When designing a program or product, many education leaders and ed-tech developers want to start with the best knowledge available on how students learn. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
Although thousands of academic articles are published every year, busy education leaders and product developers often don’t know where to start, or don’t have time to sift through and find studies that are relevant to their work. As pressure mounts for “evidence-based” practices and “research-based” products, many in the education community are frustrated, and want an easier way to find information that will help them deliver stronger programs and products — and results. We need better tools to help make research more accessible for everyday work in education.
The Digital Promise Research Map meets this need by connecting education leaders and product developers with research from thousands of articles in education and the learning sciences, along with easy-to-understand summaries on some of the most relevant findings in key research topics.
Some ways to use the tool:
- People new to education research can start by getting a quick overview of key research topics and concepts. For example, if you read the summary of key findings in Attention & Memory, you’ll see that “working memory” is an important part of the learning process. You can then search for “working memory,” and find more detailed information about how to support students’ ability to remember new concepts.
- Users who are already interested in a specific topic can quickly dig deeper. For example, let’s say you are designing a program to support children who are struggling in Math. You can start by exploring the Learning Math topic and its eight subtopics, and find links to research articles and experts in the field. In the map, the Learning Math topic is strongly connected to the Multimodal Learning, Cognition & Learning, Teaching Reading, and Attention & Memory topics — so you might explore these areas next. The map can help focus your search, so you find the most relevant information to help you build your program.
Explore the map
While a few education research studies are well-known, many other useful findings remain hidden to education audiences. The map organizes thousands of articles in a way that makes it easy for you to uncover research findings that can strengthen your work — and ultimately improve student learning.
Explore the Network View or Chord View of the Research Map now!
How often is the map updated with newly released papers? Also, is there any chance that a social and emotional well-being topic will be added?
Thank you for interest in the Research Map. The map topics are generated based on the citation data from the academic papers in the database. While there are articles on social-emotional learning spread throughout the map, this did not emerge as a major topic of research in the past 10 years. However, even as we continue to update the map annually each spring, we also hope to add content on topics of high need/interest for the education community, and will keep your suggestion in mind. Thank you!