Abstract
In recent years, the interest in research concerning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has grown considerably. Therefore, a thorough (re)evaluation of this field and its challenges is highly necessary and can help us better understand the diversity of ESD approaches and the ways in which various scholars, countries, institutions, or universities reacted through research and scientific publications to the study of ESD. Using a bibliometric approach, we analyzed 1813 papers on the subject, indexed by the Web of Science, between 1992 and 2018. The main findings increased our understanding of the ESD domain: we identified vital research, landmark studies in the development of the field, critical past contributions, emerging trends, and potentially transformative ideas. The number of publications, authors, and journals has increased, proving that ESD has gained momentum over the period examined in the study. Similarly, there are more and more works written in collaboration by people (scholars, researchers, etc.) from different parts and cultures of the world, indicating that publishing on ESD is like a legacy to international efforts to bring this area of inquiry into the mainstream. Finally, the study illustrates two main research directions for the entire timespan: integration of education into sustainable development and of sustainable development into education.
Highlights
In recent years, numerous studies [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] have shown that the interest in research concerning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has grown considerably
There are several advantages to implementing bibliometric analysis for the purposes of this study: it allows a better understanding of the structure of scientific data; it gives the opportunity to identify, analyze, and evaluate the literature on this topic; it provides valuable insights into the chronological development of this field of research; it enables us to identify the authors, articles, journals, topics, and citations that have an impact on the scholarly community; it gives the opportunity to establish the degree of interaction between authors, scientific papers, and journals, to summarize large datasets, and to identify popular issues and research trends
According to the analysis provided by VosViewer, the top 10 most cited journals were: Environmental Education Research (2919), Journal of Cleaner Production (2060), International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education (1232), Sustainability (1222), Journal of Environmental Education (671), Sustainability Science (432), Journal of Education for Sustainable Development (402), International Journal of Science Education (344), Journal of Business Ethics (328), and Sustainability-Basel (328)
Summary
Numerous studies [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] have shown that the interest in research concerning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has grown considerably. As it expands rapidly, this sector is becoming more visible and significant in a global world affected by serious environmental issues and by growing social, economic, and political inequality. The European Commission [12] explains the role of SD: “it provides a comprehensive approach bringing together economic, social and environmental considerations in ways that mutually reinforce each other”
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