From cradle to brave new world: the first 20 years of developing a research field in new technologies and teacher education, as reflected in the pages of JITTE/TPE

Abstract

This article explores the development of the Journal over the first 20 years of its existence, reflecting a period of ongoing change in educational technologies and their role in teacher education and development. This exploration is undertaken through an analysis of the abstracts of articles published in the first 19 volumes of the Journal. Word clouds are used for the first level of analysis, and deeper investigation is undertaken using text mining, based on latent semantic analysis, to derive thematic clusters of articles, reflecting the changes in the wider landscape of educational technology. The authors also investigate the changing picture of widening international participation in the Journal. They conclude that, whilst some underlying themes of the Journal remain consistent, other themes reflect aspects of external changes.

Keywords:

• Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education (JITTE)
• Technology, Pedagogy and Education (TPE)
• text mining
• latent semantic analysis
• word clouds

Notes

1. http://www.informaworld.com

2. http://www.wordle.net

3. http://rapid-i.com/

4. http://www.altova.com/mapforce.html

5. The ‘Stevenson Report’ is the name commonly given to the report of the Independent ICT in School Commission, chaired by Dennis Stevenson.

6. A more comprehensive account of the process can be found at http://vancouverdata.blogspot.com/2010/11/text-analytics-with-rapidminer-part-4.html