A theory-driven analysis of didactic foci in STEM-related teacher education master’s theses

Master's theses often have limited visibility in research, even though they can unveil intriguing similarities and disparities between nations. Master’s theses in subject-specific education provide a lens to teacher training traditions in different countries, which complements the view gained by analysing published research articles in journals and conference proceedings. The latter one emphasises interests of experienced researchers, while master’s theses cover the perspective of a much wider population, teacher training students who aim at working as practising teachers, as well as their supervisors. In this study, we analysed 765 STEM education related master’s theses in Finland and Türkiye, covering biology, chemistry, physics, and computing education and instructional technology. We employed an extended Herbartian didactic triangle as our theoretical framework and analysed the data using the didactic foci categorisation (DFC) method to study master's theses. The findings show that didactic relationships are studied much more often than pedagogical relationships. The most frequently investigated aspect in both countries was the student-content relationship, while teachers' pedagogical actions received frequent scrutiny only in Finland. Notably, there was limited exploration in both countries of teachers' reflections on students' perceptions and attitudes to goals/content and teachers' conceptions of students' actions in pursuit of these goals. These results underscore the need for a broader discussion regarding the scope and coverage of studying for a master's thesis within STEM-related teacher education.