Detecting the historical roots of education for sustainable development (ESD): a bibliometric analysis
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
ISSN: 1467-6370
Article publication date: 19 September 2021
Issue publication date: 24 February 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Although several researchers have statistically analyzed references associated with education for sustainable development based on the co-citation frequency, evolutionary analysis based on high-citation references omits literature with low citation frequency, which has a significant impact on the evolution of a discipline. The purpose of this study is to understand and explore the historical processes and roots of the field of education for sustainable development and to understand the theoretical grounding of the field.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on education for sustainable development publications in the science citation index expanded and social sciences citation index databases from 1992 to August 2020, a new bibliometric method, reference publication year spectroscopy, was adopted to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the 58,588 cited references in 1,778 publications.
Findings
The earliest reference in the field of education for sustainable development traces back to 1732. There were 21 peaks in this field between 1732 and August 2020. Dewey’s “new three-center theory”; Bloom’s “taxonomy”; Freire’s “conscientization theory”; the “theory of planned behavior”; Kolb’s “experiential learning theory”; Wittgenstein’s theoretical concepts of “language-games,” “forms of life” and “rule-following” and Leopold’s “land ethics” laid an early theoretical grounding of educational philosophy and environmental ethics for research into education for sustainable development. The new environmental paradigm and the new ecological paradigm have become the most widely used methodological tools for understanding the values and attitudes of people toward the natural environment. Among the 50 most cited references, Lozano and Wals have published the most publications, contributing to promoting the development of research into education for sustainable development. The Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education and Environmental Education Research have published the most publications related to the field of education for sustainable development.
Originality/value
The findings of this study are helpful for scholars and practitioners to understand the academic ideological roots, theoretical grounding and important influential literature in the field of education for sustainable development.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author thank all independent reviewers for their help and guidance in this work. The author would like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing.
Declarations.
Funding: This work was supported by the Zhejiang philosophy and Social Sciences key research base (Institute of China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education of Wenzhou Medical University) (Grant number: 20JDZD042).
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Author contributions: All authors made great contributions to this article. YuYing Zhang and Peng Wang conceived, wrote and designed this research article.
Citation
Zhang, Y. and Wang, P. (2022), "Detecting the historical roots of education for sustainable development (ESD): a bibliometric analysis", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 478-502. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-11-2020-0462
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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