An examination of social studies education research: A bibliometric analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29329/pedper.2025.90Keywords:
Social studies, Social studies education, Bibliometric analysis, BiblioshinyAbstract
Social studies have an integrated and interdisciplinary structure. Due to its inclusion of different disciplines and the presentation of their integration, this special field requires a specific analysis to examine its own subjects, methods, and trends. The wide range of social studies compared to other fields and their intense collaboration with other disciplines have led to many bibliometric studies in the literature being inadequateSocial studies have an integrated and interdisciplinary structure. Due to its inclusion of different disciplines and the presentation of their integration, this special field requires a specific analysis to examine its own subjects, methods, and trends. The wide range of social studies compared to other fields and their intense collaboration with other disciplines have led to many bibliometric studies in the literature being inadequate or limited. This research aims to reveal the current state, research trends, prominent topics, conceptual structure, and future directions of social studies research in the field of education over the past 20 years through visual mapping. In the study, the bibliometric analysis method was used, and the data were obtained from the Web of Science database. In this context, English articles published between 2002 and 2022 in journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) within the scope of social studies education research were analysed. In the analysis of the data, the Bibliometrix package supported by R Studio software and the Biblioshiny interface were utilised. Based on the analysis of the 569 data obtained, the findings revealed that social studies education research is predominantly conducted as research articles, with an annual growth rate of 7.31%. The most productive year recorded was 2021. It has been determined that the journal Theory and Research in Social Education is the most published and cited journal, and according to Bradford's law, it also occupies a core area, making it the most influential journal in the field. Concepts such as citizenship education, identity, history education, and social justice have been the most frequently used keywords, with citizenship-related concepts particularly coming to the forefront since 2016.
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