Research in Early Childhood Education is broad and diverse, which is generally studied through scientific articles published on different topics, such as STEM (Su & Yang, 2024), inclusive education (Tsai & Wu), nature play (Prints et al., 2022), among others. In fact, most of the literature review studies and state-of-the-art studies focus on the analysis of these articles, leaving the relevance of other academic sources in the background. Indeed, while recognising the importance of the scientific article as a fundamental means of scientific advancement, it is relevant to consider the contributions of doctoral theses as academic documents, recognising that they offer a broader comprehensive framework and a deeper and more detailed analysis of research processes (Alves et al., 2012; López-Gómez, 2016).

From this perspective, and with the aim of highlighting the value of doctoral research in the advancement of knowledge, this contribution focuses on the analysis of doctoral theses defended between 2020 and 2024 in the field of Early Childhood Education in Spain. Its aim, in short, is to identify the emerging lines of research and the predominant themes in a current time frame, which can be discussed with the relevant trends in international research, and from which key recommendations can be obtained to improve the quality of education in this decisive educational stage.

A retrospective descriptive design with a bibliometric approach and content analysis was employed, using data on doctoral theses defended in Spanish universities obtained from the TESEO and Tesis en Red databases, which are the two main databases of doctoral theses in Spain. Eighty-four theses were identified and analysed, with the aim of examining key variables, both bibliometric and thematic, including universities of reading, frequency and distribution of thesis direction, and predominant thematic areas, among other aspects. The analysis was conducted following previous methodological approaches (Ferreira, 2020; López-Gómez, 2016).

The preliminary results show that the most researched topics within the context of Early Childhood Education are inclusion, educational technology and active methodologies, which coincides with the current international literature (Eliasson et al., 2023; Yu & Cho, 2022), with the theses that focus on teacher training at this stage also being a cross-cutting theme. The most relevant aspects of the research carried out on these major issues, which have a decisive impact on the quality of early childhood education (López-Gómez et al., 2020), will be detailed. Likewise, a female predominance is observed in both the authorship and direction of the theses, together with a concentration of production in certain universities and university departments in Spain. This pattern suggests the possible existence of consolidated scientific schools in the field of Early Childhood Education research. These findings, together with others in the process of analysis, may offer an analysis methodology of interest to those interested in Early Childhood Education research, which can be replicated in other contexts, as well as a comparative framework for the analysis of trends in research on the subject, through doctoral theses. And contribute, in short, to a better understanding of research in Early Childhood Education in Spain, emphasising the value of doctoral theses as a key source from which to obtain a current state of research in Early Childhood Education.

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