimodal discourse analysis of marketing for online learning (Ludwig, 2020)
• Advocacy and accountability in school counselling: assessing the use of data as related to professional self-efficacy (Matthews, 2020)
• The use of an application screening assessment as a predictor of teaching retention at a midwestern, K-12, public school district (Scarbrough, 2020)
• Core values driving sustained elite performance cultures (Beiner, 2020)
• Educative features of upper elementary Eureka math curriculum (Dwiggins, 2020)
• How female principals nurture adult learning opportunities in successful high schools with challenging student demographics (Woodward, 2020)
• The disproportionality of Black Males in Special Education: A Case Study Analysis of Educator Perceptions in a Southeastern Urban High School (McCrae, 2021)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, in order for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest.  In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

Get 1-On-1 Help

If you’re still unsure about how to find a quality research topic within education, check out our Research Topic Kickstarter service, which is the perfect starting point for developing a unique, well-justified research topic.

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Home » 500+ Educational Research Topics

500+ Educational Research Topics

Education is a fundamental human right that plays a vital role in shaping the future of individuals, communities, and societies. In order to improve the effectiveness of education, it is crucial to engage in rigorous educational research that seeks to understand how people learn, what factors influence their learning outcomes, and how educational systems can be designed to promote equitable access and success for all learners. Educational research topics cover a wide range of issues, from exploring new teaching methods to examining the impact of technology on learning. In this blog post, we will delve into some of the most important and relevant educational research topics, highlighting their significance and potential impact on the field of education.

Educational Research Topics

Educational Research Topics are as follows:

• The effects of personalized learning on student academic achievement
• The impact of teacher expectations on student achievement
• The effectiveness of flipped classroom models on student engagement and learning outcomes
• The impact of classroom design on student behavior and learning
• The relationship between socio-economic status and student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction on student academic achievement
• The impact of technology on student learning outcomes
• The effectiveness of online learning versus traditional classroom instruction
• The influence of teacher expectations on student achievement
• The role of parental involvement in student success
• The relationship between school culture and student engagement
• The impact of teacher training on student achievement
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring programs
• The relationship between socioeconomic status and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of project-based learning
• The impact of standardized testing on student motivation and achievement
• The role of homework in student learning
• The relationship between teacher-student rapport and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction
• The relationship between student self-esteem and academic achievement
• The impact of school size on student achievement
• The role of school discipline policies in student behavior and achievement
• The effectiveness of character education programs
• The relationship between school funding and student achievement
• The impact of school start times on student achievement
• The effectiveness of arts education programs
• The relationship between teacher feedback and student learning
• The impact of school climate on student achievement
• The effectiveness of online assessment tools
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student behavior
• The impact of school resources on student achievement
• The effectiveness of teacher collaboration
• The relationship between student motivation and academic achievement
• The impact of class size on student achievement
• The role of student-teacher trust in academic achievement
• The effectiveness of student-led conferences
• The relationship between student self-efficacy and academic achievement
• The impact of school culture on teacher job satisfaction
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning
• The relationship between teacher stress and student achievement
• The impact of school safety measures on student achievement
• The effectiveness of flipped classroom instruction
• The relationship between teacher diversity and student achievement
• The impact of technology integration on teacher job satisfaction
• The effectiveness of project-based assessment
• The relationship between school climate and teacher job satisfaction
• The impact of teacher job satisfaction on student achievement
• The effectiveness of service-learning programs
• The relationship between school leadership and teacher job satisfaction
• The impact of parent-teacher communication on student achievement
• The effectiveness of online professional development for teachers
• The relationship between student engagement and teacher job satisfaction
• The impact of peer mentoring programs on student achievement
• The effectiveness of cooperative learning
• The relationship between teacher-student ethnicity match and student achievement
• The impact of school discipline policies on teacher job satisfaction
• The relationship between teacher quality and student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of technology integration in the classroom
• The impact of parent involvement on student academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher leadership and student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring on student academic achievement
• The impact of class size on student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of project-based learning on student academic achievement
• The impact of teacher diversity on student academic achievement
• The relationship between student engagement and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of student-centered learning on academic achievement
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic achievement
• The relationship between homework and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of cooperative learning on academic achievement
• The impact of school culture on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher collaboration and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of online learning on academic achievement
• The impact of standardized testing on student academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of mindfulness interventions on student academic achievement
• The impact of cultural competency on student academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher job satisfaction and student academic achievement
• The effectiveness of social-emotional learning on academic achievement
• The impact of parent-teacher communication on academic achievement
• The relationship between student-teacher relationships and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning on academic achievement
• The impact of learning environment on academic achievement
• The relationship between student attendance and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of feedback on academic achievement
• The impact of teacher expectations on student behavior
• The relationship between teacher training and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of teacher professional development on academic achievement
• The impact of teacher beliefs on student academic achievement
• The relationship between classroom management and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of bilingual education on academic achievement
• The impact of cultural background on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher turnover and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of tutoring programs on academic achievement
• The impact of teacher salaries on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher-student racial matching and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of college preparatory programs on academic achievement
• The impact of high-stakes testing on academic achievement
• The relationship between student well-being and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of service learning on academic achievement.
• The effects of technology on student learning outcomes.
• The relationship between parental involvement and student achievement.
• The impact of teacher feedback on student motivation and learning.
• The effectiveness of online learning compared to traditional classroom instruction.
• The role of emotional intelligence in academic success.
• The relationship between sleep and academic performance.
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring on student achievement.
• The impact of early childhood education on later academic success.
• The effects of social media on academic performance and well-being.
• The impact of teacher expectations on student achievement.
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction on student learning outcomes.
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student performance.
• The effectiveness of inclusive education for students with disabilities.
• The impact of teacher training and professional development on student outcomes.
• The effects of school culture and climate on student engagement and achievement.
• The relationship between homework and student achievement.
• The effectiveness of gamification in education.
• The impact of nutrition on student academic performance.
• The effects of gender on academic achievement and attitudes towards learning.
• The effectiveness of project-based learning on student engagement and learning outcomes.
• The relationship between school attendance and academic performance.
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic achievement and well-being.
• The effectiveness of cooperative learning on student learning outcomes.
• The effects of parental involvement in homework on student achievement.
• The relationship between student engagement and academic performance.
• The impact of classroom size on student learning outcomes.
• The effectiveness of feedback in online learning environments.
• The effects of poverty on student academic achievement.
• The relationship between student motivation and academic achievement.
• The impact of school leadership on student outcomes.
• The effectiveness of formative assessment on student learning outcomes.
• The effects of school funding on student achievement.
• The relationship between student self-regulation and academic performance.
• The impact of cultural diversity on academic achievement and student attitudes towards learning.
• The effectiveness of technology integration in the classroom.
• The effects of teacher diversity on student achievement and attitudes towards learning.
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student engagement.
• The impact of school policies on student academic performance and behavior.
• The effectiveness of metacognitive strategies on student learning outcomes.
• The effects of parental involvement on student behavior and well-being.
• The relationship between teacher collaboration and student achievement.
• The impact of school transitions on student academic performance and well-being.
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning on student engagement and learning outcomes.
• The effects of standardized testing on student motivation and learning.
• The relationship between student self-efficacy and academic performance.
• The impact of cultural competency training on teacher attitudes and student outcomes.
• The effectiveness of blended learning on student achievement and engagement.
• The effects of teacher beliefs and attitudes on student outcomes.
• The relationship between student achievement and post-secondary success.
• The impact of extracurricular activities on student academic performance and well-being.
• The effectiveness of flipped classroom models in higher education
• The relationship between teacher-student rapport and academic performance
• The effects of parental involvement on student achievement
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction in mixed-ability classrooms
• The impact of teacher collaboration on student learning outcomes
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in K-12 education
• The relationship between classroom climate and student motivation
• The effects of social media use on academic performance
• The impact of inclusive education on students with disabilities
• The effectiveness of online learning in higher education
• The relationship between school size and academic achievement
• The effects of school uniforms on student behavior and academic performance
• The impact of student-centered learning on student achievement
• The effectiveness of cooperative learning in K-12 education
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student achievement
• The effects of school funding on student achievement
• The impact of teacher training on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring in K-12 education
• The effects of class size on student achievement
• The impact of bilingual education on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of gamification in education
• The relationship between standardized testing and student achievement
• The effects of homework on student achievement
• The impact of parental involvement on college retention rates
• The effectiveness of problem-based learning in K-12 education
• The effects of teacher feedback on student learning outcomes
• The impact of school discipline policies on student behavior and academic performance
• The effectiveness of computer-assisted instruction in K-12 education
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student outcomes
• The effects of teacher-student racial/ethnic matching on academic performance
• The impact of extracurricular activities on student achievement
• The effectiveness of blended learning in higher education
• The relationship between school leadership and student achievement
• The effects of parental involvement on student attendance
• The impact of peer influence on student achievement
• The effectiveness of outdoor learning in K-12 education
• The relationship between teacher autonomy and student outcomes
• The effects of teacher diversity on student achievement
• The impact of early childhood education on later academic achievement
• The effectiveness of mindfulness practices in education
• The relationship between teacher evaluation and student achievement
• The effects of student self-assessment on learning outcomes
• The impact of cultural competence on teacher-student relationships and academic performance
• The effectiveness of online discussion forums in higher education
• The relationship between school climate and student mental health
• The effects of student-teacher race/ethnicity matching on academic performance
• The impact of college majors on post-graduation outcomes.
• The impact of technology on student engagement and academic performance
• The effectiveness of project-based learning compared to traditional teaching methods
• The impact of school uniforms on student behavior and academic performance
• The relationship between teacher diversity and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of peer mentoring for at-risk students
• The impact of school funding on student achievement
• The relationship between parent-teacher communication and student success
• The effectiveness of social media for educational purposes
• The impact of inclusive education on academic achievement
• The effectiveness of teacher mentoring programs for new teachers
• The relationship between school funding and student outcomes
• The impact of teacher diversity on student achievement
• The effectiveness of using games in the classroom for learning
• The impact of teacher collaboration on teacher retention
• The effectiveness of using graphic novels in the classroom for literacy development
• The impact of standardized testing on student motivation and performance
• The effectiveness of teacher coaching on teacher practice and student learning
• The relationship between parent-teacher communication and student outcomes
• The impact of peer mentoring on academic achievement
• The effectiveness of teacher professional learning communities on student outcomes
• The relationship between teacher personality and classroom climate
• The impact of arts education on student creativity and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching math
• The relationship between teacher autonomy and teacher motivation
• The impact of student-led conferences on parent involvement and academic performance
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction for gifted and talented students
• The relationship between school discipline policies and student mental health
• The impact of teacher leadership on school improvement
• The effectiveness of using social media in education
• The relationship between teacher beliefs and teacher effectiveness
• The impact of school size on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using simulations in the classroom for learning
• The relationship between parent involvement and teacher satisfaction
• The impact of outdoor education on student learning and development
• The effectiveness of using digital portfolios in the classroom for assessment
• The relationship between teacher collaboration and teacher professional growth
• The effectiveness of using multimedia in the classroom for learning
• The relationship between school choice and student achievement
• The impact of teacher empathy on student motivation and engagement
• The effectiveness of using mindfulness practices in the classroom
• The relationship between teacher creativity and student engagement
• The impact of student ownership on academic performance
• The effectiveness of using project-based learning in science education
• The relationship between teacher job satisfaction and teacher retention
• The impact of using drama in the classroom for learning
• The effectiveness of using educational apps in the classroom
• The relationship between teacher feedback and student achievement
• The impact of peer assessment on student learning
• The effectiveness of using simulations in social studies education
• The impact of teacher-parent partnerships on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using podcasts in the classroom for learning
• The relationship between teacher collaboration and teacher well-being
• The impact of school culture on parent involvement
• The effectiveness of using debate in the classroom for critical thinking skills.
• The impact of teacher-student ratio on academic performance
• The effectiveness of outdoor education on student learning
• The impact of teacher gender on student engagement and achievement
• The relationship between teacher feedback and student self-efficacy
• The effectiveness of blended learning for language education
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student attendance
• The relationship between teacher diversity and school culture
• The effectiveness of cultural responsiveness in the classroom
• The impact of school choice on student outcomes
• The relationship between classroom design and student engagement
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction for gifted students
• The impact of student mobility on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher experience and classroom management
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching mathematics
• The impact of teacher burnout on student performance
• The relationship between teacher job satisfaction and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of arts education on student development
• The impact of standardized testing on student motivation and academic performance
• The relationship between teacher-student trust and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of online learning for adult education
• The impact of school culture on teacher retention
• The relationship between student motivation and academic success
• The effectiveness of game-based learning for science education
• The impact of teacher training on student outcomes in special education
• The relationship between teacher beliefs and classroom management
• The effectiveness of project-based learning for social studies education
• The impact of school leadership on teacher job satisfaction
• The relationship between teacher support and student mental health
• The effectiveness of experiential learning for environmental education
• The impact of teacher collaboration on student outcomes
• The relationship between school climate and student achievement
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching foreign languages
• The impact of teacher evaluation on instructional quality
• The relationship between school diversity and student achievement
• The effectiveness of multicultural education for promoting social justice
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student self-esteem
• The relationship between teacher turnover and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning for mathematics education
• The impact of school discipline policies on student behavior
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student engagement
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching literacy
• The impact of teacher autonomy on classroom innovation
• The relationship between school climate and teacher job satisfaction.
• The relationship between classroom size and student achievement
• The impact of school leadership on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of different types of assessment methods
• The influence of teacher attitudes on student motivation and engagement
• The relationship between parental involvement and student achievement
• The effectiveness of different teaching strategies for diverse learners
• The impact of early childhood education on academic success
• The relationship between teacher training and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of different types of feedback on student learning
• The impact of student-centered learning on academic performance
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction for diverse learners
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic success
• The relationship between school culture and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of flipped classrooms compared to traditional classrooms
• The impact of classroom management on student behavior and academic performance
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring on student learning
• The impact of parental involvement on student behavior and social-emotional development
• The effectiveness of co-teaching for students with disabilities
• The impact of bilingual education on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher beliefs and student achievement
• The effectiveness of online learning compared to traditional classroom instruction
• The impact of school culture on teacher satisfaction and retention
• The relationship between teacher experience and student achievement
• The effectiveness of technology-enhanced learning environments
• The impact of teacher-student race/ethnicity matching on academic performance
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning for science education
• The relationship between school discipline policies and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of teacher professional development on student learning
• The impact of teacher preparation programs on teacher effectiveness
• The relationship between classroom climate and student engagement
• The effectiveness of teacher collaboration on student learning
• The impact of social-emotional learning on academic performance
• The relationship between teacher motivation and student achievement
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching English as a second language
• The impact of teacher autonomy on student outcomes
• The relationship between teacher feedback and student motivation
• The effectiveness of self-regulated learning strategies for academic success
• The impact of single-sex education on student achievement
• The relationship between teacher personality and student engagement
• The effectiveness of experiential learning for history education
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student mental health
• The relationship between school safety and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of mindfulness practices on student behavior and academic performance.
• The impact of technology on classroom learning
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction in diverse classrooms
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student achievement
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic performance
• The effectiveness of teacher professional development on instructional practice
• The effectiveness of online learning during the pandemic
• The impact of teacher burnout on student achievement
• The effectiveness of early childhood education programs
• The impact of parental involvement on student success
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student performance
• The impact of school safety measures on student well-being
• The relationship between school culture and teacher satisfaction
• The effectiveness of using manipulatives in math education
• The impact of homework on student achievement
• The relationship between teacher preparation programs and teacher retention
• The effectiveness of using technology for literacy development
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on student behavior and academic achievement
• The relationship between school leadership and teacher morale
• The effectiveness of using virtual reality in science education
• The impact of teacher gender on student achievement
• The relationship between parental involvement and student motivation
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in social studies education
• The impact of school climate on student attendance
• The relationship between teacher experience and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using game-based learning in language arts education
• The relationship between school funding and teacher quality
• The effectiveness of using inquiry-based learning in science education
• The impact of teacher expectations on student motivation
• The relationship between school facilities and student achievement
• The effectiveness of using music in the classroom for learning
• The impact of teacher diversity on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using graphic organizers in the classroom for writing
• The impact of teacher evaluation systems on teacher performance
• The relationship between school size and student achievement
• The effectiveness of using digital storytelling in the classroom
• The impact of teacher feedback on student learning
• The relationship between teacher professional development and student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using problem-based learning in math education
• The impact of school discipline policies on student outcomes
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student self-esteem
• The effectiveness of using visual aids in the classroom for learning
• The impact of school culture on teacher collaboration
• The relationship between school climate and student behavior
• The effectiveness of using drama in language arts education
• The impact of teacher motivation on student engagement
• The relationship between school culture and student academic identity
• The effectiveness of using mobile devices in the classroom for learning
• The relationship between school climate and teacher retention
• The effectiveness of using games for social-emotional learning
• The impact of teacher-student racial matching on student achievement.
• The relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement
• The impact of inclusive education on social and emotional development
• The effectiveness of blended learning on student outcomes
• The impact of school culture on student behavior and attitudes
• The effectiveness of flipped classroom models on student engagement
• The relationship between teacher autonomy and student motivation
• The impact of bilingual education on cognitive development
• The effectiveness of cooperative learning strategies in the classroom
• The effectiveness of classroom management strategies on student behavior
• The impact of standardized testing on teaching and learning
• The effectiveness of peer tutoring on academic achievement
• The relationship between teacher training and student achievement
• The impact of cultural diversity on classroom dynamics and learning
• The effectiveness of technology in teaching and learning writing
• The relationship between school facilities and student learning
• The impact of teacher collaboration on instructional quality
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in science education
• The relationship between parent involvement and school climate
• The impact of teacher feedback on student learning and motivation
• The effectiveness of assessment tools in measuring student learning
• The relationship between student attitudes and academic achievement
• The impact of college readiness programs on student success
• The effectiveness of using graphic organizers for teaching reading comprehension
• The relationship between teacher leadership and school improvement
• The impact of special education programs on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using digital tools in teaching and learning history
• The relationship between school culture and student attendance
• The impact of teacher expectations on student self-efficacy
• The effectiveness of using peer assessment in student writing
• The impact of teacher preparation programs on instructional quality
• The impact of teacher-student ratio on student outcomes
• The relationship between student engagement and academic achievement in online learning
• The impact of teacher tenure policies on student outcomes
• The relationship between school safety and student learning
• The effectiveness of using game-based learning in the classroom.
• The impact of COVID-19 on online learning in K-12 education
• The effectiveness of differentiated instruction in a diverse classroom
• The impact of early literacy intervention programs on reading comprehension
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning in science education
• The relationship between parent involvement and student academic success
• The impact of teacher feedback on student writing
• The effectiveness of using digital tools for formative assessment
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student engagement
• The relationship between school climate and bullying prevention
• The impact of school discipline policies on student behavior and academic achievement
• The effectiveness of using virtual reality in history education
• The relationship between teacher expectations and student self-efficacy
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student well-being
• The effectiveness of using games for math learning in elementary school
• The relationship between teacher training and technology integration in the classroom
• The impact of school culture on student mental health
• The effectiveness of using project-based learning in social studies education
• The relationship between teacher autonomy and job satisfaction
• The impact of socio-economic status on access to higher education
• The effectiveness of using technology for language learning
• The relationship between school size and student outcomes
• The impact of school leadership on teacher retention
• The effectiveness of using active learning strategies in college classrooms
• The relationship between teacher collaboration and student achievement
• The impact of school-based mental health services on student well-being
• The effectiveness of using assistive technology for special education students
• The relationship between teacher job satisfaction and student performance
• The impact of school-based health education programs on student health behaviors
• The effectiveness of using simulations in science education
• The effectiveness of using educational games for literacy development
• The relationship between school culture and student academic achievement
• The impact of teacher professional development on student outcomes
• The effectiveness of using experiential learning in business education
• The impact of teacher diversity on student engagement
• The effectiveness of using graphic organizers in the classroom for reading comprehension
• The relationship between school climate and teacher collaboration
• The impact of school-based social-emotional learning programs on student behavior and academic performance
• The effectiveness of using mobile devices for language learning
• The relationship between teacher autonomy and teacher creativity
• The effectiveness of using game-based learning for STEM education
• The relationship between school climate and student motivation
• The effectiveness of using mindfulness practices in the classroom for student well-being.
• The effectiveness of personalized learning strategies
• The effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in reducing stress and anxiety in students
• The impact of teacher communication styles on student engagement
• The relationship between bilingual education and cognitive development
• The effectiveness of using virtual simulations in science education
• The impact of school start times on student performance and well-being
• The effectiveness of using art in language arts education
• The impact of teacher-student race matching on student motivation and achievement
• The relationship between school culture and student mental health
• The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning in social studies education
• The impact of peer mentoring on student success in college
• The relationship between teacher burnout and student behavior
• The effectiveness of using manipulatives in science education
• The effectiveness of using gamification in math education
• The impact of teacher-student gender matching on student attitudes towards STEM subjects
• The relationship between student engagement and academic performance
• The effectiveness of using social media in language learning
• The relationship between school climate and parent involvement
• The effectiveness of using technology in physical education
• The effectiveness of using multimedia in history education
• The impact of teacher motivation on student engagement and achievement
• The relationship between school culture and parent satisfaction
• The impact of teacher feedback on student motivation and self-regulation
• The relationship between school climate and student attitudes towards diversity
• The effectiveness of using blended learning in literacy education
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on college success
• The effectiveness of using digital portfolios for assessment
• The impact of teacher diversity on school culture and climate
• The relationship between school leadership and teacher professional development
• The effectiveness of using inquiry-based learning in art education
• The impact of teacher-student personality matching on academic achievement
• The relationship between school climate and student creativity
• The effectiveness of using coding in math education
• The impact of teacher mentoring on new teacher retention
• The relationship between school culture and student motivation
• The effectiveness of using peer feedback in writing instruction
• The impact of teacher diversity on student attitudes towards diversity
• The relationship between school culture and student resilience
• The effectiveness of using case-based learning in business education
• The impact of teacher-student trust on student engagement and academic achievement.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How to Read and Interpret Research to Benefit Your Teaching Practice

Teachers can find helpful ideas in research articles and take a strategic approach to get the most out of what they’re reading.

Have you read any education blogs, attended a conference session this summer, or gone to a back-to-school meeting so far where information on PowerPoint slides was supported with research like this: “Holland et al., 2023”? Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered what to do with these citations or how to find and read the work cited. We want to improve our teaching practice and keep learning amid our busy schedules and responsibilities. When we find a sliver of time to look for the research article(s) being cited, how are we supposed to read, interpret, implement, and reflect on it in our practice? 

There has been much research over the past decade building on research-practice partnerships . Teachers and researchers should work collaboratively to improve student learning. Though researchers in higher education typically conduct formal research and publish their work in journal articles, it’s important for teachers to also see themselves as researchers. They engage in qualitative analysis while circulating the room to examine and interpret student work and demonstrate quantitative analysis when making predictions around student achievement data.

There are different sources of knowledge and timely questions to consider that education researchers can learn and take from teachers. So, what if teachers were better equipped to translate research findings from a journal article into improved practice relevant to their classroom’s immediate needs? I’ll offer some suggestions on how to answer this question.

Removing Barriers to New Information

For starters, research is crucial for education. It helps us learn and create new knowledge. Teachers learning how to translate research into practice can help contribute toward continuous improvement in schools. However, not all research is beneficial or easily applicable. While personal interests may lead researchers in a different direction, your classroom experience holds valuable expertise. Researchers should be viewed as allies, not sole authorities.

Additionally, paywalls prevent teachers from accessing valuable research articles that are often referenced in professional development. However, some sites, like Sage and JSTOR , offer open access journals where you can find research relevant to your classroom needs. Google Scholar is another helpful resource where you can plug in keywords like elementary math , achievement , small-group instruction , or diverse learners to find articles freely available as PDFs. Alternatively, you can use Elicit and get answers to specific questions. It can provide a list of relevant articles and summaries of their findings.

Approach research articles differently than other types of writing, as they aren’t intended for our specific audience but rather for academic researchers. Keep this in mind when selecting articles that align with your teaching vision, student demographic, and school environment.

Using behavioral and brain science research, I implemented the spacing effect . I used this strategy to include spaced fluency, partner practices, and spiral reviews (e.g., “do nows”) with an intentional selection of questions and tasks based on student work samples and formative/summative assessment data. It improved my students’ memory, long-term retention, and proficiency, so I didn’t take it too personally when some of them forgot procedures or symbols.

What You’ll Find in a Research Article

Certain elements are always included in a research article. The abstract gives a brief overview. Following that, the introduction typically explains the purpose and significance of the research—often through a theoretical framework and literature review. Other common sections of a research article may include methodology, results or findings, and discussion or conclusion.

The methodology section explains how the researchers answered their research question(s) to understand the topic. The results/findings section provides the answer(s) to the research question(s), while the discussion/conclusion section explains the importance and meaning of the results/findings and why it matters to readers and the field of education at large.

How to Process Information to Find What You’re Looking For

To avoid getting overwhelmed while reading research, take notes. Many articles are lengthy and filled with complex terminology and citations. Choose one relevant article at a time, and jot down important points or questions.

You could apply many strategies to read research, but here’s an idea that takes our time constraints and bandwidth as teachers into account:

• First, read the title and full abstract, then scan and skim the introduction. You’ll be able to see if it’s relevant to your interests, needs, and whether you need to continue reading. 
• After you’ve decided if the research is relevant to your classroom and professional development, jump straight to the discussion/conclusion section to see the “so what” about the research findings and how they could apply to your classroom. Review the findings/results section after for more details if needed.

Decipher the Details in the Data 

As a math, science, or English language arts teacher, you might come across figures, tables, or graphs that could spark ideas for your lessons. Some of these visuals and data may seem complex and difficult to understand. To make sense of them, take it slow and read through the notes and descriptions carefully.             

For example, researchers C. Kirabo Jackson and Alexey Makarin created a graph to show that middle school math teachers who had online access and support to use high-quality materials saw a positive impact on math test scores, especially when they used the materials for multiple lessons. The notes below the graph explain how the data was collected and which school districts were involved in the study.

Lastly, after reading the findings/results section, you’ll understand the gist of the research and if it’s applicable to your needs. Reading beyond these sections depends on your schedule and interests. It’s perfectly normal if it takes additional time to digest these sections.

When it comes to reading research, teachers don’t have to go it alone. School and district leaders can involve us in discussions about research findings and their practical implications for our school during professional learning community meetings or professional development sessions before the start of the school year. Even if only a few teachers participate in this process, sharing the main points with peers and the principal can have a significantly positive impact on improving direct instruction for students.

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Researching your teaching practice: an introduction to pedagogic research

What is pedagogic research, why should you do it and what effect can it have on your academic career? 

1 August 2019

The Academic Careers Framework at UCL recognises that education activities which support students to learn can strengthen an application for promotion. This includes contributing to pedagogic research.

When applying for UCL Arena Fellowships (nationally recognised teaching awards accredited by the Higher Education Academy), contributing to pedagogic research is recognised in the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) as an area of activity [A5] and as a professional value [V3].

At the heart of both the UKPSF and pedagogic research is a philosophy of reflective practice, dissemination of research, engagement of students, and attention to disciplinary specificity.

• The Academic Careers Framework at UCL 
• The UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) 

What pedagogic research means

Also known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), or education enquiry, pedagogic research is an established field of academic discourse involving carefully investigating your teaching practice and in turn developing the curriculum.

It requires a systematic and evidence-based study of student learning, often through a small-scale research projects engaging students.

Pedagogic research is a form of self-study, and/or action research involving critical reflection and reflexivity on current practice, which gives way to new knowledge. It encourages investigating learning, including what works and what does not.

As with any rigorous research endeavour, you will need to be well-informed and critically reflective.

Pedagogic research has the goal of improving the quality of education locally and further afield, through dissemination of best practice to colleagues at UCL and beyond, in conferences and in either discipline-specific education journals or education-focused journals.

Pedagogic research brings together key objectives in UCL’s Education Strategy , by encouraging:

• active connections between education and research
• reflection on and development of our education provision
• connections between staff and students in partnership to improve education.

Pedagogic research allows educators to examine their own practice, reflect on successes and challenges, and share experiences so others can learn from this, improving education more widely.

Consider aligning your research to UCL’s education strategy

A number of pedagogic research projects focus on research-based education , specifically through uncovering answers to the following:

“What kinds of impact, if any, does UCL’s research-based education strategy (Connected Curriculum) have on changing real practice within and across the disciplines, at UCL and beyond?”

• Contact [email protected] to find out more and get involved in this research.  

Pedagogic research will support a community of scholars

Making transparent how learning is possible and developing practice may well involve collaboration with students in research activities and data collection. Students are well-suited to be co-researchers on pedagogic research projects.

Engaging with the existing body of scholarship will position your work in a larger field and allow you to contribute to the community while learning from others.

Finally, sharing your findings in public forums to help others develop practice will support community-based and shared knowledge construction.

Pedagogic research resembles rigorous disciplinary research

“ “You spend some time looking at different approaches to teaching and learning within a specific field of knowledge and about learning in general in that area. You research how the knowledge is known and practised and applied within the discipline and you consider what others have done and then you plan your program and you monitor the results and improve it. It is also about writing about it and communicating it to others in the larger arena. You communicate what you do locally so other students within the discipline or profession can be helped to learn and more can be known about how the learning is achieved and how thinking and knowledge is structured in the areas. It’s about reflective practice and it’s about active dissemination of that practice for the benefit of learning and teaching.” (Trigwell et al. 2000: 167)

Subject disciplines have distinctive approaches to conducting research into education.

• More on paradigmatic approaches to pedagogic research: Russell, N. (2014). Approaching Educational Enquiry  (pdf), The University of Sheffield.

6 key steps to develop your own pedagogic research project

1. identify the problem and set clear goals.

Identify the focused problem you wish to consider. You may already know the intervention or practice you would like to improve, but it is important to have clear goals in mind.

You may focus on overcoming a challenge you face in your education practice. Taking a problem-based approach will make connection between pedagogic research and discipline-specific issues. For example, you could focus on massification and large class teaching, or developing cross-cultural understanding in diverse political science courses.

A helpful place to start is to identify a gap in the existing pedagogic research.

It’s also useful at this early stage to begin thinking about potential audiences for disseminating your work. This will allow you to strategically frame the project in line with what stakeholders need to know; demonstrating the initiative has value will make the work more publishable and relevant to your career development.

• What do I want to know about student learning in my discipline and/or how do I want to develop it?
• What do I want to do to develop my practice?
• Who will I communicate my findings to?
• How will this goal advance the work of other scholars?

2. Prepare adequately and begin to implement your development

You’ll want to be as prepared as possible.

Conducting a literature review relevant to your discipline and education context will help ensure your project has not already been done and help you refine the study and methodology.

Begin to implement your enhancement activity, for example through revising rubrics, assessment criteria or learning activities.

Avoid conducting a controlled experiment, where only some students receive the benefit of development.

Set a research question that allows you to explore, understand and improve student learning in specific contexts.

Discuss your plans with colleagues and students. Consider engaging collaborators.

Find out if an ethics application is required. At UCL, education research is generally considered ‘low-risk’, involving completing a simple ‘low risk’ ethics application form for Chair’s review. Allow on average two weeks for review.

As part of the application process a participant information sheet and consent form need to be produced if you are recruiting participants to your study. Data protection registration is required only if you are using ‘personal data’.

• What will my students learn and why is it worth learning?
• Who are my students and how do students learn effectively?
• What can I do to support students to learn effectively?
• What does the literature tell me about this issue?
• What activities will I design to improve education?
• What ethical implications are there?
• How will I measure and evaluate the impact of my practice on student learning?

Ethics and guidance : The British Educational Research Association (BERA) offers a wealth of information on ethics in their online guide.

3. Establish and employ appropriate methods of enquiry

In order to investigate changes to education practice, a range of methods could be employed, including:

• reflection and analysis
• focus groups
• questionnaires and surveys
• content analysis of text
• Ethnography
• Phenomenography
• observational research and speculation.

Capturing students’ views are important; they will value the opportunity to be involved in improving education at UCL.

Treat your programme as a source of data to answer interesting questions about learning: collect data available at your fingertips.

Your colleagues may also be able to contribute to the research.

Be sure to gain participants’ consent.

• What methods do I need to employ to measure my practice?
• Who will I engage?
• What are my students doing as a result of my practice?

For more on methods:

• Cohen, L., Manion, L., and Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Educatio n. London: Routledge.
• Stierer, B. and Antoniou, M. (2004). Are there distinctive methodologies for pedagogic research in higher education? Teaching in Higher Education 9, no. 3: 275–285.

4. Evaluate results

Analyse your data using appropriate strategies.

Draw appropriate conclusions and critically reflect on your findings and intervention.

Return to earlier stages if further development or data collection is needed, before continuing with the project.

How has student learning changed as a result of my practice and what evidence do I have?

• What lessons have I learned?
• What adjustments have been made to my teaching?

5. Prepare your presentation

Begin to write up your work, presenting the evidence and results of your intervention.

Use the evidence you gathered to design and refine new activities, assignments and assessments for further iterations. Be critically reflective.

• What worked and what did not go according to plan?
• What can others learn from my project?
• How has enhancement developed student learning?
• What makes my intervention worth implementing?

6. Share your project with others

Go public with your project and communicate your findings (whether work-in-progress or complete) with peers, who can comment, critique and build on this work.

Engage your students in the work and invite feedback.

Share results internally (at teaching committees, or in reports), across UCL (at the UCL Education Conference , or a UCL Arena event ), or internationally (in open-access publications, and through conference presentations).

More dissemination ideas can be found below.

• What can engaging others tell me about this development?
• What impact does my work actually have on others interested in developing their practice?

This may lead to you examining the medium and long-term impact of the education development project.

Engaging multiple stakeholders over a long period of time may result in returning to step 1, through another iteration of development.

How to disseminate your pedagogic research

Sharing your findings and intervention is an important part of pedagogic research.

Look to disseminate through the following forums.

With the UCL community

• Local teaching committees.
• Faculty education events.
• Write a case study for the UCL Teaching & Learning Portal .
• Propose to deliver an Arena event . Submit a proposal if you'd like to run an event by completing the form (word document) or emailing [email protected] . 
• Present at the annual UCL Education Conference .

At a higher education conference

Within the uk.

• Assessment in Higher Education 
• British Educational Research Association 
• Higher Education Academy Annual Conference  
• Higher Education Conference & Exhibition
• Society for Research into Higher Education
• Staff and Education Development Association
• Universities UK

Wonkhe  has a calendar of many major UK events and conferences.

Outside the UK 

• Educause (Information Technology in Higher Education, USA)
• Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australia
• International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Canada)

Through publication

In a pedagogy-based book series:

• Palgrave’s Critical University Studies Series

In a higher education journal, cross-disciplinary or discipline-specific:

• Active Learning in Higher Education
• Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
• Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
• Studies in Higher Education
• Teaching & Learning Enquiry

The  IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society website  has an updated long list of journals, both cross-disciplinary and discipline-specific.

Successful pedagogic research

Projects with maximum impact:

• investigate learning processes
• partner with students in the research and education development
• engage the body of pedagogic research
• critically reflect on changes
• are relevant to a wide audience
• communicate through open-access forums.

“ Teaching is the most impactful thing we do as academics in higher education. The sheer number of students we encounter and influence over our careers is incredible.     Pedagogic research (SoTL) offers an opportunity for us as academics to refine our practice and to generate understanding through evidence of what works and doesn’t in student learning.     In a research intensive institution, like UCL, pedagogic research offers us the chance to link the teaching and learning space more clearly with our research agendas, whilst at the same time contributing to opening up new opportunities to foster student learning.” David J. Hornsby, Deputy Head of Department (Education), UCL STEAPP 

An example of pedagogic research at UCL

“Recognising that students could better engage with core writing concepts through acting like a teacher, I designed peer review exercises to follow draft submissions of work, as part of a module I coordinate in The Bartlett School of Architecture. After consulting the literature, I realised that there was very little by way of guidance on how to set this up. 

Following the implementation phase, I held a focus group with students to find out their views, which were overwhelmingly positive. This enhancement project also improved students’ marks. I published this work and placed it on the module reading list, which helps underscore the value of this pedagogic tool and makes transparent the learning process.”  Brent Carnell, UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education and The Bartlett School of Architecture  

• Carnell, B. (2016). Aiming for autonomy: Formative peer assessment in a final-year undergraduate course . Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 41, no. 8: 1269–1283. 

Case studies of interest on the Teaching & Learning Portal:

• A hybrid teaching approach transforms the functional anatomy module
• Novel assessment on anatomy module inspires reconfiguration of assessment on entire programme
• Peer instruction transforms the medical science classroom

Where to find help and support

The following initiatives and opportunities are available to colleagues to support research:

• Meet with colleagues experienced in pedagogic research, including from the IOE or the Arena Centre for Research-based Education.
• Funding from UCL ChangeMakers to work in partnership with students to develop education.  
• Funding from the Arena Centre for Research-based Education. Sign up to the monthly newsletter to hear about the latest funding opportunities.
• A Guide to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), Vanderbilt University  
• International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning resources 
• Early-career researcher information and resources from the British Educational Research Association (BERA) 
• Bass, R. (1999). “ The scholarship of teaching: What’s the problem? ” Inventio: Creative Thinking about Learning and Teaching 1 (February), no. 1. 
• Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate . Princeton, New Jersey: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 
• Cleaver, E., Lintern, M. and McLinden, M. (2014). Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Disciplinary Approaches to Educational Enquiry . London: Sage. 
• Fanghanel, J., McGowan, S., Parker, P., McConnell, C., Potter, J., Locke, W., Healey, M. (2015). “ Defining and supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): A sector wide study .” York, UK: Higher Education Academy. 
• Felten, P. (2013). “ Principles of good practice in SoTL .” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 121–125. 
• Fung, D. (2017). “ Strength-based scholarship and good education: The scholarship circle. ” Innovations in Education and Training 54, no. 2: 101–110. 
• Greene, M. J. (2014). “ On the inside looking in: Methodological insights and challenges in conducting qualitative insider research .” The Qualitative Report 19, no. 29: 1–13. 
• Healey, M. (2000). “ Developing the scholarship of teaching in higher education: A disciplinebased approach .” Higher Education Research & Development 19, no. 2: 169–189. 
• Healey, M. Resources from Professor Mick Healey  (Higher Education Consultant and Researcher) - a range of resources including bibliographies and handouts. 
• Healey, M., Matthews, K. E., & Cook-Sather, A. (2019). Writing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Articles for Peer-Reviewed Journals .  Teaching & Learning Inquiry ,  7 (2), 28-50.
• Hutchings, P. (2000). “ Approaching the scholarship of teaching and learning .” In Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, by P. Hutchings, 1–10. Mento Park: The Carnegie Foundation.
• Hutchings, P., Huber, M. and Ciccone, A. (2011). The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 
• Koster, B. and van den Berg, B. (2014). “ Increasing professional self-understanding: Self-study research by teachers with the help of biography, core reflection and dialogue. ” Studying Teacher Education 10, no. 1: 86–100. 
• O’Brien, M. (2008). “ Navigating the SoTL landscape: A compass, map and some tools for getting started .” International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 2 (July), no. 2: 1–20.  
• Rowland, S. and Myatt, P. (2014). “ Getting started in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A “how to” guide for science academics .” Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education 42, no. 1: 6–14. 
• Tight, M. (2012). Researching Higher Education. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. 
• Trigwell, K., Martin, E. Benjamin, J. and Prosser, M. (2000). “ Scholarship of teaching: A model .” Higher Education Research & Development 19, no. 2: 155–168.

This guide has been produced by the UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education . You are welcome to use this guide if you are from another educational facility, but you must credit the UCL Arena Centre. 

Further information

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Arena one: for postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs)  - enables you to apply to become an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). 

Arena two: for Lecturers and Teaching Fellows on probation  - enables you to apply to become a UCL Arena Fellow and Fellow of the HEA. 

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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110+ Exceptional Education Research Topics Ideas

Topics for education research usually comprise school research topics, research problems in education, qualitative research topics in education, and concept paper topics about education to mention a few.

If you’re looking for research titles about education,  you’re reading the right post! This article contains 110 of the best education research topics that will come in handy when you need to choose one for your research. From sample research topics in education, to research titles examples for high school students about education – we have it all.

Educational Research Topics

Research title examples for college students, quantitative research titles about education, topics related to education for thesis, research titles about school issues, ph.d. research titles in education, elementary education research topics, research title examples about online class, research titles about modular learning, examples of research questions in education, special education research titles.

The best research titles about education must be done through the detailed process of exploring previous works and improving personal knowledge.

Here are some good research topics in education to consider.

What Are Good Research Topics Related to Education?

• The role of Covid-19 in reinvigorating online learning
• The growth of cognitive abilities through leisure experiences
• The merits of group study in education
• Merits and demerits of traditional learning methods
• The impact of homework on traditional and modern education
• Student underdevelopment as a result of larger class volumes
• Advantages of digital textbooks in learning
• The struggle of older generations in computer education
• The standards of learning  in the various academic levels
• Bullying and its effects on educational and mental health
• Exceptional education tutors: Is the need for higher pay justifiable?

The following examples of research titles about education for college students are ideal for a project that will take a long duration to complete. Here are some education topics for research that you can consider for your degree.

• Modern classroom difficulties of students and teachers
• Strategies to reform the learning difficulties within schools
• The rising cost of tuition and its burden on middle-class parents
• The concept of creativity among public schools and how it can be harnessed
• Major difficulties experienced in academic staff training
• Evaluating the learning cultures of college students
• Use of scientific development techniques in student learning
• Research of skill development in high school and college students
• Modern grading methods in underdeveloped institutions
• Dissertations and the difficulties surrounding their completion
• Integration of new gender categories in personalized learning

These research topics about education require a direct quantitative analysis and study of major ideas and arguments. They often contain general statistics and figures to back up regular research. Some of such research topics in education include:

• The relationship between poor education and increased academic fees
• Creating a social link between homeschool and traditional schoolgoers
• The relationship between teacher satisfaction and student performance
• The divide between public and private school performance
• The merits of parental involvement in students’ cognitive growth.
• A study on child welfare and its impact on educational development
• The relationship between academic performance and economic growth
• Urbanization in rural areas and its contribution to institutional growth
• The relationship between students and professors in dissertation writing
• The link between debt accumulation and student loans
• Boarding schools and regular schools: The role these two school types play in cognitive development

Educational-related topics used for a thesis normally require a wide aspect of study and enough educational materials.  Here are some education research topics you can use for write my thesis .

• The difficulties of bilingual education in private universities
• Homework and its impact on learning processes in college education
• Dissertation topic selection: Key aspects and research obligations
• Social media research topics and their educational functions
• A detailed educational review of student learning via virtual reality techniques
• Ethnicities in universities and their participation in group activities
• The modern approach to self-studying for college students
• Developing time management skills in modern education
• Guidelines for teacher development in advanced educational institutions
• The need for religious education in boarding schools
• A measure of cognitive development using digital learning methods

A research title about school issues focuses on activities surrounding the school environment and its effects on students, teachers, parents, and education in general. Below are some sample research titles in education, relating to school issues.

• Learning English in bilingual schools
• A study of teachers’ role as parent figures on school grounds
• Addressing the increased use of illegal substances and their effects in schools
• The benefits of after-class activities for foreign students
• Assessing student and teacher relationships
• A study of the best methods to implement safety rules in school
• Major obstacles in meeting school schedules using boarding students as a case study
• The need for counseling in public and private schools: Which is greater?
• Academic volunteering in understaffed public schools
• Modern techniques for curbing school violence among college students
• The advantages and disadvantages of teacher unions in schools

As you create your proposed list of research topics in education, consider scientific journals for referencing purposes. Here are some Ph.D. research titles for education.

• The modern methods of academic research writing
• The role of colleges in advanced mental care
• The merits and demerits of Ph.D. studies in Europe and Africa
• Interpersonal relationships between students and professors in advanced institutions
• A review of community colleges: merits and demerits
• Assessing racism in academic ethnic minorities
• The psychological changes of students in higher education
• The questionable standards of student loan provisions
• The merits of personalized teaching techniques in colleges
• The wage gap between private and public university teachers
• Teacher responsibilities in private universities versus public universities

The research topics in elementary education in 2023 are very different from the elementary education research topics from five or ten years ago. This creates interesting grounds for different research titles for elementary education.

Here are some elementary education title research ideas.

• Assessing quick computer literacy among elementary school pupils.
• The role of video games in childhood brain development
• Male vs female role models in early education periods
• The advantages of digital textbooks in elementary schools
• The impact of modern curriculums on elementary education
• Lack of proper school grooming is a cause of violence.
• Should elementary school children be taught about LGBTQ?
• A review of the need for sexual education in elementary schools
• The effects of emotional dependence in early childhood learners.
• The need for constant technology supervision of elementary school students
• Advantages of computer-guided education in elementary schools

Here are some research title examples for students taking online classes.

• The academic difficulties experienced by online students.
• A study of decreased attention in online classes
• The upsides and downsides of online education
• The rising fees of online and traditional education in universities
• A detailed study on the necessity of college internships
• The need to provide college scholarships based on environmental achievements
• How online education terminates university fraternities and sororities.
• The role of academic supervisors in career selection
• Why interactive assignments improved learning capabilities during the pandemic
• Merits of education in online learning environments
• Why online lessons are the least effective for some college students

The modular learning approach focuses primarily on learning outcomes. Here are some examples of research titles about modular learning.

• Modular learning and the role of teachers in its execution
• Teaching techniques of religious institutions
• Potential risks of accelerated learning
• Modular learning on students’ future performances
• The general overview of modular learning amongst students
• The modern Advantages and disadvantages of inclusive classes
• Observing student developments in modular learning
• Music therapy for fostering modular learning techniques
• The creation of a personalized curriculum for students.
• Applications of modular learning both in home-schooling?
• The benefits of modular learning towards creating a more holistic educational system

These research title examples about education answer important questions and they can also be argumentative essay topics .

Here are some titles of research about education questions.

• What impacts do learning approaches provide for students?
• How can schools manage their increasing gender differences?
• What fosters the provision of learning needs?
• What are the best educational recruitment methods?
• How can cognitive development improve education?
• How can you assess the moral growth of institutions?
• What are the primary causes of educational differences in geographical locations?
• How can institutions address increasing mental health needs?
• Why is early intervention essential in students with mental health setbacks?
• What are the characteristics of mental health deterioration among students?
• What techniques are acceptable in regulating the violence of students in institutions

Some of the research title examples about education include:

• How do schools create more personalized learning methods?
• Evaluating mental health setbacks during education
• The impact of modern technology on special education
• The cognitive improvements via specialized learning in dyslexic children
• The psychological link between dyslexia and bullying in high school
• Impact of social isolation in special education classes
• The difficulties in providing specialized learning environments
• A study of orphan students with disabilities and their aptitudes for learning
• How special classes improve the self-esteem of disabled students.
• How to use modern teaching techniques in unique learning environments.
• A study of the application of digital games to autistic learning

Final words about education research topics

We have provided some reliable examples of a research topic about education you can use for write my thesis . You can use these research titles in education to cultivate your ideas, create inspiration, or for online research. Remember always to select a topic that you’re naturally passionate about and do diligent research, and reach out to our professional writing services if you need any help.

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Research on improving teaching and learning often lacks a holistic focus—a new collaborative research project hopes to change this

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, ghulam omar qargha ghulam omar qargha fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education.

June 16, 2023

Over the past decade, it has become evident that although more children are gaining access to schooling, there needs to be improvement in learning outcomes . The recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS ) highlighted a decline in reading proficiency in 28 out of the 45 participating countries between 2016 and 2021. The current model of schooling is not meeting the needs of a significant portion of the world’s population and is extraordinarily vulnerable to catastrophic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to transform our educational systems in robust, rapid, and nonlinear ways .  We know that the most effective way to achieve our goals for quality, inclusive, equitable, and relevant education for all is by changing teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices, commonly called pedagogy. However, research has repeatedly shown that most teacher education interventions have limited or no impact on changing classroom practice.

There is a gap among research, program design, and implementation of teaching and learning practices, especially in low- and middle-income contexts. The research on improving teaching and learning often lacks a focus on real-world challenges of practice. Programs based on this type of research are often not nuanced for the individual contexts and therefore do not result in a sustained change in classroom practice.

During the education system transformation symposium , the Center for Universal Education launched the Strengthening Pedagogical Approaches for Relevant Knowledge and Skills (SPARKS) project. This initiative aims to create a network of policymakers, educators, donors, civil society actors, and other education decisionmakers dedicated to discussing and researching the role of pedagogies in transforming education systems. During the symposium, a roundtable involving over 50 participants discussed the role, definition, and how innovative pedagogies can contribute to systems transformation. Insights from the roundtable discussion and subsequent conversations with experts have highlighted four key themes that will inform our focus on the role of pedagogies in education system transformation as we delve into this work in the coming years.

Pedagogy is a complex and multidimensional concept; we must think of it holistically.  

Pedagogy is commonly defined as the science and art of teaching. Educational literature describes different pedagogical approaches, such as teacher-centered (often called traditional), learner-centered, liberative, constructivist, contemplative, Montessori, indigenous, and innovative. These various approaches highlight the complexity and multidimensionality of pedagogy. Each of these includes observable elements of classroom practice, such as how to interact with students, the curriculum, assessment strategies, and underlying theories and ideologies about teaching and learning that are not readily observable. When exploring pedagogy, it is essential to work toward shared goals and contextualized definitions by acknowledging the multidimensionality of the concept and discussing the observable and non-observable factors influencing the teaching and learning process.

Pedagogy is a moral, ethical, cultural, political, and technical activity. Shifting classroom practice requires acknowledging and addressing all these factors.

Global education reform efforts have often aimed to shift traditional teacher-centered pedagogies to more learner-centered pedagogies to enhance classroom learning. These reform efforts have primarily addressed technical delivery problems, such as a need for more training and resources. Despite considerable investments in workshops, seminars, and teacher training programs to promote pedagogical shifts, classroom practice has remained the same. Emphasizing greater technical knowledge and resources is a necessary but insufficient mechanism for changing classroom practice. Transforming teaching practices, scaling specific initiatives, and transforming systems are deeply intertwined with the overall ecosystem’s political, cultural, institutional, and social factors. Focusing only on the technical aspects of classroom practice assumes that pedagogy is a value-free activity. However, it is well established that a teacher’s classroom practice is shaped by the broader policies, values, histories, and worldviews that comprise their larger educational ecosystems. Any discussion about pedagogical change must address the underlying purposes of education , the values and policies, and the broader institutional and social processes that govern teaching and learning in each context.

Efforts to change teaching and learning should not solely focus on teachers; we must consider all the actors in the educational ecosystem.

The gap among theories of learning, classroom practices, and many large-scale teacher professional development efforts is partly due to an assumption that teachers are the only actors responsible for shifting pedagogical approaches. However, teaching and learning are not constrained to the four walls of the formal school. The teaching and learning process involves multiple actors, institutions, and spaces. Expecting a pedagogical change in the classroom by demanding teachers to change their practice without creating an enabling and supportive environment is misguided and unfair to teachers.

Bringing positive changes in classroom practice requires creating a supportive ecosystem that enables teachers, parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders to discuss their problems and potential solutions and develop policies and institutional norms to bridge the divide among home, school, and their greater society. Changing the teaching and learning process requires expanding our definition of educators to include parents, mentors, community leaders, and peers and widening the profile of learning environments beyond schools to include formal, non-formal, and informal learning environments .

Pedagogical changes require open and honest dialogue, acknowledgment of contextual differences, and collaborative research.  

International policymakers, donors, and program designers often need more cultural and contextual understanding while national-level policymakers need help finding relevant evidence for their contexts from teacher development research and the learning sciences on how children learn best. To facilitate meaningful and lasting change in learning and teaching, it is necessary to create space within the education ecosystem to discuss the interplay among technical interventions, the theoretical underpinning of various pedagogical approaches, and what those mean for system transformation within specific cultural, socio-economic, and political contexts.

These four key insights have guided the creation of the SPARKS project, a new initiative by the Brookings Institution. This project aims to produce practical and collaborative learning resources that tackle important questions about the impact of pedagogy on transforming education systems. It will do so by establishing an international peer-learning network and forging partnerships among researchers, policymakers, educators, civil society, and other education actors. We are enthusiastic about this endeavor and encourage you to stay tuned for updates on our next steps. If you are interested in joining our peer-learning network or participating in our research-policy-practice partnerships, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

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Teaching and learning artificial intelligence: Insights from the literature

• Published: 02 May 2024

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• Bahar Memarian   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0671-3127 1 &
• Tenzin Doleck 1  

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for nearly a century, yet in recent years the rapid advancement and public access to AI applications and algorithms have led to increased attention to the role of AI in higher education. An equally important but overlooked topic is the study of AI teaching and learning in higher education. We wish to examine the overview of the study, pedagogical outcomes, challenges, and limitations through a systematic review process amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and public access to ChatGPT. Twelve articles from 2020 to 2023 focused on AI pedagogy are explored in this systematic literature review. We find in-depth analysis and comparison of work post-COVID and AI teaching and learning era is needed to have a more focused lens on the current state of AI pedagogy. Findings reveal that the use of self-reported surveys in a pre-and post-design form is most prevalent in the reviewed studies. A diverse set of constructs are used to conceptualize AI literacy and their associated metrics and scales of measure are defined based on the work of specific authors rather than a universally accepted framework. There remains work and consensus on what learning objectives, levels of thinking skills, and associated activities lead to the advanced development of AI literacy. An overview of the studies, pedagogical outcomes, and challenges are provided. Further implications of the studies are also shared. The contribution of this work is to open discussions on the overlooked topic of AI teaching and learning in higher education.

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1 What is Action Research for Classroom Teachers?

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• What is the nature of action research?
• How does action research develop in the classroom?
• What models of action research work best for your classroom?
• What are the epistemological, ontological, theoretical underpinnings of action research?

Educational research provides a vast landscape of knowledge on topics related to teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment, students’ cognitive and affective needs, cultural and socio-economic factors of schools, and many other factors considered viable to improving schools. Educational stakeholders rely on research to make informed decisions that ultimately affect the quality of schooling for their students. Accordingly, the purpose of educational research is to engage in disciplined inquiry to generate knowledge on topics significant to the students, teachers, administrators, schools, and other educational stakeholders. Just as the topics of educational research vary, so do the approaches to conducting educational research in the classroom. Your approach to research will be shaped by your context, your professional identity, and paradigm (set of beliefs and assumptions that guide your inquiry). These will all be key factors in how you generate knowledge related to your work as an educator.

Action research is an approach to educational research that is commonly used by educational practitioners and professionals to examine, and ultimately improve, their pedagogy and practice. In this way, action research represents an extension of the reflection and critical self-reflection that an educator employs on a daily basis in their classroom. When students are actively engaged in learning, the classroom can be dynamic and uncertain, demanding the constant attention of the educator. Considering these demands, educators are often only able to engage in reflection that is fleeting, and for the purpose of accommodation, modification, or formative assessment. Action research offers one path to more deliberate, substantial, and critical reflection that can be documented and analyzed to improve an educator’s practice.

Purpose of Action Research

As one of many approaches to educational research, it is important to distinguish the potential purposes of action research in the classroom. This book focuses on action research as a method to enable and support educators in pursuing effective pedagogical practices by transforming the quality of teaching decisions and actions, to subsequently enhance student engagement and learning. Being mindful of this purpose, the following aspects of action research are important to consider as you contemplate and engage with action research methodology in your classroom:

• Action research is a process for improving educational practice. Its methods involve action, evaluation, and reflection. It is a process to gather evidence to implement change in practices.
• Action research is participative and collaborative. It is undertaken by individuals with a common purpose.
• Action research is situation and context-based.
• Action research develops reflection practices based on the interpretations made by participants.
• Knowledge is created through action and application.
• Action research can be based in problem-solving, if the solution to the problem results in the improvement of practice.
• Action research is iterative; plans are created, implemented, revised, then implemented, lending itself to an ongoing process of reflection and revision.
• In action research, findings emerge as action develops and takes place; however, they are not conclusive or absolute, but ongoing (Koshy, 2010, pgs. 1-2).

In thinking about the purpose of action research, it is helpful to situate action research as a distinct paradigm of educational research. I like to think about action research as part of the larger concept of living knowledge. Living knowledge has been characterized as “a quest for life, to understand life and to create… knowledge which is valid for the people with whom I work and for myself” (Swantz, in Reason & Bradbury, 2001, pg. 1). Why should educators care about living knowledge as part of educational research? As mentioned above, action research is meant “to produce practical knowledge that is useful to people in the everyday conduct of their lives and to see that action research is about working towards practical outcomes” (Koshy, 2010, pg. 2). However, it is also about:

creating new forms of understanding, since action without reflection and understanding is blind, just as theory without action is meaningless. The participatory nature of action research makes it only possible with, for and by persons and communities, ideally involving all stakeholders both in the questioning and sense making that informs the research, and in the action, which is its focus. (Reason & Bradbury, 2001, pg. 2)

In an effort to further situate action research as living knowledge, Jean McNiff reminds us that “there is no such ‘thing’ as ‘action research’” (2013, pg. 24). In other words, action research is not static or finished, it defines itself as it proceeds. McNiff’s reminder characterizes action research as action-oriented, and a process that individuals go through to make their learning public to explain how it informs their practice. Action research does not derive its meaning from an abstract idea, or a self-contained discovery – action research’s meaning stems from the way educators negotiate the problems and successes of living and working in the classroom, school, and community.

While we can debate the idea of action research, there are people who are action researchers, and they use the idea of action research to develop principles and theories to guide their practice. Action research, then, refers to an organization of principles that guide action researchers as they act on shared beliefs, commitments, and expectations in their inquiry.

Reflection and the Process of Action Research

When an individual engages in reflection on their actions or experiences, it is typically for the purpose of better understanding those experiences, or the consequences of those actions to improve related action and experiences in the future. Reflection in this way develops knowledge around these actions and experiences to help us better regulate those actions in the future. The reflective process generates new knowledge regularly for classroom teachers and informs their classroom actions.

Unfortunately, the knowledge generated by educators through the reflective process is not always prioritized among the other sources of knowledge educators are expected to utilize in the classroom. Educators are expected to draw upon formal types of knowledge, such as textbooks, content standards, teaching standards, district curriculum and behavioral programs, etc., to gain new knowledge and make decisions in the classroom. While these forms of knowledge are important, the reflective knowledge that educators generate through their pedagogy is the amalgamation of these types of knowledge enacted in the classroom. Therefore, reflective knowledge is uniquely developed based on the action and implementation of an educator’s pedagogy in the classroom. Action research offers a way to formalize the knowledge generated by educators so that it can be utilized and disseminated throughout the teaching profession.

Research is concerned with the generation of knowledge, and typically creating knowledge related to a concept, idea, phenomenon, or topic. Action research generates knowledge around inquiry in practical educational contexts. Action research allows educators to learn through their actions with the purpose of developing personally or professionally. Due to its participatory nature, the process of action research is also distinct in educational research. There are many models for how the action research process takes shape. I will share a few of those here. Each model utilizes the following processes to some extent:

• Plan a change;
• Take action to enact the change;
• Observe the process and consequences of the change;
• Reflect on the process and consequences;
• Act, observe, & reflect again and so on.

Figure 1.1 Basic action research cycle

There are many other models that supplement the basic process of action research with other aspects of the research process to consider. For example, figure 1.2 illustrates a spiral model of action research proposed by Kemmis and McTaggart (2004). The spiral model emphasizes the cyclical process that moves beyond the initial plan for change. The spiral model also emphasizes revisiting the initial plan and revising based on the initial cycle of research:

Figure 1.2 Interpretation of action research spiral, Kemmis and McTaggart (2004, p. 595)

Other models of action research reorganize the process to emphasize the distinct ways knowledge takes shape in the reflection process. O’Leary’s (2004, p. 141) model, for example, recognizes that the research may take shape in the classroom as knowledge emerges from the teacher’s observations. O’Leary highlights the need for action research to be focused on situational understanding and implementation of action, initiated organically from real-time issues:

Figure 1.3 Interpretation of O’Leary’s cycles of research, O’Leary (2000, p. 141)

Lastly, Macintyre’s (2000, p. 1) model, offers a different characterization of the action research process. Macintyre emphasizes a messier process of research with the initial reflections and conclusions as the benchmarks for guiding the research process. Macintyre emphasizes the flexibility in planning, acting, and observing stages to allow the process to be naturalistic. Our interpretation of Macintyre process is below:

Figure 1.4 Interpretation of the action research cycle, Macintyre (2000, p. 1)

We believe it is important to prioritize the flexibility of the process, and encourage you to only use these models as basic guides for your process. Your process may look similar, or you may diverge from these models as you better understand your students, context, and data.

Definitions of Action Research and Examples

At this point, it may be helpful for readers to have a working definition of action research and some examples to illustrate the methodology in the classroom. Bassey (1998, p. 93) offers a very practical definition and describes “action research as an inquiry which is carried out in order to understand, to evaluate and then to change, in order to improve educational practice.” Cohen and Manion (1994, p. 192) situate action research differently, and describe action research as emergent, writing:

essentially an on-the-spot procedure designed to deal with a concrete problem located in an immediate situation. This means that ideally, the step-by-step process is constantly monitored over varying periods of time and by a variety of mechanisms (questionnaires, diaries, interviews and case studies, for example) so that the ensuing feedback may be translated into modifications, adjustment, directional changes, redefinitions, as necessary, so as to bring about lasting benefit to the ongoing process itself rather than to some future occasion.

Lastly, Koshy (2010, p. 9) describes action research as:

a constructive inquiry, during which the researcher constructs his or her knowledge of specific issues through planning, acting, evaluating, refining and learning from the experience. It is a continuous learning process in which the researcher learns and also shares the newly generated knowledge with those who may benefit from it.

These definitions highlight the distinct features of action research and emphasize the purposeful intent of action researchers to improve, refine, reform, and problem-solve issues in their educational context. To better understand the distinctness of action research, these are some examples of action research topics:

Examples of Action Research Topics

• Flexible seating in 4th grade classroom to increase effective collaborative learning.
• Structured homework protocols for increasing student achievement.
• Developing a system of formative feedback for 8th grade writing.
• Using music to stimulate creative writing.
• Weekly brown bag lunch sessions to improve responses to PD from staff.
• Using exercise balls as chairs for better classroom management.

Action Research in Theory

Action research-based inquiry in educational contexts and classrooms involves distinct participants – students, teachers, and other educational stakeholders within the system. All of these participants are engaged in activities to benefit the students, and subsequently society as a whole. Action research contributes to these activities and potentially enhances the participants’ roles in the education system. Participants’ roles are enhanced based on two underlying principles:

• communities, schools, and classrooms are sites of socially mediated actions, and action research provides a greater understanding of self and new knowledge of how to negotiate these socially mediated environments;
• communities, schools, and classrooms are part of social systems in which humans interact with many cultural tools, and action research provides a basis to construct and analyze these interactions.

In our quest for knowledge and understanding, we have consistently analyzed human experience over time and have distinguished between types of reality. Humans have constantly sought “facts” and “truth” about reality that can be empirically demonstrated or observed.

Social systems are based on beliefs, and generally, beliefs about what will benefit the greatest amount of people in that society. Beliefs, and more specifically the rationale or support for beliefs, are not always easy to demonstrate or observe as part of our reality. Take the example of an English Language Arts teacher who prioritizes argumentative writing in her class. She believes that argumentative writing demonstrates the mechanics of writing best among types of writing, while also providing students a skill they will need as citizens and professionals. While we can observe the students writing, and we can assess their ability to develop a written argument, it is difficult to observe the students’ understanding of argumentative writing and its purpose in their future. This relates to the teacher’s beliefs about argumentative writing; we cannot observe the real value of the teaching of argumentative writing. The teacher’s rationale and beliefs about teaching argumentative writing are bound to the social system and the skills their students will need to be active parts of that system. Therefore, our goal through action research is to demonstrate the best ways to teach argumentative writing to help all participants understand its value as part of a social system.

The knowledge that is conveyed in a classroom is bound to, and justified by, a social system. A postmodernist approach to understanding our world seeks knowledge within a social system, which is directly opposed to the empirical or positivist approach which demands evidence based on logic or science as rationale for beliefs. Action research does not rely on a positivist viewpoint to develop evidence and conclusions as part of the research process. Action research offers a postmodernist stance to epistemology (theory of knowledge) and supports developing questions and new inquiries during the research process. In this way action research is an emergent process that allows beliefs and decisions to be negotiated as reality and meaning are being constructed in the socially mediated space of the classroom.

Theorizing Action Research for the Classroom

All research, at its core, is for the purpose of generating new knowledge and contributing to the knowledge base of educational research. Action researchers in the classroom want to explore methods of improving their pedagogy and practice. The starting place of their inquiry stems from their pedagogy and practice, so by nature the knowledge created from their inquiry is often contextually specific to their classroom, school, or community. Therefore, we should examine the theoretical underpinnings of action research for the classroom. It is important to connect action research conceptually to experience; for example, Levin and Greenwood (2001, p. 105) make these connections:

• Action research is context bound and addresses real life problems.
• Action research is inquiry where participants and researchers cogenerate knowledge through collaborative communicative processes in which all participants’ contributions are taken seriously.
• The meanings constructed in the inquiry process lead to social action or these reflections and action lead to the construction of new meanings.
• The credibility/validity of action research knowledge is measured according to whether the actions that arise from it solve problems (workability) and increase participants’ control over their own situation.

Educators who engage in action research will generate new knowledge and beliefs based on their experiences in the classroom. Let us emphasize that these are all important to you and your work, as both an educator and researcher. It is these experiences, beliefs, and theories that are often discounted when more official forms of knowledge (e.g., textbooks, curriculum standards, districts standards) are prioritized. These beliefs and theories based on experiences should be valued and explored further, and this is one of the primary purposes of action research in the classroom. These beliefs and theories should be valued because they were meaningful aspects of knowledge constructed from teachers’ experiences. Developing meaning and knowledge in this way forms the basis of constructivist ideology, just as teachers often try to get their students to construct their own meanings and understandings when experiencing new ideas.  

Classroom Teachers Constructing their Own Knowledge

Most of you are probably at least minimally familiar with constructivism, or the process of constructing knowledge. However, what is constructivism precisely, for the purposes of action research? Many scholars have theorized constructivism and have identified two key attributes (Koshy, 2010; von Glasersfeld, 1987):

• Knowledge is not passively received, but actively developed through an individual’s cognition;
• Human cognition is adaptive and finds purpose in organizing the new experiences of the world, instead of settling for absolute or objective truth.

Considering these two attributes, constructivism is distinct from conventional knowledge formation because people can develop a theory of knowledge that orders and organizes the world based on their experiences, instead of an objective or neutral reality. When individuals construct knowledge, there are interactions between an individual and their environment where communication, negotiation and meaning-making are collectively developing knowledge. For most educators, constructivism may be a natural inclination of their pedagogy. Action researchers have a similar relationship to constructivism because they are actively engaged in a process of constructing knowledge. However, their constructions may be more formal and based on the data they collect in the research process. Action researchers also are engaged in the meaning making process, making interpretations from their data. These aspects of the action research process situate them in the constructivist ideology. Just like constructivist educators, action researchers’ constructions of knowledge will be affected by their individual and professional ideas and values, as well as the ecological context in which they work (Biesta & Tedder, 2006). The relations between constructivist inquiry and action research is important, as Lincoln (2001, p. 130) states:

much of the epistemological, ontological, and axiological belief systems are the same or similar, and methodologically, constructivists and action researchers work in similar ways, relying on qualitative methods in face-to-face work, while buttressing information, data and background with quantitative method work when necessary or useful.

While there are many links between action research and educators in the classroom, constructivism offers the most familiar and practical threads to bind the beliefs of educators and action researchers.  

Epistemology, Ontology, and Action Research

It is also important for educators to consider the philosophical stances related to action research to better situate it with their beliefs and reality. When researchers make decisions about the methodology they intend to use, they will consider their ontological and epistemological stances. It is vital that researchers clearly distinguish their philosophical stances and understand the implications of their stance in the research process, especially when collecting and analyzing their data. In what follows, we will discuss ontological and epistemological stances in relation to action research methodology.

Ontology, or the theory of being, is concerned with the claims or assumptions we make about ourselves within our social reality – what do we think exists, what does it look like, what entities are involved and how do these entities interact with each other (Blaikie, 2007). In relation to the discussion of constructivism, generally action researchers would consider their educational reality as socially constructed. Social construction of reality happens when individuals interact in a social system. Meaningful construction of concepts and representations of reality develop through an individual’s interpretations of others’ actions. These interpretations become agreed upon by members of a social system and become part of social fabric, reproduced as knowledge and beliefs to develop assumptions about reality. Researchers develop meaningful constructions based on their experiences and through communication. Educators as action researchers will be examining the socially constructed reality of schools. In the United States, many of our concepts, knowledge, and beliefs about schooling have been socially constructed over the last hundred years. For example, a group of teachers may look at why fewer female students enroll in upper-level science courses at their school. This question deals directly with the social construction of gender and specifically what careers females have been conditioned to pursue. We know this is a social construction in some school social systems because in other parts of the world, or even the United States, there are schools that have more females enrolled in upper level science courses than male students. Therefore, the educators conducting the research have to recognize the socially constructed reality of their school and consider this reality throughout the research process. Action researchers will use methods of data collection that support their ontological stance and clarify their theoretical stance throughout the research process.

Koshy (2010, p. 23-24) offers another example of addressing the ontological challenges in the classroom:

A teacher who was concerned with increasing her pupils’ motivation and enthusiasm for learning decided to introduce learning diaries which the children could take home. They were invited to record their reactions to the day’s lessons and what they had learnt. The teacher reported in her field diary that the learning diaries stimulated the children’s interest in her lessons, increased their capacity to learn, and generally improved their level of participation in lessons. The challenge for the teacher here is in the analysis and interpretation of the multiplicity of factors accompanying the use of diaries. The diaries were taken home so the entries may have been influenced by discussions with parents. Another possibility is that children felt the need to please their teacher. Another possible influence was that their increased motivation was as a result of the difference in style of teaching which included more discussions in the classroom based on the entries in the dairies.

Here you can see the challenge for the action researcher is working in a social context with multiple factors, values, and experiences that were outside of the teacher’s control. The teacher was only responsible for introducing the diaries as a new style of learning. The students’ engagement and interactions with this new style of learning were all based upon their socially constructed notions of learning inside and outside of the classroom. A researcher with a positivist ontological stance would not consider these factors, and instead might simply conclude that the dairies increased motivation and interest in the topic, as a result of introducing the diaries as a learning strategy.

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, signifies a philosophical view of what counts as knowledge – it justifies what is possible to be known and what criteria distinguishes knowledge from beliefs (Blaikie, 1993). Positivist researchers, for example, consider knowledge to be certain and discovered through scientific processes. Action researchers collect data that is more subjective and examine personal experience, insights, and beliefs.

Action researchers utilize interpretation as a means for knowledge creation. Action researchers have many epistemologies to choose from as means of situating the types of knowledge they will generate by interpreting the data from their research. For example, Koro-Ljungberg et al., (2009) identified several common epistemologies in their article that examined epistemological awareness in qualitative educational research, such as: objectivism, subjectivism, constructionism, contextualism, social epistemology, feminist epistemology, idealism, naturalized epistemology, externalism, relativism, skepticism, and pluralism. All of these epistemological stances have implications for the research process, especially data collection and analysis. Please see the table on pages 689-90, linked below for a sketch of these potential implications:

Again, Koshy (2010, p. 24) provides an excellent example to illustrate the epistemological challenges within action research:

A teacher of 11-year-old children decided to carry out an action research project which involved a change in style in teaching mathematics. Instead of giving children mathematical tasks displaying the subject as abstract principles, she made links with other subjects which she believed would encourage children to see mathematics as a discipline that could improve their understanding of the environment and historic events. At the conclusion of the project, the teacher reported that applicable mathematics generated greater enthusiasm and understanding of the subject.

The educator/researcher engaged in action research-based inquiry to improve an aspect of her pedagogy. She generated knowledge that indicated she had improved her students’ understanding of mathematics by integrating it with other subjects – specifically in the social and ecological context of her classroom, school, and community. She valued constructivism and students generating their own understanding of mathematics based on related topics in other subjects. Action researchers working in a social context do not generate certain knowledge, but knowledge that emerges and can be observed and researched again, building upon their knowledge each time.

Researcher Positionality in Action Research

In this first chapter, we have discussed a lot about the role of experiences in sparking the research process in the classroom. Your experiences as an educator will shape how you approach action research in your classroom. Your experiences as a person in general will also shape how you create knowledge from your research process. In particular, your experiences will shape how you make meaning from your findings. It is important to be clear about your experiences when developing your methodology too. This is referred to as researcher positionality. Maher and Tetreault (1993, p. 118) define positionality as:

Gender, race, class, and other aspects of our identities are markers of relational positions rather than essential qualities. Knowledge is valid when it includes an acknowledgment of the knower’s specific position in any context, because changing contextual and relational factors are crucial for defining identities and our knowledge in any given situation.

By presenting your positionality in the research process, you are signifying the type of socially constructed, and other types of, knowledge you will be using to make sense of the data. As Maher and Tetreault explain, this increases the trustworthiness of your conclusions about the data. This would not be possible with a positivist ontology. We will discuss positionality more in chapter 6, but we wanted to connect it to the overall theoretical underpinnings of action research.

Advantages of Engaging in Action Research in the Classroom

In the following chapters, we will discuss how action research takes shape in your classroom, and we wanted to briefly summarize the key advantages to action research methodology over other types of research methodology. As Koshy (2010, p. 25) notes, action research provides useful methodology for school and classroom research because:

Advantages of Action Research for the Classroom

• research can be set within a specific context or situation;
• researchers can be participants – they don’t have to be distant and detached from the situation;
• it involves continuous evaluation and modifications can be made easily as the project progresses;
• there are opportunities for theory to emerge from the research rather than always follow a previously formulated theory;
• the study can lead to open-ended outcomes;
• through action research, a researcher can bring a story to life.

Action Research Copyright © by J. Spencer Clark; Suzanne Porath; Julie Thiele; and Morgan Jobe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Published: 21 October 2020

Uncovering trend-based research insights on teaching and learning in big data

• Young-Eun Park   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3057-7930 1  

Journal of Big Data volume  7 , Article number:  93 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Along with the big data era, digital transformation has had a transformative effect on modern education tremendously in higher education. It transforms an institutional core value of education to better meet students’ needs by leveraging big data and digital technology. Based on this background, this study attempts to catch the principal trends, or new directions, paradigms as predictors with an association of each topic by discovering the up-to-date research trends on teaching and learning in higher education via text mining techniques. For this, 285 research articles in the area of teaching and learning in higher education were collected from several big databases (distinguishable publishers’ web platforms) through search engines for 2 years in 2018–2019. Then it was analyzed using a semantic network analysis that processes natural human language. Consequently, research results show a relatively high connection with ‘student’ or ‘student-centered/led’ rather than ‘teacher-led.’ Moreover, it exhibits that the practice and assessment in learning can be attained via diverse learning activities, containing community or outreach activities. Besides, research in academic contexts, experience-based classes, the effect of group activities, how students’ feelings or perceptions, and relationships affect learning outcomes were addressed as the main topics through topic modeling of LDA, a machine learning algorithm. This study proposes that educators, researchers, and even academic leaders can exert extraordinary power to reshape educational quality programs for future education and in a timely manner with recognizable trends or agendas in teaching and learning of higher education.

Introduction

Digital transformation in higher education covers many things from using digital tools such as LMS (Learning Management System), Interactive whiteboard, various application tools for e-learning, etc. in university classrooms to digitize university documents. However, it does not just involve in utilizing advanced tools. The change and growing demand can be more profound and deep, incorporating whole aspects of education. Although there is an initial resistance to new technologies caused by continually changing, we have no choice but to hold and follow this latest trend [ 11 , 53 ]. Moreover, no matter what has happened to us in the past and what is going on in our current lives, there is no power to keep us from having an unknown future with high uncertainty. It is the main reason we should be aware of the latest trends or changing circumstances around us. Accordingly, efforts to look at trends or predict a new paradigm based on historical big data in teaching and learning has been around continuously in the various educational sectors of higher education [ 1 , 4 , 16 , 17 , 39 , 53 ]. In particular, main issues, which have traditionally started from finding trends about students’ learning [ 17 , 20 ], expand into teaching and learning broadly [ 22 , 58 ]. Furthermore, now it amplifies into research and development [ 7 , 16 , 18 , 19 , 27 , 29 , 37 , 41 , 42 , 44 ]. Besides, previous studies favored measuring the higher education curriculum’s achievement or improvement and measuring the outcomes to fulfill the highest standards [ 2 , 6 ]. Past research trends that studied diverse factors affecting students’ learning attitudes and learning outcomes have been extended to diversified research areas. Those comprehensively connect distinct educational issues and teaching and learning methods. For example, new techniques such as flipped learning, blended learning, and interactive ways maximize education effectiveness [ 45 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 64 ]. Furthermore, there is an ever-increasing range of connections with multiple stakeholders around education, management, administration, policy, and leadership in higher education [ 8 , 35 , 44 ].

Thus, recognizing the latest issues or trends of how teaching and learning in higher education have conducted in research has a special meaning to reflect the present and previous studies and seek desirable directions in the development of future education [ 7 , 18 , 19 , 27 , 29 , 37 , 41 , 42 ]. Consequently, a number of researchers in diverse educational sectors have shown many distinguished studies related to those topics with different perspectives to keep up with the most popular and the latest educational trends. However, most studies are independent studies based on a specific situation or context rather than grasping the overall academic flow. Besides, most of them were investigated with qualitative and subjective methods through surveys and interviews, such as focus group interviews. Also, reviews of scientific publications such as articles or books, course syllabus, etc. are implemented to manually gather non-numerical data. This qualitative research approach provides obvious implications and contributions comprehensively to understand and explore an educational situation or a higher education phenomenon. However, it is a study confined to individual conditions or specific circumstances independently. Moreover, there is a potential to create subjective judgments or arguments when applying for different occasions or environments [ 41 , 42 ]. Hence, this study aims to supplement the limitations of those existing studies and grasp the general current flow of teaching and learning through big data. By identifying the latest teaching and learning trends in higher education through semantic network analysis, a text mining technique using big data of unstructured texts, this study catches the fundamental directions and main topics, including the linkage of each issue. In conclusion, this research can provide a wealth of insights to guide educators, researchers, and academic leaders in higher education with a trend-based approach in quality education. The latest educational issues identified using big data and advanced technologies will help renovate and reshape future educational programs. Also, in the face of rapidly changing educational trends and dynamic environments, it will meet the different needs of diverse stakeholders around higher education.

The rest of this research paper is organized and illustrated as follows. The next section presents reviewing existing studies extensively. Then, a proposed research framework with research questions is addressed. After that, the data and methodology are presented and analyzed in the section of results and discussion. Lastly, the implication and conclusion are included in a future research direction in the last section.

Literature review

Researches about teaching and learning in higher education.

A past or present, a critical issue to higher education lies in teaching and learning. Accordingly, different agendas from a wide variety of perspectives in higher education are progressively evolving. However, we need to revisit the basic principals and focus on the essential subjects of teaching and learning [ 9 , 45 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 60 , 64 ]. Traditionally, education has focused on finding the diverse matters surrounding the roles of students and teachers, respectively, to examine the learning effects and the factors that influence it, that is, to find cause and effect (causality) in teaching and learning [ 16 , 17 ]. It has progressed into an in-depth discussion of how psychological factors, such as students’ perceptions, feelings, or relationships with teachers, influence learning outcomes [ 24 , 36 , 62 ]. What is more, many studies examined how various demographical factors such as gender, race, and income level of families affect students’ learning or its outcomes [ 25 , 30 , 57 ]. In addition to this approach, attention was paid to the teachers’ point of view to find out more effective teaching methods and what new teaching methods were being developed and used and how those methods worked. For example, flipped learning, blended learning, online learning, or interactive learning using various technology tools or simulation game. These are the most recently adopted teaching methods [ 19 , 21 , 23 , 34 , 60 ].

Other endeavors have been made to find general trends in teaching and learning with a holistic perspective [ 13 , 16 , 19 , 20 , 22 , 27 , 37 , 41 , 42 ]. Deng et al. [ 13 ] focused on identifying trends and categorizing the study on Massive Open Online Courses in teaching and learning. Elton and Laurillard [ 16 ] sought to find research trends in students’ learning and discover new research paradigms. They analyzed the trends to uncover the determinants of how humans learn, the differences among individuals in human education, how content elements affect learning, and how contextual factors affect learning. Guri-Rozenblit [ 20 ] reviewed and analyzed four books that can use to examine trends in learning. Based on this, he defined the definitions of distance education and open education. He covered a wide range of free public/distance systems, course design, advanced technology, and delivery systems, student support and survival issues, and lastly, inter-university and inter-institutional collaboration issues. Henderson et al. [ 22 ] studied students’ perceptions of useful digital technologies in teaching and learning in the university, which has an online education or interactive education through an online system. It is attracting attention as research that captures the transforming the nature of university education. Nikitina and Lapina [ 41 ] proposed that recent business education trends were organized into three categories: a curriculum that meets the desire of society and business, partnership & networking, and a modern and flexible teaching method in their research. Besides, new forms of teaching and learning, including blended learning, interactive learning, and flipped learning, have been addressed by many scholars [ 21 , 34 , 60 ]. Besides that, a large number of studies have mainly concentrated on the numerous factors or trends affecting educational development and management [ 19 , 27 , 37 , 41 , 42 ]. For instance, Nomuoja [ 42 ] studied the current trends emerging in business schools of higher education. Consequently, career awareness, risk management, people-oriented strategy and management, and skills-based curriculum were mainly discussed. Moreover, there are interviews from international top MBA schools to discover major MBA trends such as ‘growing trend of double degrees,’ growth acceleration of online or technology-based education and blended learning in business education [ 19 , 23 , 37 ]. Accordingly, a considerable amount of research has been done with broad and varied teaching and learning perspectives. However, most of them were independent studies investigated based on a specific situation or context rather than grasping the educational flow or trends. Moreover, there is still a lack of study that looks at the global direction of such research more objectively and quantitatively using big data. Hence, this study aims to fill in the gap of these existing studies.

Semantic network analysis using big data of the unstructured text

We live in an era where all aspects of our lives are uncertain and rapidly changing [ 28 , 33 , 47 ]. The best way to cope with this uncertain and unknown future is to predict and prepare for the future based on various historical big data by reducing this prediction error. In this regard, people focus on using big data to read trends and prepare for the unknown future. This substantial phenomenon is well represented in diverse and separate research fields as well. Many scholars in a very different area are working actively to discover insights into big data using various data mining techniques [ 1 , 15 , 26 , 38 , 46 , 47 , 52 , 53 , 55 , 63 ]. We can deal with big data or data sets due to the breakthrough technology, which is too complicated or broad to be dealt with by traditional data-processing approaches. In particular, it became possible to analyze a large amount of unstructured text data through text mining, one of the data mining techniques, as linguistic techniques have developed and applied to diverse areas [ 11 , 38 , 61 ].

A morphological or semantic network analysis deals with dividing a sentence into the smallest meaningful unit of language, namely, morphemes by importing unstructured text data such as speeches, comments, or posting in social media like Twitter, Instagram, or any bibliographic information (for example, books, scholarly articles, records, interviews, etc.) [ 15 , 26 , 43 , 47 , 63 ]. It automatically extracts words in sentences, paragraphs, and documents to make it simple to construct a word-to-word network according to the degree of nearness or adjacency between words [ 3 , 26 ]. Based on that, network structures provide intuitive and beneficial illustrations for modeling semantic inference and knowledge [ 55 ]. Through this, we can comprehend the relationship among words or understand their association by combining topics through proper interpretations in a given text [ 12 , 50 , 55 ]. The more commended, the larger the size of the morpheme or word. It can then be seen at first sight, as it were, to visually stress major issues or agendas such as keywords in unstructured documents to extract critical attributes, mainly in big data that manages a large amount of information. Nodes in a semantic network mean words, and links are word-to-word adjacency relationships [ 43 ]. Until recently, network analysis required data structured by nodes and ties ahead of time. The subsequent processes were performed by individual programs, which required plenty of human efforts and time. However, with state-of-the-art technology development, natural language processing is built into data mining programs, which can directly enter unstructured text data and extract words (nodes) in morphological units and create network data encompassing words. It broadens the network analysis horizon with massive unstructured text data [ 12 , 29 ]. Accordingly, a large number of scholars has ripened into a semantic network analysis as a powerful tool of text mining in numerous ways since Rice and Danowski [ 50 ] built a basic framework for network analysis [ 15 , 40 , 50 , 56 ].

The purpose of analyzing text using text mining is very diverse. It is possible to comprehend between the lines in which the document intends to deliver by reassembling the text. Also, by visually grasping the relationship between the main concepts and other keywords in the text, it is easy to understand various networks. Through this, it is achievable to analyze the roles of words and their relationships by recognizing the word associations. One of the most significant benefits in text mining is to analyze the terms both qualitatively and quantitatively [ 11 , 38 , 39 ]. Additionally, it uses to visualize or illustrate the relationship between objects or people in text and topic modeling [ 26 , 43 ]. For this, a large amount of information can efficiently and effectively utilize to generate more comprehensive and extended knowledge, analytical reasoning, and even explorative analysis, which is the final goal of text analysis [ 11 , 12 , 14 , 38 , 39 , 59 ]. With those benefits of this approach, many scholars have discussed various topics with different perspectives using big data. Many scholars and observers have found huge opportunities and tremendous potentials of semantic network analysis with recognizing centrality indicators between words and sub-network structures of words [ 32 , 50 ]. Many of those studies exhibit the possibility of the ongoing development of the semantic networks as a powerful research tool emerging with the big data era’s advent. In particular, semantic network analysis is used in research to study teaching and learning in higher education. Shen and Ho [ 51 ] showed the importance of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) through a semantic approach as an inspired way to improve teaching and learning outcomes in high education. Kim [ 27 ] determined the study trends of music education using the semantic network analysis. Lee [ 31 ] analyzed the research trends in the area of journalism, pursuing the key words of the abstract of research articles published in 2005–2015 through semantic network analysis, then, finally established knowledge system as a result. Besides, Kim et al. [ 29 ] applied semantic network analysis to draw a significant agenda of nursing care service opinions by extracting data from online news and social media data. Recently, Park [ 47 ] took the data of news media and social media to compare the trends from the two different kinds of big data sources to predict leading Korean companies’ sustainability.

Based on those previous studies, this study aims to investigate the most recent research issues and latest trends of teaching and learning in higher education through semantic network analysis. Using a large amount of unstructured text data, we can effectively and efficiently discover trendy insights and directions of future education in teaching and learning and research [ 15 , 52 , 53 , 55 ]. Accordingly, it expects to generate subsequent development of knowledge and intuition to comprehend a new paradigm of future education in general, which is just around the corner. It would be very constructive and beneficial to educators, researchers, academic leaders, and even administrative leaders in higher education.

Proposed research framework

To pinpoint major agendas and trends in teaching and learning of higher education, semantic network analysis, a data mining technique, was used in this study. Accordingly, there is no theoretical framework with hypotheses as the data-driven approach is used in this paper. This data-driven methodology became an extraordinarily capable and promising area. A massive amount of information reserved in electronic and digital records on the internet brings tremendous opportunities and impacts remarkably for knowledge discovery, information extraction, and analytical reasoning in education fields [ 15 , 40 , 61 ]. Thus, this empowers one to extract important algorithmic properties that give powerful intuitions and insights into the structure of networks and graphs [ 38 , 53 , 55 , 65 ]. As previous literature shows, a researcher can collect big data from various sources and platforms. For example, news channels (such as BBC, CNN, ABC, etc.), social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.), web or internet search engines (such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Journal databases or publishers’ databases, etc.), other financial reports (such as financial statements, press releases, conference calls regarding earnings and related information, etc.), and so on [ 11 , 39 , 47 , 53 ]. In this study, the data were gathered for analysis from several distinguishable publishers (Sage Publications, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier BV)’ web platforms through search engines. Figure  1 shows the proposed framework of this study with a holistic approach.

The proposed framework of this study

This study attempts to determine the most recent research agendas or trends of the leading higher education journals about teaching and learning in 2018 and 2019 through semantic network analysis. As the global trend is changing very fast, this study emphasizes teaching and learning in the last 2 years. For this purpose, this study establishes the following research questions.

(1) What are the main trends or agendas of teaching and learning in higher education in the last two years?

(2) What are the critical attributes of teaching and learning in higher education, and what are the implications of this?

(3) How are the specific sub-domains (topic modeling) of teaching and learning in higher education categorized as future education strategies?

Data and methodology

Data collection.

This study aims to identify the most recent educational trends and predict future directions or shifts by recognizing the main issues of teaching and learning in Higher education. For that, the data collected from 285 research articles of four international ‘top-tier’ journals ranked as ISI/SCOPUS Q1 in this field for 2 years (2018–2019) in the big databases of each publisher’s web platform. The data were selected according to the following criteria using the search engine: ISI/SCOPUS indexed, reputable publishers/open-access journals, and international peer-reviewed journals in Table  1 . Then, semantic network analysis, a powerful and compelling technique in a significant data era, is used to extract patterns or directions with uncovering data-empowered insights. Consequently, 587 unique keywords, 1743 sentences, and 285 paragraphs and documents were identified in 285 abstracts of research articles through NetMiner4’s semantic network analysis program. NetMiner is an eminent application software tool for exploratory analysis and visualization of extensive network data. It also includes several functions and features for data analytics, such as machine learning algorithms, semantic network analysis, etc. It has optimized operations and structure that can efficiently process large amounts of unstructured text data. Accordingly, the study uses this software program, particularly semantic network analysis, which is the most appropriate method to achieve the research questions.

Data cleaning with refinement

Most commonly, data encloses ambiguous and unnecessary contents. Particularly, unstructured text data include meaningless and illogical messy texts such as symbols, colon, emoticons, consonant and vowel data, and even slang and spelling errors. Thus, it is necessary to filter and purify the data through pre-processing for data cleaning and refinement [ 5 ]. In the pre-processed text, the word tab is integrated into the result area. The Word tab provides such information as a list of words, frequency of use, part of speech, which is to be extracted from the unstructured text contents according to the text process settings. After refining, the data are cleaned up, and the quality of the messy data for analysis is improved overall. In this study, messy data were tidy up using Open Refine (used to be called Google Refine), one of the best tools for data cleaning and refinement. Also, the word filtering of data cleaning software in the NetMiner was used for double-checking.

Results and discussion

This study’s first objective is to determine the most studied topics in the field of higher education in 2018 and 2019. For this, the top 20 keywords are selected through semantic network analysis among 587 keywords appearing in 285 abstracts of research papers in four top journals related to the issues of teaching and learning in 2018–2019. The result is as shown in Table  2 .

According to the results, the main ‘top 20’ keywords of teaching and learning in higher education cover the topics of ‘students-centered or student-led learning’ rather than ‘teacher-led’ and that, research, experience, group, development, practice, and engagement are identifiable. Especially, the word ‘student’ composed 7.11% of the total 797 times as a leading keyword showing the highest frequency, and it follows by study, learning, education, research, university, and experience. They are 2.97%, 2.41%, 2.04%, 1.81%, 1.81%, and 1.18%, respectively. In this study, a directional link (Directed Network) based on the ‘Binary Network,’ which does not weigh the connecting line, is created. Here, the frequency of a node is an amount defined for each node and means the number of connection lines of each node that exists as a neighbor. In-degree refers to the number of edges coming towards a vertex in a directed graph; out-degree refers to the number of arcs directed away from the vertex. Although Table  2 shows the keywords in the top 20 ranks, it observes that a few keywords in the top and the other keywords show a great difference in the number of nodes in- and out-degree. Accordingly, for the detailed view at a glance, a word cloud is created to check each keyword’s quantitative importance. Then, it considers the relationship and features of keywords in more detail through network map and topic modeling. Word Cloud is a visualization tool that illustrates the size of letters according to the importance of keywords. Based on that, we can notice the difference between relatively meaningful words, in brief, to understand how much difference is there. In this study, the word cloud node attributes are used to display information as frequency and number of words by entering the maximum number of words as 100. The result of the word cloud is as follows in the Fig.  2 .

Word Cloud of Top 100 keywords

Meanwhile, the word-to-word network is visualized with a network map to understand the data analysis results intuitively. It means that the network data is calculated and arranged according to NetMiner’s layout algorithm’s program. A layout algorithm is a method of calculating where to place nodes to visualize network data. Among the usual methods, Spring Layout is chosen as it can show the connection structure most effectively. Spring layout can be expressed by various algorithms such as Kamada & Kawai, Stress Majorization, and Clustered Eades, Fruchterman & Reingold, GEM, HDE, etc.

Among them, Kamada & Kawai, Stress Majorization, and Eades are chosen as these algorithms fit the need for data analysis and representation, then compare them as preliminary work to consider the number of various cases of subtopic extraction inherent in a given text. In this study, the isolated nodes are shown at the edge of the network map and visualized comparing the ‘Kamada & Kawai,’ ‘Stress Majorization,’ and ‘Clustered Eades’ network maps deselecting isolated nodes. The layout of the analysis results is as follows in the Fig.  3 .

Layout after deselecting isolated nodes (Kamada & Kawai vs. Stress Majorization vs. Eades)

After importing unstructured data, a 2-mode network between words and sentences/paragraphs/documents generated in the program of NetMiner transforms into the keyword–keyword 1-mode system of the research presented in the major journals about teaching and learning. Here’s a look at the detailed layout with keywords from the three core types of network maps in Fig.  4 .

The detailed layout view of network maps

In the NetMiner program, a 1-mode network generates by using word-to-word distance information. In this study, the nearness of two words is calculated, and based on that, a method of creating links between words located close together is used. The number of words includes setting the link generation range between words called ‘Window Size.’ In this study, a maximum of 3 words is included in the link generation range by entering Window Size as 3. Links create between words according to the Window Size set as above, and the two linked words are displayed as Source and Target, respectively, in Table  3 .

The term TF (Term Frequency) describes above indicates how often a particular word appears in a document. It means the higher the value, the more critical the word. However, a term commonly used (for example, do) may have a high TF value even though it is not an important word. To avoid this, we can measure how many documents appear in a text by Document Frequency (DF). In conclusion, TF-IDF (Inverse Document Frequency) provides information to determine how valuable a word is in a particular document based on word frequency and document frequency. The value of the weight, in general, marks the TF-IDF. This Eq.  1 of the TF-IDF score is calculated as follows.

tf i, j  = The number of occurrences of i in j; df i  = The number of documents containing i; N = total number of documents.

Weight is the link frequency of generated word pairs, meaning that the words of ‘student’ and ‘experience’ weight 28, and the word pair appears 28 times in the entire text. # of Sentences/Paragraphs/Documents is the number of sentences/paragraphs/documents in which the word pair appears. In this study, the word pair of ‘learning’ and ‘environment’ appear 26 times, with a weight of 26 and # of documents of 19. Gini Coefficient indicates how concentrated the word pair is intensely in a few sentences, paragraphs, and documents. It is also how evenly it appears in multiple sentences, paragraphs, and documents. A value closer to 1 demonstrates that the more focused it is on a few sentences, paragraphs, and documents, the more important the word pair is. In this case, the criterion for sentences, paragraphs, and documents is a co-occurrence unit selected when creating a 1-mode network.

Lastly, the method of LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), which is a machine learning algorithm, is used to extract subtopics embedded in the text [ 10 , 54 ]. LDA is one of the most popular and influential topic models, a method for analyzing a broad set of unstructured documents. The basic idea is that unstructured documents are represented as a topic distribution where each topic is characterized by a word distribution [ 12 , 54 ].

We can denote p(z❘d i ), p(w❘z i,j ) as the topic distribution for each document i, and the word distribution for a topic allocated to jth word of document i, respectively. In the learning phase, LDA fits p(z❘d i ), p(w❘z i,j ) to a pair of documents (i.e., a document-by-word sparse matrix). Given these distributions, the LDA can generate a new document with the following generative process [ 12 ]:

for jth word in the ith document:

Choose a topic z i, j  ~ Multinomial (p(z❘d i ))

Choose a topic w i, j  ~ Multinomial (p(w❘z i,j )).

For each topic, the top nodes from the main nodes show in Table  4 . Moreover, this table shows the number of nodes and probability included for each topic when the classification labels of nodes in a Subnodeset are assigned to the topic that maximizes the topic proportion from ‘SubNode’.

MainNode (it is a Keyword) and SubNode (it is a Document) show probability information about which topic to associate. Using this method, we can figure out that the more similar the values of the response variables are, the more likely they are to contain compatible subjects. In contrast, the more significant the differences between them, the more likely they are to include different topics. The results of the top 3-topic modeling, according to the # of documents, show as follows. The main subject of the first topic can be interpreted as that practice and learning assessment can be achieved through various activities such as community activities. The second topic suggests that students’ college education can also reach through experience-based classes as staff. Third, the supervisor’s research may indicate that subjects in academic contexts can be addressed. In addition to that, several issues are revealed as uprising topics through the topic modeling of LDA. For example, a system-based education, the results or effects of group activity, how skills and knowledge can play a critical role in performance models. Moreover, how students’ perceptions or feelings can affect learning outcomes, relationships with students, and feedback could be analyzed to develop learning strategies, learning outcomes using cases, and finding teaching strategies through students’ and teachers’ practices.

Implication and conclusion

This study aspires to grasp the latest research agendas and academic trends in teaching and learning with the keywords of major international journals in higher education through semantic network analysis. Consequently, it turns out that this study obviously provides educators, researchers, and academic leaders with data-empowered insights and intuition. The identifiable future agendas, such as a trend-based approach in teaching, learning, and research in higher education, will guide future education with right direction. In this regard, this study outlines the significant implications as follows.

First of all, the world is changing faster than ever; accordingly, it is not easy to follow up on the current educational trends in higher education by mastering whole agendas. Most academic members do not adapt as quickly to keep them up-to-date in the double loop with strategic agility. Given that, this study allows us to identify the current flow of education and educational issues at a glance by leveraging advanced technology and big data. This study focuses on the most recent 2 years of big research data to best support this current situation rather than looking at old panel data such as ten or twenty-year past data. Recent big data generated by reputable publishers’ web database platforms and analytics has become an essential component for the higher education sector. In this way, this research reflects best the current educational situations in teaching and learning of higher education and contribute to preparing for the future with data-empowered intuitions and insights.

Secondly, the semantic network analysis method, a data-driven approach used in this paper, may shed light on the development of new techniques using the machine learning algorithm to get the whole picture of a new paradigm or shift in higher education. It proves that this is a very effective and useful tool to understand the key attributes of current flow and network map in teaching and learning thoroughly by extracting main issues and associated sub-topics. In this regard, this study enhances a more objective view of the actual educational reality and phenomena through big data and machine learning models in the educational sector entirely.

Lastly, traditionally, ‘teacher-centered’ or ‘teacher-led’ education in teaching and learning was the central theme in higher education. A teacher or instructor mainly focused on delivering entire contents from his or her side to students unilaterally. However, now, the paradigm is wholly changed into ‘student-centered’ or ‘student-led’ education. Then, various issues, such as learning, education, research, and experience that follow incidentally, are broken down and spread to diverse subjects. This study firmly reflects in this modern paradigm and educational trend quantitatively and qualitatively. Furthermore, this research result will play a critical role in reshaping educational environments and critical perspectives on teaching and learning in higher education placed on big data.

Although this research suggests several substantial and critical implications, there are still some limitations to be improved below. It will address in future research.

In this study, 285 scholarly articles from the top-ranked international journals related to teaching and learning in 2018–2019 were gathered and analyzed to recognize the most recent research agendas and trends, as it intended, intends to see only up-to-date data given that the trend is changing quickly. However, it is a fact that studies using massive data improve the results in terms of the level of validity and reliability of analysis in general, and it still works in the academic world. Accordingly, future research is needed to collect more data by increasing the number of articles on teaching and learning.

Next, the semantic network analysis or semantic mining technique performs statistical, logical, and rule-based semantic networks analysis quantitatively and qualitatively. However, the research method still leaves room for consideration. Traditional network analysis techniques analyzed physical world relationships simply based on distance (such as centrality), strength, direction, etc. However, recently network analysis has been developed continuously. The giant network is continually forming and flowing subsequent knowledge as large as 1: N link for real-time communication through social media such as Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, etc. Thus, it should notice that recent network analysis is very complicated, like the social network web, with a vast amount of data flowing through the network structure. Also, it is necessary to derive and analyze sub-networks aiming to apply them to diverse sectors by reflecting those attributes of a network into the research world.

Lastly, approaching individually or together with a holistic perspective in different education sectors such as law, engineering, business, computer science, or any other studies in higher education is worth doing for future research. The discovery and comparison of the most recent issues or keywords on teaching and learning in each field of higher education will help drive innovation and change in teaching and learning entirely. Furthermore, it encourages academic leaders, more senior or higher management teams, to have effective and proactive leadership by realizing the trend-based education and following up the future directions.

Availability of data and materials

In this study, the data supporting the findings are openly available in publishers’ web platforms of four journals, respectively. These data are derived from the articles of each journal in the public domain.

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Recent Research in Science Teaching and Learning

• Sarah L. Eddy

*Address correspondence to: Sarah L. Eddy ( E-mail Address: [email protected] ).

Department of Biological Sciences, STEM Transformation Institute, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199

Search for more papers by this author

The Current Insights feature is designed to introduce life science educators and researchers to current articles of interest in other social science and education journals. In this installment, I highlight three diverse research studies: one addresses the relationships between active learning and teaching evaluations; one presents an observation tool for documenting metacognition in the classroom; and the last explores things teachers can say to encourage students to employ scientific reasoning during class discussions.

STUDENT EVALUATIONS AND ACTIVE LEARNING

Henderson, C., Khan, R., & Dancy, M. (2018). Will my student evaluations decrease if I adopt an active learning instructional strategy? American Journal of Physics , 86 (12), 934–942. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5065907

Student evaluations are widely used and are often the sole source for the evaluation of faculty teaching. As described in the Introduction, fear that one’s student evaluations may decrease is one of the oft-cited reasons for faculty not adopting active-learning techniques. Yet this phenomenon has not been studied on a large scale. Henderson and colleagues test the hypothesis that active learning lowers student evaluations in a population of physics and astronomy instructors who participated in a long-running faculty development workshop. Forty percent (40%) of new physics and astronomy faculty attended this workshop. Of the more than 1300 workshop participants, 431 responded to a follow-up survey. Participants were asked about their use of active-learning methods in their most recent quantitative physics class; whether their student evaluations were impacted by the use of active learning; and whether students complained about the inclusion of active learning. If a faculty member reported a change in student evaluations, he or she was given an opportunity to provide an explanation for that change.

The majority of respondents saw either an increase (48%) or no change in their student evaluations (32%). The subset of instructors who reported receiving lower teaching evaluations also reported substantially less time lecturing than instructors who reported better evaluations. This pattern seemed driven by people using interactive methods for more than 80% of a class period, as this population was more likely to report reduced evaluations. Student complaints followed a similar pattern, with an increase in complaints becoming the most common outcome for instructors using active methods more than 80% of class time.

The reasons shared by instructors for why their evaluations changed were varied. For those who reported their evaluations improving, more than 20% of the instructors thought this increase was due to each of the following: students believing they were learning more, students enjoying class more, students enjoying interacting with one another, or students enjoying using technology. For those who reported lower evaluations, 40% reported that the students felt that the instructor was not teaching. Interestingly, many of these instructors also confessed as part of this comment that they were not good at “selling” the active learning. They next most common explanation given for lower evaluations was that students did not like working during class time; they would rather be listeners.

The results of this study suggest that, for the majority of faculty, adopting active learning will not negatively impact student evaluations. The study also suggests that those instructors concerned about student evaluations could incorporate active-learning activities for as much as 80% of class time and still not be likely to see a negative impact on their evaluations. This could be useful information to share with departmental colleagues and anyone mentoring new faculty who are deciding how to teach. As always, though, some caution should be taken in applying these results in a new context. Specifically, the authors acknowledge that they did not account for what types of active learning instructors implemented. It may be that some methods are more accepted by students than others.

TEACHERS TALKING METACOGNITION

Zepeda, C. D., Hlutkowsky, C. O., Partika, A. C., & Nokes-­Malach, T. J. (2018, October 29). Identifying teachers’ supports of metacognition through classroom talk and its relation to growth in conceptual learning. Journal of Educational Psychology (advance online publication). https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000300

Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge and awareness of one’s own thought processes. As reviewed in the Introduction, metacognition is considered highly desirable for students, because it has been linked to many positive outcomes in experimental and classroom studies, including achievement, transfer of knowledge from one context to another, and motivation. Although many studies have focused on the use of planned interventions for metacognition, few have looked at what teachers are saying and doing spontaneously in the classroom that might influence student metacognition.

Zepeda and colleagues developed an observation protocol to detect classroom talk directed toward metacognitive growth in middle school students in math classrooms. They identified both the metacognitive content of the talk and the delivery method by documenting four dimensions, each with three possible states: the type of metacognitive knowledge being promoted; the metacognitive skill being worked on; the manner in which the teacher delivered this content; and how specific the metacognitive skill is frame d (from specific to the question being worked on to a more global approach to problem solving). For example, a teacher might say, “Alright, so explain to us what you are doing right now.” This would be coded as personal knowledge, because the student is asked about his or her own process. The skill being worked on would be monitoring, (i.e., being aware of why they are doing what they are doing). The manner in which the teacher delivers the content would be directive, because the teacher is telling the student to do something. The framing could be domain general, because the prompt could be used with any type of problem. I am not going to go further into the individual states for each dimension due to space, but there are lengthy descriptions of them within the original paper.

The authors use this observation tool with one class session from 39 middle school math instructors. The classes were selected from a larger national data set of middle school classrooms. Every class included in this larger data set had math knowledge assessments. The current authors created a smaller data set that included instructors who had the most student growth on the math assessment over a year and a set of instructors who had the least growth after accounting for various student- and instructor-level factors. Each video was transcribed and each teacher statement was examined for metacognitive talk. Any instance of metacognitive talk was coded for the four dimensions in the observation tool.

Overall, there were very few metacognitive statements made by teachers (∼7% of teacher statements), but even with this low overall percentage, there were some interesting patterns. The odds of teachers engaging in metacognitive talk were 4.75 times greater during whole-class activities than during activities done individually by students. In addition, in high math growth classes, the odds of instructors engaging in metacognitive talk were 1.5 times higher than in low math growth classes.

The content of the metacognitive talk differed between these two class types as well. In terms of the knowledge dimension, teachers in the high math growth classes elicited more personal knowledge statements in which students shared their own understanding of what they were doing in class than teachers in the low math growth classes. The high math growth class also had more statements focused on the skills of monitoring and evaluating their own work. In terms of how the metacognitive content was delivered (manner), the high math growth class had more directive statements. Finally, the high math growth classes had more domain-general framing of the metacognitive statements.

This study demonstrates that classroom observations can be used to explore metacognition and that the same methods that work most effectively in interventions designed to promote metacognition may also work more informally during teach talk in class. Although the authors cannot rule out that teachers who are more effective in other ways are also more likely to engage in metacognitive talk, the results do suggest that certain ways and certain content of metacognitive talk is more effective than others.

BUILDING STUDENT’S SCIENTIFIC REASONING IN CONVERSATIONS

Grinath, A. S., & Southerland, S. A. (2018). Applying the ambitious science teaching framework in undergraduate biology: Responsive talk moves that support explanatory rigor. Science Education ,  103 (1), 92–122. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21484

Active learning is centered around the idea that it encourages students to engage in their own learning, often through conversations about course content. Yet the quality of these conversations can vary. In this paper, Grinath and Southerland explore how instructors can influence in-class student discussions.

To explore the question of facilitation effects without confounding variables of differences between lessons, content, and students, the authors chose to work with 26 teaching assistants (TAs) instructing sections of the same introductory biology lab for nonmajors at the same university. This controlled both the content being presented to students across instructors and the structure of the lessons, as each TA was provided the same slides and the same training in how to conduct the lab. The laboratory lessons were designed around the Ambitious Science Teaching framework described in the Introduction, which is meant to help students engage in the meaningful practices of their discipline, including scientific dialogue. One aspect of this framework is helping students connect their everyday explanations of their experiences to the scientific principles underlying them, that is, bridging their everyday way of talking and science talk. This initial conversation is thought to help them meaningfully engage in the subsequent lesson. This study focuses on these initial conversations.

Grinath and Southerland recorded the 8- to 22-minute–long class discussions that opened a lab class exploring how organisms respond to stimuli. At the start of class, students were asked to describe how they experience stress and explain what is driving this response. The authors transcribed the recordings and characterized each TA discourse “move,” a statement made by a TA that served a specific communication function. These moves were coded as conservative or ambitious . Conservative patterns follow the traditional classroom pattern, in which the expertise lies with the instructor only. These moves include the instructor asking questions that only have one correct answer, usually about recalling facts or procedures; evaluating a student response as right or wrong; and explaining the connection between the student response and the scientific concept rather than having students make the connection. Ambitious patterns of discourse allow students to be experts, and the instructor is the facilitator. These instructor moves include asking questions with many possible reasonable answers, probing student responses, and pressing students to supply explanations for their answers. Finally, observers also coded TA moves as inclusive or not inclusive . Inclusive moves could include providing opportunities for multiple students to respond to a question, acknowledging a contribution without indicating correctness, and repeating student responses out loud.

The discourse moves were correlated with student talk. Grinath and Southerland used a framework for explanatory rigor of scientific talk to code student responses in the initial class discussion. There were three codes for student answers: fact , observation , and explanation . A turn of student talk was coded as fact if it was short and a vocabulary word or scientific definition not grounded in personal experience. Observations were what a student thought was happening based on personal experience. Finally, explanations were students’ ideas of why something was happening. The goal of ambitious science teaching is to help students start making their own explanations of phenomena grounded in science and their own experiences. Thus, TA discourse moves that promoted student explanations were considered the most important in this study.

Using linear regressions with a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, Grinath and Southerland found that conservative discourse moves by TAs were related to an increase in student responses being simply fact statements. Ambitious questions (with multiple possible answers) did not predict student responses, but ambitious responses in which TAs deliberately probed student response and pressed students to expand on their answers did relate to increased explanations. Finally, inclusive moves together related to increased observations given by students.

This work highlights several interesting principles that could be expanded beyond labs. First, it seems that, without deliberately pressing for it (and removing the instructor’s explanations), students are not making explanations themselves. They offer facts or observations and wait for the instructor to put them together. Yet explaining phenomena is a key scientific practice and one students should develop. Second, how instructors respond to student answers is critical for creating meaningful conversations in the classroom, maybe even more critical than the qualities of the initial question itself.

• A Critical Feminist Approach for Equity and Inclusion in Undergraduate Biology Education 22 April 2021

© 2019 S. L. Eddy. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

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• Published: 10 May 2024

Non-communicable diseases, digital education and considerations for the Indian context – a scoping review

• Anup Karan 1 ,
• Suhaib Hussain 1 ,
• Lasse X Jensen 2 ,
• Alexandra Buhl 2 ,
• Margaret Bearman 3 &
• Sanjay Zodpey 1  

BMC Public Health volume  24 , Article number:  1280 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Introduction

The increasing ageing of the population with growth in NCD burden in India has put unprecedented pressure on India’s health care systems. Shortage of skilled human resources in health, particularly of specialists equipped to treat NCDs, is one of the major challenges faced in India. Keeping in view the shortage of healthcare professionals and the guidelines in NEP 2020, there is an urgent need for more health professionals who have received training in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of NCDs. This paper conducts a scoping review and aims to collate the existing evidence on the use of digital education of health professionals within NCD topics.

We searched four databases (Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO Education Research Complete, and PsycINFO) using a three-element search string with terms related to digital education, health professions, and terms related to NCD. The inclusion criteria covered the studies to be empirical and NCD-related with the target population as health professionals rather than patients. Data was extracted from 28 included studies that reported on empirical research into digital education related to non-communicable diseases in health professionals in India. Data were analysed thematically.

The target groups were mostly in-service health professionals, but a considerable number of studies also included pre-service students of medicine ( n  = 6) and nursing ( n  = 6). The majority of the studies included imparted online learning as self-study, while some imparted blended learning and online learning with the instructor. While a majority of the studies included were experimental or observational, randomized control trials and evaluations were also part of our study.

Digital HPE related to NCDs has proven to be beneficial for learners, and simultaneously, offers an effective way to bypass geographical barriers. Despite these positive attributes, digital HPE faces many challenges for its successful implementation in the Indian context. Owing to the multi-lingual and diverse health professional ecosystem in India, there is a need for strong evidence and guidelines based on prior research in the Indian context.

Peer Review reports

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) kill 41 million people each year. Of these deaths, more than 15 million happen to people between the ages of 30 and 69 years, and the vast majority of these “premature” deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [ 1 ]. It is estimated that by 2030 the share of NCDs in global total mortality will be 69% – a dramatic rise from 59% in 2002 [ 2 ]. Although the burden of NCDs continues to increase across all regions of the world, it disproportionately affects poorer regions [ 3 ], with almost 80% of NCD-related deaths occurring in LMICs [ 4 ].

This shift is largely driven by demographical and epidemiological transitions, coupled with rapid urbanization and nutritional transitions in LMICs [ 5 ].

With approximately six million annual deaths from NCDs, India presents an important case study with respect to these challenges [ 6 ]. Similar to many other LMICs, India is experiencing a rapid health transition with a rising burden of NCDs now surpassing the burden of communicable diseases [ 7 ]. In India, NCDs such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes are estimated to account for around 63% of all deaths, thus making them the leading causes of death [ 6 ]. This NCD burden has severe implications for the healthcare system. In particular, the shortage of skilled health professionals, i.e. medical specialists, nurses, and other professionals equipped to treat NCDs, presents a serious challenge [ 8 ]. The inadequacy of educational institutions to impart quality medical and nursing education has been one of the main reasons for the health workforce shortage [ 8 ]. In a recent study, the number of Indian doctors and nurses/midwives was estimated at 0.80 million and 1.40 million, with a density of 6.1 and 10.6, respectively, per 10,000 population. The numbers further drop to 5.0 and 6.0 per 10,000 population, respectively, after accounting for the adequate qualifications [ 9 , 10 ]. All these estimates are well below the WHO threshold of 44.5 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 population [ 11 ]. The study also highlights the highly skewed distribution of the health workforce across states, rural–urban and public–private sectors. The skewed distribution of the health workforce across India means that this shortage is even more grave in rural and remote areas [ 9 , 10 ]. The revised guidelines of the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NP-NCD), are a welcome strategy in the prevention and control of NCDs [ 12 ]. The focus of the guidelines on health promotion, early diagnosis and screening, and capacity building of healthcare professionals will definitely push for increased attention to the management of NCDs and how this relates to the pre- and in-service training needs of health professionals. In addition, the recent establishment of Health and Wellness Centres (HWC) in managing NCDs and achieving UHC is an excellent response to the changing demographic and epidemiological profile in India. However, this initiative is not without challenges, with a major challenge being the need to build human resource capacity with a continued need for training [ 13 , 14 ]. Although some states have conducted specific training programs to improve the capacity and address the issue, the lack of training modules for NCD management remains an important challenge to be addressed [ 14 ]. The need to strengthen the HWCs through adequate financing, human resources, and logistics for medicines and technology, especially in hard geographical areas, is an area to be focussed upon [ 13 ].

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 by the government of India has highlighted the role of digital education in training and continuing education [ 15 ]. Digital education is defined as an act of teaching and learning by means of digital technologies involving a multitude of educational approaches, concepts, methods, and technologies [ 16 ]. The NEP 2020 focuses attention on implementing and strengthening multidisciplinary, inclusive and technology-based learning that is accessible to all. With a large geographical and cultural diversity in India, meeting this need has proven to be a challenge to India’s existing systems of health professions education (HPE). Hence, the use of technology in education is proposed as a way to access remote areas and bypass geographical barriers [ 15 ].

Although the NEP 2020 has some aspirational objectives, there is a lack of specific knowledge regarding the digital education of health professionals in India. A recent review of Indian research in digital health professions education found that the body of literature is very limited and that the studies that do exist tend to take the form of evaluations of local educational interventions rather than more systematic contributions to research-based knowledge [ 17 ].

Considering the scarcity of empirical evidence related to digital education and training of health professionals regarding NCDs, it is relevant to look outside of India and explore what research may have been done in other contexts.

Digitalization of education may help us address the urgent need for more health professionals who have received training in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of NCDs. However, it is still unclear what constitutes best practice in NCD-related digital education, and how experiences from across the world are relevant to the Indian context.

The objective of the present paper is to conduct a scoping review of the published research examining the digital education of health professionals within NCD topics. More specifically the paper aims to: (i) assess the strengths and weaknesses of the digital teaching-learning practices described in the literature; and (ii) discuss the findings in relation to the Indian context.

The scoping review methodology is appropriate for exploring the extent of research activity within a topic where the literature is limited and disorganized. With a more flexible approach than what is known from systematic reviews, the scoping methodology can provide an overview of what kinds of evidence exist and help inform future research [ 18 ].

To identify relevant publications, we searched four research databases (Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO Education Research Complete, and PsycInfo). This was done with a search string consisting of three elements, namely terms related to digital education ( n  = 174), terms related to health professions ( n  = 30), and terms related to NCD ( n  = 36). The search string with all terms is included in the online supplementary material .

The search produced 1032 hits combined from all the databases (Web of Science: 443; PubMed: 259; EBSCO Education Research Complete: 118; PsycInfo: 212). When searching, we did not limit the search to any specific time frame, but subsequently, we opted to exclude papers published before 2017. This was decided to ensure that the included papers reported on interventions that represent current digital technologies. After removing duplicates and papers published before 2017, we had 463 documents. These documents were imported into the online review tool Covidence, which was used to manage the screening and data extraction processes.

Figure  1 . PRISMA flow chart showing the screening process.

PRISMA flow chart showing the screening process

In Covidence, the first step was to screen the title and abstract of these 463 documents to determine whether they were suitable for inclusion in the review. This screening process excluded studies that were.

Not empirical (e.g., reviews and commentaries).

About training patients to manage their own chronic disease.

About digital health solutions (e-health, m-health, apps, etc.)

Not related to NCD prevention, treatment, or care.

This process led to the exclusion of 385 documents, leaving a pool of 78 for full-text screening. The full-text screening followed the same exclusion criteria. This led to the exclusion of a further 50 documents, leaving a pool of 28 documents for inclusion in the review. The PRISMA flow chart in Fig.  1 illustrates this process, and Table  1 presents an overview of the 28 included studies. We note quality assessments are not typically recommended or conducted with scoping reviews [ 19 ] Moreover, as we were primarily focused on understanding what kinds of evidence exist, we did not undertake a quality assessment of the included documents.

From each of these 28 papers, we extracted data about the study’s objectives, location, target population, research design and methodology, findings, health focus, and modality of the digital educational intervention. This extraction process was undertaken by one author (SH). A few unclear cases were discussed with a further two authors (AB, LXJ). In the results section below, we present a synthesis of the extracted data, with an emphasis on the benefits and challenges identified in the various digital educational interventions.

Description of studies

The final list of the 28 studies included in our review consisted of 22 studies from high-income countries with the majority of them from United States of America (USA). Only six studies were from LMICs, more specifically from Brazil, Pakistan, Türkiye, and Uganda, as well as two studies that spanned several LMICs.

The target groups were mostly in-service health professionals but a considerable number of studies also included pre-service students of medicine ( n  = 6) and nursing ( n  = 6). Among the targeted in-service health professionals, most were nurses ( n  = 12), followed by doctors ( n  = 8) and other health professionals ( n  = 8) including emergency technicians, primary care providers, medical assistants, etc.

The majority of the studies in the overall pool used either experimental or observational study designs and gathered data using online questionnaires, interviews, and/or analysis of individual or online interactions between learners. The details about target groups and study designs are shown in Table  2 . We use the term experimental for studies that have no specific information on the randomization of the participants or where randomization has not been done. These studies typically included two groups of the study population, where one group served as an experimental one provided with the intervention and the other with no or some traditional type of intervention. Other than the observational and experimental studies, randomized control trials (RCTs) and evaluation studies were part of our review.

The studies in our review comprised mainly of educational interventions related to diabetes, stroke, hypertension and cardiac disorders.

Assessment of digital educational intervention

Based on the digital education modality that was described, we grouped the studies into three categories: blended learning, online learning with instructor, and online learning as self-study. In the sub-sections below we present the interventions, study findings, effectiveness and identified challenges of each modality.

Blended learning

Our review includes seven studies providing blended learning to health professionals and students. For this purpose, we identify blended learning as any intervention that combines online learning with some form of onsite training or teaching. All the studies report the advantages of blended learning over traditional learning and the increase in overall knowledge.

Blended learning was incorporated in various formats in the studies. Some of the studies include the online learning proponent prior to the onsite training [ 33 , 40 ]. In these, the online learning was provided in modules that could be taken at the participants’ own pace before the onsite programme which was characterised by hands-on workshops and lectures. Other studies began with on-site training followed by an online learning proponent [ 23 , 36 , 39 ]. In these studies, the online proponent consisted of further self-study of the content learned in the prior onsite training. The remaining two studies did not have a set order but rather had the online proponent as a learning resource that the participants could draw upon among other resources such as tele-education sessions, a local support coach [ 46 ] or interactive classroom lectures with group discussions and role play [ 43 ].

The studies consisted of both RCTs and observations. The RCT studies mostly highlighted the strengthening capacity of nursing professionals. For instance, in one RCT study in Thailand, the findings showed the effectiveness of blended learning in strengthening competency in diabetes care among nurses, wherein the levels of perceived self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, knowledge and skills in diabetes management care were statistically and significantly higher at Weeks 4 and 8 compared to the control group [ 39 ]. In another RCT conducted in Australia, the addition of access to online learning, as well as face-to-face education, significantly increased the uptake of diabetes education among hospital non-specialist nursing staff [ 40 ]. A study based in Pakistan gathered information about perceptions about social media as a tool for online training and reported that Facebook, with tutor support, enabled participants to study the material when their schedule permitted. The online teaching component and facilitation were ideal for their full-time working nurses, as reflected by their improved post-course test results [ 43 ]. The detailed findings for studies examining blended learning are provided in Table  3 .

Generally, among health professionals, the perception of blended learning was positive. Blended learning was perceived to be beneficial and impactful in increasing knowledge. This type of learning makes the learning interactive. However, certain challenges were identified that hampered online learning, e.g., limited internet connection and computer skills for the participants enrolled in the learning [ 43 ]. As many of the participants are health professionals active in the workforce, the long duration of the working hours makes it difficult to spare time for online learning [ 36 , 40 ].

Online learning with instructor

There were six studies in our review, wherein online learning with instructors was explored. Such online learning includes following a simultaneous schedule allowing for contact between learners and teachers/trainers during the course. Two of the six studies had no control group. All the studies assessed the effects of their online teaching through survey-based questionnaires. A majority of the studies reported that these types of courses are cost-effective and can help bypass the geographical barrier. The findings of these studies are given in Table  4 .

Regarding instructor involvement, five of the studies used learning platforms such as Moodle or Zuvia for the instructor to organise courses, materials and activities [ 22 , 27 , 38 , 42 , 45 ]. Four of these also had an online forum or messaging app for peer discussions about the content, two of these also included interactions with faculty and tutor support [ 27 , 38 , 42 , 45 ]. For instance, a study by Paul et al. [ 38 ] had an online request form for specialist advice regarding diabetes. The last study by Hicks and Murano [ 30 ] had an instructor-led webinar followed by self-study.

The studies showed a positive effect on practice. A Spanish study on cerebrovascular medical emergency management from reported that interprofessional online stroke training in the Catalonian Emergency Medical Service (EMS) was effective in increasing the study participants’ knowledge of cerebrovascular medical emergencies. The results encouraged the Catalonian EMS to maintain this training intervention in their continuous education program [ 27 ].

Online learning as self-study

Of the included papers, 15 were about online learning as self-study. In such an intervention, the learner undertakes an online course/training as flexible self-study. This means the course can be done at any time and does not require any set schedule or contact with teaching staff. Table  5 presents an overview of the study findings.

Largely the studies using online learning as self-study reported improvements in learning following the training. For instance, A study across Latin American countries studied the effects of online training on medical knowledge regarding acute kidney injury (AKI) on nephrologists and primary care physicians. The study reported gains in knowledge equivalent to 36%. It is important to note that the study concluded that the interactive, asynchronous, online courses were valuable and successful tools for continuing medical education in Latin America, reducing heterogeneity in access to training across countries. The application of distance education techniques has proved to be effective, not only in terms of primary learning objectives but also as a potential tool for the development of a sustainable structure for communication, exchange, and integration of physicians and allied professionals involved in the care of patients with AKI [ 34 ]. However, one study explored the use of online simulations [ 25 ]. This randomized control trial reported no significant change in the experimental group following an online educational course regarding oral anticoagulants in case of atrial fibrillation. Also, the reading material in certain modules being too dense and lengthy poses a challenge for the participants in one study to complete the learning [ 45 ]. Another study by Lombardi et al. [ 34 ]., also questioned whether the knowledge effect is retained on a long-term basis.

Some of the studies emphasise the possibilities that online learning provides. One study indicated that a 6-week internet-based course in diabetes and obesity treatment may serve as an important resource in postgraduate education for medical doctors as well as other health professionals. From a wider perspective, education based on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) may assist the professional community by providing the latest evidence-based guidelines in an easily accessible and globally available way [ 47 ]. An evaluation study in the United States reported that online learning modules can be developed and maintained with minimal costs and basic technological requirements and present a unique opportunity to provide essential information in a short timeframe. In addition, these modules can be specifically tailored to address identified knowledge gaps among various groups and can be easily disseminated and can be an effective method for educating nurses in a time- and cost-sensitive manner [ 41 ].

The major challenges faced by health professionals or students when participating in online learning by self-study include time constraints and out-of-date or inappropriate hardware and software [ 20 , 34 ]. Some barriers that online learning can help organisations overcome include logistical difficulties and expenses associated with maintaining an adequate pool of educators, coordinating training sessions, and standardizing training across sites [ 21 ].

This section discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and advantages of digital education related to NCDs in the reviewed literature in the context of India.

Value of online and blended NCD education

The limited literature available on the topic paints a positive picture regarding the increase in learning/knowledge of health professionals on NCDs due to online learning. A majority of the studies reported an increase in knowledge after the interventions. A study from Latin America provides an example of how online courses can be a valuable and successful tool for continuing medical education and reducing heterogeneity in access to training across countries. The diverse findings suggest that modality alone is not the sole issue; for example, a recent study comparing traditional vs. online learning [ 44 ] suggests interactivity may matter.

The studies reported a number of challenges related to the online format in general. One highlighted that training of healthcare providers can be more difficult in time constrained and low-resource settings due to limited accessible equipment, inadequate environment and competing interests [ 28 ]. Another found that augmented reality smartphone apps may not provide the extensive information needed for complex content [ 29 ]. The senior doctors were not as pleased as their less-experienced colleagues with the web-based format of the learning [ 35 ]. Online training options, while notionally attractive and accessible, are not likely to have high levels of uptake as they require more commitment, activity, and dedication [ 38 ]. Although there are challenges with online learning, the included studies also emphasized the opportunities it provides, e.g. making knowledge more accessible to a wider population and making it more flexible for health professionals with heavy workloads to learn at their own pace [ 36 , 39 , 47 ].

Although we categorize and present the interventions in the three modalities, it is important to note that many of the challenges and opportunities we found are shared by all modalities. Because of this, it is not possible to highlight a single modality that is best in all situations – rather, they each have different affordances in relation to important considerations such as learner flexibility or programme scalability. Online learning as self-study offers almost complete learner flexibility and programme scalability – but it lacks important elements of individualized feedback, collaborative learning, and the motivation that learners and teachers can experience when they are together in the same room at the same time. Blended learning tries to balance the advantages of being together with the flexibility of learning online. This blend can take many forms, and rather than a single pedagogical approach, it should probably be considered a spectrum of approaches inhabiting the space between campus learning and online self-study.

Relevance to Indian context

The review showed that most of the literature is from high-income countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain. Only very few studies describe educational interventions set in LMICs, and none of them were from India. It is, however, important to point out that the category LMIC is very broad, including both countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as countries like Türkiye and Thailand. This entire spectrum is also present within India. Despite the great diversity within India, the high-income setting of most of the described interventions limits their direct applicability in many of the most underserved Indian contexts, where the health professions, education systems, and health care systems in general already have significantly fewer resources. We hope, however, that the experiences from other countries can serve as inspiration for educational interventions and research which is tailored to the needs, challenges, and opportunities that are relevant to India.

In an Indian context, the main advantage of online learning is the flexibility to reach people in rural areas, especially for in-service training of health professionals who are no longer residing close to a medical or nursing college. This flexibility is even more pronounced with online self-study training. The advantages of online learning are beginning to be recognised in India. During the last decade, the digital education platform has seen a perceptible growth in India. Several public and private organizations and entities have started providing digital training for capacity building of healthcare professionals especially in terms of NCDs. Different types of courses are offered in the form of online or blended learning. However, it is important to note, that the use of digital education and training in rural areas comes with its own set of challenges in relation to lacking connectivity and insufficient technical infrastructure. Furthermore, the significant linguistic and cultural diversity of India, also influences how well digital education interventions can scale. Nonetheless, with the NEP 2020 focusing on digital and equitable education among health care professionals and the post-pandemic time period, the courses offered digitally have increased severalfold. Introducing such courses in The National Programme for Prevention & Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NP-NCD) could help India address shortages and skewed distributions of its health workforce. Also, with the introduction of MOOCs and EdTech investments in the last decade, many leading universities and schools of public health are hosting NCD courses, which are available for learners in the Indian subcontinent and worldwide. These are primarily aimed at medical doctors, with just very few targeting nurses. Many of the courses that are open to nursing are open to almost all sections of health care workers.

Examples of digital training in India mainly focus on diabetes education and are provided by the government through public institutions as well as private organizations. Some examples of online training on diabetes through government institutions include through National Institute of Public Health Training and Research (NIPHTR) and Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore [ 48 , 49 ]. In addition to these, various organizations have partnered to provide quality training courses on diabetes. One such example is an online certification course in diabetes by British Medical Journal & Fortis C-DOC, endorsed by The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), London [ 50 ]. Another example is an online training on diabetes targeted at primary care physicians offered by Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). PHFI has developed the capacity of more than 15,000 primary care physicians with its various diabetes-related capacity-building programs since 2010 in collaboration with academic partners like Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Education Academy (DMDEA) [ 51 ]. There are numerous examples of online courses on diabetes education that have been started in recent times [ 52 , 53 ]. However, these trainings through online learning have rarely been evaluated and there is a lack of literature examining the effectiveness of such programs.

However, India faces some challenges to online learning as well. The adherence to course curriculum and retention rates will vary according to different health professionals of different geographical regions. Technological issues like internet connectivity, limited computer skills, and out-of-date software or hardware can have direct effects on the participation of health professionals. Also, there might be reluctance in the case of senior professionals to learn from their junior colleagues in instructor-based online learning [ 35 ].

Strengths and limitations

This review is a diverse contribution from a team of Indian and non-Indian authors.

Our review includes a wide range of study designs and methodologies.

The review synthesizes evidence on an emerging topic in Lower Income Countries and provides evidence for further research.

We did not systematically employ dual independent screening and data extraction.

We did not conduct a formal assessment of the quality of the included literature. However, this is typical of scoping reviews [ 19 ], and also, the value of the insights we gained from the included studies was not necessarily bound to the quality of their findings.

To focus on current forms of digital teaching and learning we chose to limit our search to research published since 2017. Including older publications, or those in the grey literature, may have yielded further evidence that could have had relevance to our objectives.

Digital education related to NCDs has proven to be beneficial for both in- and pre-service health professionals. Digital education may also offer an effective way to bypass geographical barriers that can be utilized for capacity building of the existing health workforce especially in relation to NCDs. Despite these positive attributes, and an increased openness to learning and collaborating online, digital education faces many challenges for its successful implementation in the Indian context. Owing to the multi-lingual and diverse health professional ecosystem in India, there is a need for strong evidence and guidelines based on prior research in the Indian context. Rigorous research in the form of evaluation, quasi-experimental studies or RCTs needs to be done in order to address the challenges and uncover potentials for online learning in India.

Declarations.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

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This work was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF22SH0078207).

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Karan, A., Hussain, S., Jensen, L.X. et al. Non-communicable diseases, digital education and considerations for the Indian context – a scoping review. BMC Public Health 24 , 1280 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18765-7

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