The educational science of the present as reflected in its reception of theories

This article provides an empirical overview of the reception of theories in educational science in the present and recent past. Journal articles in which theories are explicitly named and that were published in relevant journals between 2007 and 2016 are analysed in a fully and semi-automated manner. This study intends to provide an insight into the development of theory in the discipline and identify not only prominent theoreticians and theoretical fields of reference, but also logics of reception in educational theory. It will be shown that the discipline still does not rely on independent theory production, but instead predominantly draws on theories from other disciplines.