10 Education Problems Worth Researching Right Now

 17th September 2026

Here is something that does not get said enough in education circles.

The problems shaping classrooms today are not new. Most of them have been present for decades. What is new is the urgency, the scale, and the tools we now have to study them properly.

If you have been working in education long enough to feel the weight of these issues, you already know that experience alone does not solve them. Research does. Rigorous, evidence-based, practitioner-informed research that translates into real policy and real practice.

That is exactly why more educators are pursuing a Ph.D. in Education, not to leave the classroom behind, but to return to it with the tools to change things at a deeper level.

This blog looks at ten education problems that genuinely deserve serious research attention right now.

1. Why Students Are Disengaging From School Despite Better Access to Learning

Attendance, motivation, and engagement have become some of the most discussed concerns in education globally since the pandemic. But the conversation often stops at symptoms without reaching causes.

Why does a student with a smartphone, internet access, and a decent school still find learning irrelevant?

Research questions worth pursuing here include:

• What is the relationship between curriculum relevance and student motivation across different national contexts?
• How does the design of physical and digital learning environments affect engagement?
• Which pedagogical approaches show the most consistent impact on intrinsic motivation across different age groups?

This is a problem that touches every level of education and every geography. It deserves far more empirical attention than it currently receives.

2. The Teacher Retention Crisis and What Schools Are Actually Getting Wrong

In country after country, schools are struggling to keep qualified teachers in the profession. Recruitment pipelines are filling, but experienced teachers are leaving faster than they are being replaced.

The surface-level explanations- workload, pay, and stress- are well-known. The deeper structural questions are less explored.

Research areas worth investigating:

• What school leadership behaviours and cultures most strongly predict teacher retention?
• How does teacher professional identity develop and erode over the course of a career?
• What role does meaningful professional development play in keeping experienced teachers engaged?

Understanding this problem at a systems level, rather than an individual level, is where the most useful research needs to happen.

3. How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing What Learning Actually Means

AI tools are now present in classrooms, libraries, homes, and examination halls. Education systems have not yet developed a coherent response, and the gap between what AI can do and what schools know how to do about it is widening daily.

The research questions here are genuinely open:

• What happens to higher-order thinking skills when AI handles the lower-order tasks that traditionally developed them?
• How should assessment be redesigned for a world where AI can produce competent written work?
• What does digital literacy mean now, and how do schools teach it effectively?

This is a research area where the field is moving faster than the literature. Educators with research training are urgently needed to generate evidence that policy can actually use.

4. Learning Loss After COVID-19 and Whether Recovery Interventions Are Working

The pandemic disrupted schooling globally. The scale of learning loss varied significantly by country, age group, socioeconomic status, and school type. Years later, the question of whether recovery is actually happening, and how, remains imprecisely answered.

Research questions that remain inadequately explored:

• Which specific interventions have produced measurable and lasting learning recovery, and under what conditions?
• How have different national responses to learning loss affected equity gaps between student groups?
• What are the long-term academic and psychological effects on students who experienced prolonged school closure during critical developmental periods?

This is a problem with a rapidly closing research window. The cohorts most affected are moving through the system now.

5. Inclusion in Practice: The Gap Between Policy and Classroom Reality

Inclusive education is policy in most countries. In practice, many schools are struggling to implement it meaningfully. Students with special educational needs, English language learners, and learners from marginalised communities continue to face significant gaps between what policy promises and what classrooms deliver.

The research deficit here is around implementation, not intention:

• What does high-quality inclusive practice actually look like in diverse national and cultural contexts?
• What teacher training models produce the most confident and effective inclusive practitioners?
• How do school leadership decisions about resources and timetabling either support or undermine inclusion in practice?

This is a problem that calls for practitioner-researchers, educators who know the gap from the inside and have the tools to study it rigorously.

6. Mental Health in Schools: What Teachers Can and Cannot Do

Student mental health has become one of the most frequently cited concerns in education worldwide. Schools are increasingly expected to identify, support, and in some cases manage student mental health difficulties, often without adequate training, resources, or clinical support.

Research questions that deserve attention:

• What is the appropriate boundary between a teacher's pastoral role and a clinical mental health responsibility, and how is this boundary understood differently across education systems?
• Which school-based mental health programmes show genuine evidence of effectiveness, and for which student populations?
• How does teacher mental health affect student outcomes, and what does that mean for how schools support their staff?

This is an area where well-intentioned but poorly evidenced interventions are already widespread. Better research is not a luxury here. It is a safeguard.

7. Assessment Systems and Whether They Measure What Actually Matters

Most national assessment systems were designed for a different era of work and learning. They measure a relatively narrow range of cognitive skills, primarily recall and application of domain-specific knowledge, and are increasingly poor predictors of the competencies employers and universities say they need.

Research questions worth serious investigation:

• What are the most valid and reliable ways to assess competencies like critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem-solving in formal education settings?
• How do high-stakes assessment systems shape teaching and learning in ways that may not align with stated curriculum goals?
• What can education systems learn from countries that have successfully reformed national assessment to better reflect 21st-century learning priorities?

Assessment reform is one of the most politically complex problems in education. Research that offers genuinely comparative and practical evidence is exactly what policymakers need.

8. Early Childhood Education Access and Its Long-Term Effects

The evidence for the long-term benefits of high-quality early childhood education is well established in academic literature. Access to that quality provision is not. In most countries, the quality of early years education a child receives is still strongly correlated with the income of the family they are born into.

Research questions that remain open:

• What models of early years provision, in terms of funding, curriculum, and professional development, produce the most equitable outcomes across socioeconomic groups?
• How do different national approaches to early childhood education affect school readiness, literacy, and social development?
• What are the most effective ways to train and retain qualified early years practitioners in under-resourced settings?

This is research with generational impact. The children entering early years settings today will be in the workforce for the next fifty years.

9. Education Leadership and Why School Management Quality Is So Variable

Every practitioner knows that the quality of school leadership shapes almost everything else about a school's effectiveness. Yet leadership development in education remains inconsistent, often under-resourced, and poorly connected to evidence about what good leadership actually looks like in practice.

This is precisely where a Ph.D. in education management can make a distinctive contribution. The research questions in this area include:

• What leadership behaviours and decision-making approaches most reliably improve teacher performance and student outcomes?
• How does distributed leadership, where responsibility is shared across a team rather than concentrated in one person, affect school culture and staff wellbeing?
• What does effective school leadership look like in low-resource or post-conflict educational environments, and how can it be developed?

The gap between leadership theory and school leadership practice is significant. Closing it requires researchers who understand both.

10. Equity in Digital Education: Who Is Still Being Left Behind

Digital education has expanded access to learning for millions of learners. It has also created and deepened inequalities for those without reliable devices, connectivity, or the digital literacy to participate effectively.

Research questions that need more rigorous investigation:

• What are the specific barriers preventing equitable access to digital education across different income groups, geographies, and demographic profiles?
• Which design choices in digital learning platforms most significantly affect learning outcomes for under-resourced or low-literacy learners?
• How can online and hybrid education models be redesigned to reduce rather than replicate the equity gaps of traditional schooling?

As online doctor of education programs continue to expand globally, the irony is that the institutions offering them often have the most to contribute to answering these questions. Doctoral candidates studying these issues are well-placed to generate evidence that changes how digital education is designed and delivered.

Bottom Line

The ten problems in this blog are not abstract or theoretical. They are present in classrooms, staffrooms, and school leadership meetings right now, in every country where education is taken seriously.

What they share is that none of them will be solved by goodwill or intuition alone. They require the kind of systematic, evidence-based inquiry that doctoral-level research is designed to produce.

For educators ready to work at that level, the pathway is more accessible than it has ever been. Online Doctor of Education programs now make it possible to pursue rigorous doctoral study without stepping away from the professional context that makes the research meaningful in the first place.

If your interest lies in the organisational and systemic dimensions of how schools function, a Ph.D. in education management offers a focused lens through which the structural problems above can be studied with the depth and rigour they deserve.

The questions are waiting. So is the research that could answer them.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1. What are some of the biggest problems in education that need more research?

Key areas include student disengagement, teacher retention, AI and learning, post-pandemic learning recovery, inclusive education, student and teacher mental health, assessment, early childhood education, school leadership, and equity in digital education.

Q2. Why is educational research important for solving these problems?

Research helps move education decisions beyond assumptions and anecdotal experience by identifying patterns, evaluating interventions, and producing evidence that can inform teaching practice, policy, and institutional decision-making.

Q3. What are some important research questions about AI in education?

Researchers are examining how AI affects higher-order thinking, how assessment should change when students can use generative AI, and what digital literacy should mean in an AI-enabled education system.

Q4. Why is teacher retention an important area of education research?

Teacher shortages and attrition can affect educational quality and institutional stability. Research can help identify how leadership, workplace culture, professional development, workload, and other factors influence whether experienced teachers remain in the profession.

Q5. Can doctoral research focus on practical problems in education?

Yes. Doctoral research can investigate real challenges in classrooms, schools, education systems, policy, technology, leadership, and other areas. The findings can contribute evidence that supports changes in professional practice or policy.

Q6. What areas can be explored through a Ph.D. in education management?

A Ph.D. in education management can provide a focused research lens for questions around school leadership, organisational decision-making, teacher performance, distributed leadership, school culture, staff wellbeing, and the management of education systems.

Q7. Can educators pursue doctoral research while continuing to work?

Yes. Online Doctor of Education programmes can provide a flexible route for working education professionals to undertake doctoral study while remaining connected to their professional environment.

 

Written By : Victoria Lewis

 

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