Hot Topics and Evolution of Frontier Research in Early Education: A Bibliometric Mapping of the Research Literature (2001–2020)

Shutao Wang,Xinlei Lv

doi:10.3390/su13169216

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to explore the evolving trend of research directions in the field of early education. In this research, CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used to visually analyze documents published in eight SSCI journals between 2001 and 2020. Through methods such as co-authorship analysis, cluster analysis, and cocitation analysis, this study found that child care, school readiness, early education quality, effortful control, executive function, self-regulation, and teacher–student relationships are hot topics in early education. Early education research has distinctive interdisciplinary characteristics.

Highlights

Experience shapes children’s social, emotional, and cognitive capacities, which can be the foundation of adult productivity [1]
We used WoS because: (1) our research objects were limited to papers published in SSCI journals in early education, which are included in WoS; (2) our research involved the analysis of authors, institutions, research hotspots, and its evolution, and WoS provides a set of metadata that are crucial for bibliometric reviews, including titles, lists of authors, institutions, countries, keywords, abstracts, references, and number of citations [22]; (3) previous studies have indicated that the Web of Science and Scopus provide fairly similar results [23], and it may not necessary to use different databases simultaneously due to the existence of duplication [24]
The main findings were that: core researchers work in close cooperation, and academic circles have formed

Summary

Introduction

Experience shapes children’s social, emotional, and cognitive capacities, which can be the foundation of adult productivity [1]. Can have a lasting impact into the adult years [2,3] and is closely related to human sustainable development. In 2015, the United Nations reported The Sustainable Development. Goals (SDGs), and Quality Education is the fourth goal (SDG4). Ensuring that children have access to high-quality early education is an inextricable part of SDG4. It is crucial to promote the sustainable development of ECE and boost the achievement of SDG4. The present article aims to review the evolution of ECE, explore its research hot topics, and provide a reference for its sustainable development in the future

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion