Although a Master’s in Education thesis is an original piece of research, it is not written in a vacuum. Instead, it is part of an ongoing scholarly conversation within its discipline and should respond to topics of current interest to the community of scholars in the field. Among the topics that are currently trending include ones having to do with gamification, classroom technology and design, international trends, and students with disabilities.
Resource: Top 10 Best Online Master’s in Education Degree Programs (M.Ed.) 2016
Gamification
The growth of video game culture originally horrified many educators, with a common assumption being that gaming took students’ attention away from their education and also led to a decline in physical fitness. Now though, scholars are increasingly interested in how video games can be a positive element in education. One approach is designing games that can be used in pedagogy. A possible topic for a masters thesis would be to look at whether games are actually more or less effective than other forms of pedagogy. A second approach is investigating “gamifying” learning by looking at how some of the strategies that motivate players to engage enthusiastically in pursuing goals in games might transfer to motivating students to succeed in school.
Classroom Technology and Design
When personal computers first became widely available and affordable, there was a surge in scholarship concerning whether or how computers could be used in the classroom. More recently, the focus has shifted to more nuanced studies of the role of technology in the classroom. One popular topic being explored is how school design affects learning and how technology could be integrated as part of a larger system of comprehensive school design. Another trending area for research is use of adaptive learning and how it can either work on its own as instructional technology or be integrated into a classroom to provide supplemental tailored learning experiences.
International Trends
As more big data become available concerning educational attainments and practices around the world, educators are increasingly becoming interested in adapting the best international practices to their own regions and cultures. In particular, the Programme for International Students Assessment, or PISA enables us to compare how students are performing in the basic skills of reading, science, and mathematics. Extremely valuable research projects focus on closely examining the practices of countries that do well in PISA assessment, by, for example, looking at how a specific subject is taught at a specific grade level in a country that has a high ranking and thinking about some specific practice one might implement in one’s own classroom.
Students With Disabilities
While understanding how best to teach students with disabilities has always been an important subject for educational scholarship, different aspects of this field trend at different times, often reflecting advances in treatment. Two specific areas currently trending are attention deficit disorder and autistic spectrum disorders, especially in terms of pedagogical strategies to support mainstreaming students with these conditions.
Although these trends give you a useful starting point for thinking about thesis topics, you should choose a topic on the basis of whether it interests you and whether you have a unique contribution to make about it. What trends tell you is that whatever your topic, you must pay attention to technology, international practices, and student abilities and disabilities.
