Trends of abstraction research in mathematics education: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Abstraction is fundamental in mathematics learning because students can discover the studied concepts through abstraction. Bibliometric analyses of abstraction research in mathematics education have yet to be published. A bibliometric analysis is conducted to explore trends in abstraction research. The mathematics education researchers will gain insights from studying the development of abstraction research over the last fifteen years. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the primary journals published, the most productive authors, universities, and countries and to identify current trends in abstraction research. Data were collected from the Scopus database and analysed using VOSviewer and R software. A thorough review was conducted on 271 articles published between 2008 and 2022. The collected data was analysed and presented using R studio and VOSviewer software. The publication of abstraction research has increased every year. Abstraction studies related to geometry, computational thinking, and preschool are trend and abstraction studies related to gesture, preschool child, arithmetic, physiology, mathematical concepts, geometry, language, and cognition. Abstraction research is exciting because it will still trend until 2022. This study offers valuable insights to researchers interested in mathematics education for exploring alternative research directions to the primary research trends. Based on these results, recommendations for further research are given so that they can explore various options for research trends.

Keywords

• abstraction
• bibliometric
• constructing
• mathematics education
• vosviewer