Towards a typology in literature studies & reviews in engineering education research

As the field of Engineering Education Research is maturing, more and more literature on Engineering Education is becoming available. Combined with increasing digitization and data analysis possibilities in the area of educational research literature, as well as a trend towards requiring more transparent and reproducible literature studies, researchers are required to adopt new and different approaches towards literature studies and reviews. Some examples of the different types are the systematic review, the critical review and the literature overview. This paper intends to assist engineering education researchers by outlining a typology of different literature review types within the field of engineering education research. This typology is based on an elaborate analysis of published literature studies in 3 leading engineering education journals, the IEEE transactions on education, EJEE and JEE, making use of the SALSA Framework (Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis and Analysis) based on a SCOPUS search. A similar method has previously been successfully employed when creating a literature typology in health research by Booth and Grant in 2009 [1]. The characteristics of each typology will be described and suitable and relevant examples of each typology will be given. The outcomes presented in this paper will provide engineering education researchers with a valuable resource to conduct, inform, interpret and guide literature studies in their field.