Recirculating Foundational Problems: Four Decades of Educational Computing in the JECR Archive (1987–2024)

Abstract

This editorial presents a structured synthesis of the thematic development of the Journal of Educational Computing Research (JECR) from 1987 to 2024, drawing on a computational analysis of 1,597 articles. Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), the analysis identifies thirteen thematic structures that reveal both the enduring commitments and the emerging orientations of the journal across nearly four decades. Themes such as problem-solving through programming and self-efficacy in programming education have constituted persistent research agendas since the journal’s earliest volumes, while computational thinking and game-based learning have gained substantial momentum since 2015. These patterns suggest that JECR’s intellectual identity is best understood not as a sequence of discrete topical shifts, but as a sustained process in which a bounded set of foundational problems is repeatedly re-articulated under changing technological and epistemic conditions. The editorial situates this trajectory in relation to contemporary developments in artificial intelligence and educational technology, arguing that the journal’s historical archive offers an indispensable conceptual framework for interpreting present-day transformations.