‘초등영어교육’ 학술지 연구 동향 토픽모델링

A policy-centered analysis of the research trends in Primary English Education using topic modeling

This study aims to analyze the research trend in Primary English Education from Volumes 1 to 27, focusing on its relation with the English education policies to examine the relationship between academic research and education policy. To this end, English abstracts of the entire research in the journal corresponding to the investigation period were collected as digital texts, preprocessed, and analyzed by LDA topic modeling using the R program. The results revealed that research topics such as teacher education and teaching methods were constantly investigated. It also confirmed that the English education policies at a particular time had a direct impact on the research trend (e.g., immersion program and TEE policy) or the concepts derived from the specific policies had an indirect impact on the research (e.g., teacher and learner variables). In addition, this study found that researchers were steadily interested in literacy education, learner assessment, and textbook analysis regardless of the policies, as the topics are significantly related to teaching and learning. Finally, the implications for the necessity of simultaneous interaction with research and policy were discussed based on the findings.