Overviews in Education Research

Abstract

Overviews, or syntheses of research syntheses, have become a popular approach to synthesizing the rapidly expanding body of research and systematic reviews. Despite their popularity, few guidelines exist and the state of the field in education is unclear. The purpose of this study is to describe the prevalence and current state of overviews of education research and to provide further guidance for conducting overviews and advance the evolution of overview methods. A comprehensive search across multiple online databases and gray literature repositories yielded 25 total education–related overviews. Our analysis revealed that many commonly reported aspects of systematic reviews, such as the search, screen, and coding procedures, were regularly unreported. Only a handful of overview authors discussed the synthesis technique and few authors acknowledged the overlap of included systematic reviews. Suggestions and preliminary guidelines for improving the rigor and utility of overviews are provided.