A bibliometric analysis of a scientific education journal might sound about as exciting as a dishwasher manual. But this study by Sumeyra Dogan Coskun on forty years of Teaching and Teacher Education is actually far more interesting than it seems at first glance. Not because the research tells us yet again what “works” in education, but because the researcher shows where research into teachers and teaching has shifted over the past decades. And there is a striking evolution in that…
The researcher examined more than 4,700 articles from arguably the most influential international journal on teacher education. What stands out immediately is that the field has grown enormously. In the 1980s, the journal published only a few dozen articles per year. Today, that number is more than 300.
More interesting than that growth is the shift in content. The classic core of the field remains remarkably stable. Themes such as teacher education, professional development, pre-service teachers, and teacher learning have remained central throughout the journal’s history. That is logical in itself. After all, it is a journal about teacher education and professional development.
But at the same time, you see that other themes are becoming increasingly central. In recent years, attention has clearly shifted towards:
- self-efficacy,
- teacher identity,
- burnout,
- motivation,
- teacher well-being,
- agency,
- teacher retention,
- social justice.
That does not mean that instruction itself has disappeared from the field. Pedagogical content knowledge, assessment, and curriculum remain important themes. But relatively speaking, the focus of many articles in this leading journal seems to have become less exclusively instructional.
Whereas research used to revolve more around the question of how teachers learn to teach, part of the attention is now shifting to:
- how teachers experience the profession,
- how they develop professionally,
- why they leave,
- how motivation and well-being are related to the profession.
One could say that teacher education research has become partly more psychological. Incidentally, this is also reflected in the most cited articles in the journal’s history. Many of these do not focus on concrete instructional models or subject-specific pedagogy, but rather on teacher efficacy, professional identity, reflection, and professional growth.
That need not be a problem in itself. Teaching is, of course, more than instruction alone. Especially in times of teacher shortages, workload, and attrition, it is logical that researchers also look at motivation, well-being, and professional identity.
But at the same time, it raises an interesting question. If research increasingly shifts towards the teacher’s experience, who still keeps instructional quality itself at the centre of the discussion?
But while writing that sentence, I realised the contrast might be too sharp. Part of the explanation is probably simply that many basic instructional principles have become relatively stable over time. Explicit instruction, feedback, curriculum quality, classroom management… There is simply more consensus on some matters today than there was thirty years ago.
And yet, the evolution remains striking to me. Perhaps I can best summarise this bibliometric analysis as follows: teacher education research has partly shifted from teaching to the teacher.