What educational researchers present: Trends in research topics and methods based on conference abstracts

This study examined trends in educational research topics and methodologies by analysing conference abstracts from major international conferences between 2010 and 2024. We inductively analysed 28,000 abstracts from yearly American and European conferences (2010–2024) using structural topic modelling and deductively coded 3342 abstracts from five conferences across Asia, Europe, and America for the years 2013, 2018, and 2023. Worldwide, attention increased for sustainability, emotions, wellbeing, and tertiary education. Tertiary education is now studied twice as often as primary education. Methodologically, the proportion of intervention and methodological studies decreased from 17% to 9% and from 7% to 4% respectively, while the proportion of qualitative and review studies increased. We use Principal-Agent theory to critically question these trends.