Research trends in Educational Neuroscience: Textual Analysis and mapping of the latest scholarly publications

Despite the existing debate about the potential critical issues in translating neuroscientific findings into effective educational practices, Educational Neuroscience (EN) could be defined as an interdisciplinary field involving different perspectives and research areas in in constantly developing. The aim of the present study was to map and identify the main issues addressed in research carried out in the EN over the past five years through a quantitative textual analysis of abstracts published by the three leading international journals on the field. Specifically, the co-occurrence relationships of selected keywords were explored (Co- word Analysis) and the main Thematic Cores were identified (Thematic Analysis of Elementary Contexts). The results, which confirm the richness of research conducted in EN and the heterogeneity of approaches used, are discussed in light of possible implications for future study and application directions.