Abstract
Ever since its founding in the 1970s, the field of instructional communication has regularly conducted comprehensive reviews of the research it produced to assess the discipline’s current state, quality of studies, and the merits of its contributions. Despite the importance of such reflections, no review has been conducted in the past 15 years. To close this gap in the research, a content analysis was conducted to analyze the content of Communication Education, the flagship journal of instructional communication. Every article published in Communication Education between January 2000 and July 2015 was examined in order to assess what topics are being studied and what type of research is being conducted. Results indicate that the field of instructional communication features an inconsistent use of theory, a strong preference for quantitative research methods, derives most data from college students, and displays tendencies to further explore established topics rather than expand its research agenda.