Inferring hot topics and emerging educational research fronts

Purpose This paper aims to identify emerging fronts and hot topics in educational research. The identification of such educational trends can help decision-makers in educational policies and research agendas. Design/methodology/approach Through a quantitative and scientometric research approach, the authors analyze a sample of 198 highly cited scientific papers extracted from Web of Science corresponding to the 2012-2016 period using a co-verbal analysis to process the papers' keywords and titles. The result of the co-occurrence analysis is further processed to generate clusters and visualize network maps that allow identifying the different emerging fronts and hot topics. Findings The results indicate that there exist pervasive and generalist topics, thus denoting the perennial nature of some themes within the education research discipline; which coexist with other more specific themes that center the focus of attention in more specific and actual topics that also attract the interest of researchers as technology, assessment, strategies or environment. These emergent fronts could conform a plausible research agenda educational research agenda. Originality/value The authors contribute a method to infer emerging fronts and hot topics of research and have used it to identify the novel avenues of educational research that may guide the agendas in the near future. In the scientific literature, they find studies and reports on fronts and topics mainly within the broader framework of social sciences. Here, the main focus of attention is placed on education as a scientific discipline on its own.