The Evolving Themes of Computing Education Research: Trends, Topic Models, and Emerging Research

Abstract

A combined body of reviews, meta-research and other analyses demonstrates the evolution of computing education research (CER) through the decades with experience reports evolving to empirical research, increased attention paid to educational research, methods and reporting rigor. Previous analyses of CER publications show the sustained focus of CER on programming education, which has, by far, been the all-time most popular topic in CER. In the recent decade, other top researched areas include K-12 computing education and computational thinking. In this chapter, we add new insights to the top research areas of CER. We followed the PRISMA-S (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) literature search extension to capture the relevant literature on CER. The process of data retrieval, screening, and pre-processing resulted in a total of 16,863 articles included in the dataset. We use a combination of keyword analysis and structural topic modeling, and introduce a model of 29 topics. We also introduce emerging topics in recent years through an analysis of emerging common words in abstracts and titles during recent years. The results paint a unique picture about the dominating and trending research areas of CER, and of how common research topics are connected with each other. The analysis also reveals under-researched areas of CER. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.