Talking Back: An Analysis of the Scope and Impact of Critical Race Theory and Its Usage in Educational Research

Abstract

This study employed bibliometric analysis to analyze the research on critical race theory (CRT) in education. We employed four approaches: citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, social network analysis, and keyword co-occurrence to examine the scientific structure of CRT research in education based on 1,464 documents and 55,493 cited references. Using VOSviewer, we identified four distinct clusters of CRT research that characterize the intellectual structure of CRT research in education. We examined how specific works influence the field using social network analysis (SNA). The SNA revealed various amounts of overall centrality (i.e., 15.42% degree centrality, 25.24% closeness centrality, and approximately 0% betweenness centrality). These results indicate that the documents’ direct influence on the co-citation network is stronger than the indirect and informal influence. Finally, the keyword co-occurrence analysis results indicate four distinct clusters of CRT research foci. The results provide important considerations for future research while refuting claims that CRT is a tool for indoctrinating America’s youth.