The Use of Technology in Preschool Education: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This study seeks to construct a bibliometric map of research on the use of technology in preschool education. To examine the structure and evolution of this field, publication co-citation analysis, author co-citation analysis, and word frequency analysis were employed. Descriptive indicators, including the distribution of publications by country, institution, and year, were derived from 1021 documents indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. Bibliometric analyses were conducted using the R and RStudio software packages. The findings reveal the prominent and influential role of American universities, scholars, and journals in this research area, a result further corroborated by the outcomes of Bradford’s Law analysis. In addition, the terms “technology,” “education,” “preschool,” and “children” emerged as the most frequently used keywords, highlighting the core themes of technology use in preschool education. Notably, since 2014, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies focusing on the use of technology in preschool education, along with a growing number of researchers and institutions contributing to this field. These trends suggest that the use of technology in preschool education is likely to remain a central focus of national and international research agendas and to gain increasing prominence within educational programs in the future.