Educational research is a systematic field of inquiry that examines educational and learning processes as well as the actors, interactions, and institutions that shape them (American Educational Research Association [AERA], n.d.). It spans impact-oriented evaluations for planning/policy and qualitative inquiry into sociocultural norms and contexts (Postlethwaite, 2005). Yet UNESCO highlights a persistent gap between the capacity of educational research to generate evidence and the uptake of that evidence in policy and practice across many contexts (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], n.d.).

As the volume of educational research grows, classification and labelling systems constitute a key infrastructure for making the literature findable and comparable; reflected in missions to strengthen research–policy linkages (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], n.d.). Knowledge organization systems (e.g., taxonomies, thesauri/controlled vocabularies, and classification schemes) provide a shared representational language that supports discovery and reduces terminological fragmentation, enabling related work to be brought together rather than dispersed across divergent naming practices (National Information Standards Organization [NISO], 2010).

In education, controlled vocabularies such as the ERIC Thesaurus provide established examples of standardising the subject representation of education-related publications, thereby facilitating access to and review of the literature (Pollard, Hellrich-Dawson, & Beck, 2015). Classification can therefore be understood as a structural instrument that supports not only the quantitative expansion of educational research but also its development as a cumulatively readable knowledge domain. In educational research, this “structural instrument” is evident not only at the level of database indexing but also in infrastructures for systematic reviews and evidence mapping formats (e.g., keywording-based registers/maps and evidence gap maps), as well as in clearinghouse-type evidence products (EPPI-Centre, 2001; Institute of Education Sciences, n.d.; International Initiative for Impact Evaluation [3ie], n.d.). Yet while these approaches largely operate at the level of topics and evidence, they often leave opaque how knowing travels into acting—in other words, how educational claims connect to assumptions about reality and to the aims and values that shape practice and policy.

Making education’s epistemological, ontological, and praxiological/axiological layers visible in an integrated and traceable way both addresses this opacity and enables a more holistic reading of the scope of educational research: any educational question simultaneously touches on knowledge (epistemology), a view of reality and the person–world relationship (ontology), and an aims/values/action horizon (praxiological/axiological orientation).

Paradigm debates make this entanglement explicit by emphasising that ontological and epistemological assumptions must be considered together with a value-related dimension and that inquiry is not value-free (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Guba & Lincoln, 2005). Yet within established classification and mapping approaches, these philosophical layers often remain at the level of paradigm discussion; in particular, the axiological/praxiological dimension is less consistently translated into systematic representation (Laitsch, n.d.). As a result, large-scale classifications of the educational research literature rarely allow the integrated tracing of these three layers.

The aim of this study is to interrogate the “scope” of educational studies by proposing a multi-layered classification approach that brings epistemological, ontological, and praxiological/axiological dimensions together, making scope visible not only through topic headings but also through conceptions of knowledge, views of educational reality, and aims/values/action horizons. The study discusses the extent to which these dimensions can be traced for classification when they are stated explicitly, implied, or left unarticulated in research texts.

Research Questions

1. How far can an integrated epistemological–ontological–praxiological/axiological classification make the scope of educational studies and the relations between these layers traceable beyond topic-based representations?
2. Does it render studies’ praxiological/axiological orientations (e.g., policy/practice guidance, improvement vs. transformative aims, recommendations) distinguishable?
3. What recurrent patterns during application indicate components that require refinement?

This study develops a classification framework intended to make the “scope” of educational research traceable through epistemological–ontological assumptions and praxiological/axiological orientations. Positioned within a qualitative paradigm, it employs document analysis to systematically examine research texts (Bowen, 2009) and draws on content analysis principles that operationalize textual evidence through rule-governed unitization, coding, and inference (Krippendorff, 2018). The dataset comprises master’s and doctoral theses in architectural education in Türkiye published up to 31 December 2025. Theses were identified through keyword-based searches in the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) National Thesis Center database (YÖK, n.d.), using the search terms “architectural education” and “architecture and education.” Retrieved records were consolidated into a candidate pool of 560 theses. Inclusion criteria were: (i) a direct and substantive focus on architectural education/pedagogy, (ii) postgraduate thesis type, and (iii) accessibility of at least basic textual components (minimum: title and abstract) required for coding. Exclusion criteria were: proficiency in art theses, an interior architecture focus, studies shifting away from an educational focus toward analyses of specific periods/figures/buildings, and works with only tangential relevance to architectural education. Applying these criteria yielded a final dataset of 234 theses. The unit of analysis is the thesis. Each thesis is mapped through a multi-layered system consisting of ten categories, and indicators in each category are coded as explicit, implicit, or absent. The framework integrates three complementary labeling logics: (i) predefined/fixed labels standardize dimensions such as strategic objectives and education type/organizational level, derived from national and international policy and professional reference documents; (ii) dynamic/inductive labels capture the thesis’s thematic approach, object of analysis, research context, and data sources as concept clusters emerging from the corpus; and (iii) semi-structured labels enable comparative recording of research type, research output type, data analysis method, and the analytic basis underpinning interpretation. Coding proceeds in two stages. First-round labeling is conducted on titles and abstracts. In the second stage, a pilot coding–revision cycle is used to refine category definitions and the label lexicon. Ambiguous cases are documented through decision memos and an example bank; coding decisions are linked to textual evidence to preserve an audit trail. Consistency is monitored through periodic re-coding checks.

The study is expected to produce a multi-layered map of postgraduate research in architectural education in Türkiye (n = 234 theses, up to 31 December 2025) by applying a ten-category classification framework with explicit/implicit/absent coding. The resulting dataset will generate (i) descriptive distributions across categories (e.g., research types, data sources, analytic bases, and output types), and (ii) cross-category patterning that makes visible how theses articulate (or leave unarticulated) epistemological, ontological, and praxiological/axiological dimensions beyond topic labels. Analytically, the mapping is expected to reveal recurring configurations—for instance, which kinds of studies most frequently make their epistemological stance explicit, which rely on implicit assumptions, and where praxiological/axiological orientations (e.g., guiding policy/practice, improvement/transformative aims, recommendation-making) remain systematically under-specified. These patterns will be used to identify concentrated agendas as well as “silent zones” in the research landscape, supporting a more relational reading of the field’s conceptual and methodological diversity. Methodologically, the application is expected to refine the label lexicon and category definitions through documented decision rules, memos, and an example bank, producing a more robust and reusable classification instrument. At the same time, the study will explicitly discuss limitations of transferability: the framework is piloted within a disciplinary/professional education domain, and some predefined label sets foreground strategic expectations derived from institutional and professional reference documents. While this may constrain direct generalization, the underlying layered logic—grounded in educational philosophy—will be discussed as adaptable to other education-research corpora by recalibrating the predefined components to field-specific strategic frameworks.

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