Variation Theory : A literature review about research field of variation theory

Variation theory is a scientific theory of learning that has emerged from critique that phenomenography was inadequate empirically grounded. Despite that the field of variation theory is young there have been large number of articles produced, mainly at universities in Sweden and China. There are plenty of texts that discuss variation theory but it does not seem to be any previously conducted literature reviews. The study aims to map the field of variation theory by determining which areas variation theory have been applied to, which areas that are lacking and also to illustrate possibilities for development.The method used to achieve this is a systematic literature review based on articles written in English from 2005 to 2015, and Swedish theses. The study shows that the school subjects of science, mathematics, and language are significantly over-represented in research within variation theory and societal- and practical subjects are underrepresented. Furthermore, the study finds that even though variation theory can be applied to adult learning very few studies have been conducted and there is a great opportunity to develop the theory into new areas. The study's main conclusion is that the large amount of learning studies that are available mainly applies variation theory, and that is a major gap in relation to the development of theory. The study finds that variation theory could be developed further by applying additional educational theories and merge them with variation theory. The most profound theoretical development proposal is a merger of phenomenography, variation theory and contextual analysis