Science and Mathematics Education in Brazil: a Systematic Review of 25 Years of Research (1994–2018)

Abstract

To understand how research in science and mathematics education has developed in Brazil in the last 25 years (from 1994 to 2018) we analyzed the 10 best-rated Brazilian journals in the field. We built an extensive dataset with all articles published in the selected journals about research in science and mathematics education since 1994. We categorized 3014 articles as national production and 584 as foreign and then analyzed the profile of the authors. In the studies from national production, we also analyzed: (i) the nature of the study (empirical research, experience report, or theoretical essay), (ii) research strands and (iii) textual content (titles, abstracts, and keywords). Our results indicated that in the last 25 years, cutting-edge research in science and mathematics education has mainly been led by male researchers from public Universities in the southeast of Brazil. The main thematic strands were teaching and learning and teacher training and the main subjects researched were teacher formation, textbook, and environmental education. In general, foreign articles had only one author from countries in Latin America, Portugal, or Spain. Through the analysis of a considerable amount of publications, our work presented an overview of the scientific production of the field in recent years.

Keywords

• brazilian scientific literature
• science education journals
• systematic review
• textual analysis