Abstract
Abstract Although science education and mathematics education share many characteristics as neighboring research disciplines, comparisons between the two research fields in the literature have rarely been made. In this study, we examine the two fields’ similarities and differences in the local context of South Korea by analyzing 2,426 research articles published in 15 selected local journals from both fields. The analysis revealed interesting commonalities and divergences across the two fields, suggesting a high degree of similarity in the distribution of research topics across the two fields. Nevertheless, some topics were more frequently studied in one field than the other. Based on the results, we suggest that understanding the ongoing research agendas and aims of adjacent disciplines such as mathematics education will be beneficial to the science education community by allowing self-reflection and facilitating interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. Several potential ways in which the two disciplines can cross-fertilize are discussed.
Highlights
Both science education research (SER) and mathematics education research (MER) are important subfields of educational research today
Four papers in the MER journals were concerned with applied mathematics or the history of mathematics without any link to education, and we indicated these as N/A
The results are drawn from Korean journals, and generalizations should be made with caution, the comparison provides valuable information for considering the relationship between SER and MER, with the mounting global interest in interdisciplinarity in education (Broggy, O’Reilly, & Erduran, 2017) and collaboration between science and mathematics teachers (Wong & Dillon, 2020)
Summary
Both science education research (SER) and mathematics education research (MER) are important subfields of educational research today. As neighboring academic research fields, the two share many characteristics. The U.S Science for All Americans acknowledge this by stating that achieving scientific literacy requires a sound understanding of science and of mathematics (AAAS, 1989). The fact that many North American universities provide graduate programs in “science and mathematics education” jointly rather than separately shows the proximity of the two fields in higher education and research today. As a more recent phenomenon, SER and MER have been jointly addressed in a larger context referred to as Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) education, meaning the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in an integrated manner (English, 2016)
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