Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Educational Equity: A 30-Year Perspective

Abstract

Education equity is essential for achieving sustainability of educational effectiveness. To gain insight into the current direction of change in this area, comprehensive research on EE is required. The bibliometric analysis, performed by VOSviewer, analyzes 3216 documents harvested from the Scopus database within the period set from 1991 to 2020, aiming to identify the development trajectory, country contributions and collaborations, the most productive authors and journals, the research foci and intellectual structure in this regard. The review identified the features of relevant publications on the performance of development trajectories, international contributions and collaborations, prolific authors and productive journals, topical foci as well as intellectual structure pertaining to educational equity. Based on the findings, the author further summarized: 1) international efforts have facilitated educational equity studies greatly since the past two decades, 2) the disproportionate representation of educational equity studies exists in global context, 3) research foci imply broad and multi-faceted themes, 4) educational equity research involves interdisciplinary perspectives. The study, which presents a holistic lens into the research status in this domain, can contribute to the burgeoning literature and orient new entrants to identify the research priorities for future studies.