The purpose of this review was to explore how Second Life (SL) has been discussed, investigated and applied in education from its launch to present. Two research questions guided the review: (1) what are the annual publication number and its percentage of empirical studies?; (2) what are the characteristics of the empirical studies regarding the academic levels, subject areas, pedagogical frameworks, evolution of research foci, research methods and sample sizes? A total of 107 papers from 68 refereed journals were reviewed. The findings of the review indicated that SL research has outgrown merely envisioning SL for educational purposes and switched to empirical explorations. Most of the empirical studies were conducted in college settings. The research had been most frequently carried out in teacher education, language education, business, hospitality and tourism and computer disciplines. The most recent research focus was to find out issues, problems and factors that might affect SL-based learning as well as the relevant solutions. This study can contribute to the discussion on the instructional use of SL by providing researchers with a summary of previous attempted studies. Several recommendations for future research are provided based on the findings. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)