A multimethod synthesis of Covid-19 education research: the tightrope between covidization and meaningfulness

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 research in education. A multi-methods approach was used to capture the full breadth of educational research. As such, a bibliometric analysis, structural topic modeling, and qualitative synthesis of top papers were combined. A total of 4,201 articles were retrieved from Scopus, mostly published from 2019 to 2021. In this work special attention is paid to analyzing and synthesizing findings about: (i) status of research about COVID-19 regarding frequencies, venues, publishing countries, (ii) identification of main topics in the COVID-19 research, and (iii) identification of the major themes in most cited articles and their impact on the educational community. Structural topic modeling identified three main groups of topics that related to education in general, moving to online education, or diverse topics (e.g., perceptions, inclusion, medical education, engagement and motivation, well-being, and equality). A deeper analysis of the papers that received most attention revealed that problem understanding was the dominating theme of papers, followed by challenges, impact, guidance, online migration, and tools and resources. A vast number of papers were produced. However, thoughtful, well-planned, and meaningful research was hard to conceptualize or implement, and a sense of urgency led to a deluge of research with thin contributions in a time of dire need to genuine insights.