Systematic Review on the Research Topic "Learning Ecologies" - Dataset and Analysis

The concept of learning ecologies (Barron, 2004, 2006; Williams, 2011)  emerged in a context of educational change. In such context, there was emphasis on searching models and applications facing the new forms of learning as continuum from structured, formal spaces to fluid, informal spaces, with the support of digital technologies (Sangra, Gonzalez-Sanmamed, & Guitert, 2013; Tabuenca, Ternier, & Specht, 2013).

While the construct “learning ecologies” has offered a broad semantic space to characterize innovative ways of learning, it is also true that its potential to promote innovative educational interventions could have been hindered by its same broadness. According to this assumption, the authors have carried out a systematic review of the literature with the aim of analyzing a) the several definitions given to the concept, encompassing the underlying ontological perspective on the phenomena studied; b) the methodological approaches adopted to study the phenomenon; c) the applications of the research on this topic. Throughout this analysis, the authors attempt to represent the criticalities of the existing research, as well as the potential areas of development with fruitful alignment of the theoretical/ontological issues, the methodological approaches and the educational applications.

The current dataset introduces all the stages of data analysis: from the 337 articles identified (covering the period 1991-2018, containing the key term “learning ecolog*” and selected from 5 relevant scientific databases in the area of education: SCOPUS, ISI WOS, DOAJ, EDITLIB, ERIC) to the final group of 84 papers which were analyzed.

Each article was coded according to a set of 20 categories developed by the authors on theoretical basis.

The dataset presents:

A) The Codebook with the categories used to code each article 

B) The first, raw selection of articles from each database

C) The second integrated dataset will the articles merged, without overlaps

D) The third final database where the articles were coded; each row reprents an article. Data filters have been applied to facilitate dynamic searches and explore the categories.

E) The PRISMA workflow, with the data extracted from A,B,C

F) The tables adopted to make the Kappa calculations

G) Some pivot tables with data analysis extracted D