A Century of Social Studies Education Research: An LDA-Based Text Mining and Topic Modeling Analysis
SAGE OPEN, cilt.16, sa.3, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 16 Sayı: 3
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1177/21582440261481228
- Dergi Adı: SAGE OPEN
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Directory of Open Access Journals, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest), Education Source Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Hatay Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Over the past century, social studies education has evolved into a multifaceted field shaped by diverse theoretical and pedagogical orientations. This study examines the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of the field through a combined bibliometric analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)-based topic modeling using data from Web of Science and Scopus. The analysis covers 2,764 articles published between 1931 and 2025. Results indicate that while the field has experienced steady quantitative growth, thematic diversification has concentrated around several dominant axes and international research collaboration remains limited, with uneven geographical distribution of publications. LDA modeling identifies twelve major thematic clusters, including democratic citizenship education, digital and critical literacy, technology-supported history teaching, historical thinking and inquiry, geography and spatial reasoning, values education, learner characteristics, classroom interaction processes, and curriculum-textbook studies. Temporal trend analysis further shows that digital citizenship, critical pedagogies, and technology integration have gained significant momentum since the early 2000s, whereas themes such as cultural heritage, geography education, and value-oriented approaches have remained relatively stable. Overall, the findings suggest that social studies education is gradually shifting from a nation-state-centered conception of citizenship toward a more multilayered framework integrating global interconnectedness, digital interaction, ethical reasoning, and participatory democratic culture. The study provides an evidence-based overview of the field's thematic evolution and offers insights for shaping future research agendas.