Epistemic Communities of Science Education Literature: Bibliographic and Text Analysis of Published Articles (1975–2018)

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Sixteen
  In Roundtable Session: Schooling, Boundary-Crossing, and Epistemic Communities (Table 12)

Abstract

Research on epistemic practices is substantial in science education literature. However, studies investigating the epistemic communities in which these epistemic practices are formed are limited. Therefore, this descriptive study aimed to locate the prominent epistemic communities in science education literature to help future researchers further investigate these communities' effects. This study conducted an extensive bibliographic investigation with VOSviewer co-citation maps covering over 42 years of research and 1.071.303 cited references to locate the most influential epistemic communities in science education literature. Additional text analysis of the 17 most influential co-cited articles utilizing VOSviewer co-occurrence maps was conducted to assure semantic similarities and support the bibliographic analysis findings. Thus, this study located three prominent epistemic communities in science education literature.

Authors

• Fatma Caglin AKILLIOGLU, Kutahya Dumlupinar University
  Presenting Author

• Semra Sungur, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jale Cakiroglu, Middle East Technical University
  Non-Presenting Author