Science mapping research on Career guidance in general schools: a bibliometric analysis from Scopus database, 1964–2022

Abstract

Career guidance, which strongly influences the world labor market and social structure, is studied in many countries on different levels. This study aims to explore the number, growth trajectories, and geographic distribution of studies on Career guidance in general schools and identify prominent influential authors, sources, publications, and new research issues. Bibliometric analysis is employed to analyze all 382 publications on the topic of Career guidance in general schools in the Scopus database. The data shows that the volume of scientific publications in this field remained steady from 1964 to 2010, while the period from 2010 to 2022 experienced a significant increase. There is a total of 2412 authors participating in research on this topic, from 1609 institutions, in 98 different countries and regions. Besides the studies of American, Italian, and Russian scholars, researchers in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia also play a notable role in this topic. The most cited and notable journal on this topic is the British Journal of Guidance and Counseling. Recently, the most prevalent research topics include influencing general school students to prepare for their career readiness, and the opportunity to create social justice in understanding and deciding on career options.

Keywords:

• Career guidance
• VOSviewer
• K-12
• bibliometric
• school

Reviewing Editor:

• Richard Kruk, Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Subjects:

• Education & Training
• Secondary Education
• Vocational Education

Introduction

Rapid changes to the job market structure are signs of modern globalized economies. It is required that individuals have extensive knowledge of both themselves and educational and career opportunities to successfully adapt to these shifting markets. Therefore, career guidance (CG) plays an important role in building skills and knowledge in countries around the world (Hooley & Rice, 2019). If CG focused on general school programs in each country, it would greatly help students overcome hesitation in choosing their careers and desired study paths in the future. General schools need to be proactive in directing students to the right career options that are appropriate to their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. CG enhances each individual’s autonomy and choice, which is essential for better participation in the market economy (Aurangzeb et al., 2021). Hence, to develop human resources, it is necessary to further provide students with an understanding of CG (ILO, 2004) with three main components: career information, career counseling, and career planning.

Bohndick et al. (2017) argued that CG in schools is about preparing students for the outside world. Especially in preparing high school students for higher education (Van & Loan, 2016). Therefore, the CG Program should also be included in the curriculum and show its positive impact (Malinda & Mandyata, 2021; Modiba & Sefotho, 2019; Mudulia et al., 2017). Moreover, CG in high schools is more effective when it is included as a policy (Watts & Sultana, 2004). Besides, it is also necessary to pay attention to the gender of students in the perception of CG in schools, as most female students do not consider CG as an important factor in making career choices (Andreea-Elena, 2014; Ibrahim et al., 2014; Levin & Gati, 2015), thus female students have more difficulty in making career decisions than their male classmates (Bacanli, 2016).

Although there have been many studies on CG in high schools, none have provided an overview of the number, growth patterns, and geographic distribution of EA research, identifying high-impact scholars, documents, sources, and key themes in CG publications in general schools. There were several bibliographic reviews related to CG (Husaeni & Nandiyanto, 2023; Calero-López & Rodríguez-López, 2020; Yu & Zhou, 2016). However, there has not been science mapping provided to reveal the citation patterns and the research structure of CG in general schools. The bibliometric analysis of research on a certain field contributes to understanding the evolution and trends of studies and also guides future studies (Pan et al., 2023). Therefore, the objective of this study is to draw an ‘intellectual structure’ of CG in high school and use this structure to solve related work based on all the publications on the topic in the Scopus database from 1964 to the end of 2022. Bibliographic analysis techniques, VOSviewer software (version 1.6.18) and Microsoft Excel software will be used to answer the following questions:

• RQ1: What are the number, growth patterns, and geographic distribution of publications on CG in general schools around the world?

• RQ2: What authors, and documents have the greatest influence on CG in general schools?

• RQ3: What are the main sources of publications on CG in general schools?

• RQ4: What are the main trends and the most popular topics investigated by CG in general schools?

In this paper, we first briefly present CG to clarify the concept and select search keywords for this research. Next, the process of data collection and processing will be presented. Then, the research results section will be presented in corresponding subsections to answer the above research questions. After that, we will discuss the significance of this study and present some conclusions and recommendations for concerned people to review and use the research results. Lastly, an exposition of the constraints associated with the employed research methodologies and data, along with recommendations for future investigations, will be provided.

Literature review

The keyword ‘guidance’ has been in use since about the 1530s and is defined as ‘the process of directing conduct’ (Roy, 2021). A long time later, the keyword ‘guidance’ was found in the scholarly works of Tomaso Garzoni, in 1626, in a book called ‘Universal Plaza of all the Professions in the World’ which presented about career choice (Omoni, 2009).

Up to now, ‘CG’ is still a complex concept and has different interpretations or approaches. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2004), Watts and Fretwell (2004) argue that the term ‘CG’ is used to cover all services and activities aimed at supporting individuals, of all ages, and at any point in their lives, to help them make educational, training, and career choices and manage their careers. This service consists of three main components: (1) Career information, information on courses, jobs, and career paths, or labor market information; (2) Career counseling, conducted on a small-group basis, where attention is given to particular career issues faced by individuals; and (3) Career education, as part of an educational program, focuses on helping groups and individuals develop their competences to manage their career development. In this sense, career education is an element of CG. In many studies, there is a remarkable consensus that CG is a program and service in the education system. CG covers various areas, such as informing students about current and future job opportunities, assessing, training, facilitating, advocating, and giving feedback. More specifically CG is a process that serves students to decide on subjects or courses according to their needs and interests (Aurangzeb et al., 2021). However, there is also a CG approach unrelated to the education system, in which researchers or policy makers consider CGs to be systematic programs that facilitate individual and managerial career development or career supervision (Hooley & Dodd, 2015).

So far, there have been many studies on CG in many different aspects. A number of studies have clarified the role of CG within the education system. CG in schools has an important role to play in preparing students for the outside world (Bohndick et al., 2017; Malinda & Mandyata, 2021). Sometimes students face situations that force them to make appropriate career decisions, so schools must establish and maintain good CG departments (Owino, 2005). In addition, CG plays an important role in addressing the educational, personal, social, spiritual, emotional, and other similar problems of students through the provision of educational instruction and CG. (Abid, 2006).

Some studies also clarify the role of teachers and resources inside and outside the school in CG activities. Wong et al. (2022) assert that teachers play an important role in guiding students to plan their own careers. The most important form of support for students is the teacher’s knowledge of the career world and the requirements of the pathway. While the involvement of all teachers and other social resources plays an important role in CG and career counseling (Wong & Yuen; 2019), the efforts of teachers and principals are still lacking in synchronization in the CG process (Astuti, 2019). The role of culture and family tradition has a significant influence on students’ career choice or career orientation (Ngai et al., 2021). Therefore, schools need to promote CG to equip students with skills and resources so that they can connect positively with their parents and influencers in their profession (Dogar et al., 2011).

The gender of the student also has a great influence on the student’s career choice and CG activities. Andreea-Elena (2014) and Ibrahim et al. (2014) indicated that female students do not consider CG as an important factor in making career choices and have more difficulty in making career decisions than male students (Bacanli, 2016).

National policies on CG have also been studied by many scholars. CG has an impact on and plays an important role in economic growth and benefits for society (Hooley & Dodd, 2015; OECD, 2002), thus career management skills are now a growing focus of national CG policies (OECD, 2002). In many countries, CG is tied to policy objectives related to learning, the labor market, and social justice (Watts & Sultana, 2004). For example, the UK Education Law (2011) emphasizes the role of CG education in the general education system (Fuller et al., 2014). The Australian Government has also demonstrated its commitment to making career counseling a part of school education through the introduction of the National career counseling system (2006), the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (2010), and National Career Education Strategy (2019) (Rothman & Hillman, 2008; Keele et al., 2020).

At present, it is possible to find a number of studies on the topic of CG, all using bibliometric analysis and VOSviewer software, but all have certain limitations. Most recently, the study by Husaeni and Nandiyanto (2023) used Google Scholar data and was only for 5 years (from 2017 to 2021). Many studies have shown that data sources that are reputable publications, such as Web of Science or Scopus, are very significant in bibliometric (Pham et al., 2021) a large source of data, but they are still not homogeneous nor have high and clear criteria for quality standards. This study also only focused on vocational schools where CG is of course very important in their educational program. Therefore, it is not possible to find the full research and policy implications related to CG if it is limited to vocational schools in CG research. Furthermore, this study does not present the research question, the results section does not state the most influential authors or groups of authors, the most influential sources, major trends, or topics in CG research in vocational schools.

In addition, Calero-López and Rodríguez-López, (2020) used thematic and bibliometric analysis on data collected from three non-Scopus sources, namely EBook Education Collection (EBSCO), Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), and Web of Science (WOS). Furthermore, this study only focused on analyzing empirical studies related to transversal competencies in vocational education and training. Although the study also has notable policy implications such as the need to improve students’ ability to convert to meet labor market demands; the importance of the cooperation of all stakeholders in the process (policy makers, industry, and educators); and from a pedagogical point of view, the necessity of introducing new teaching methods in CG. However, similar to the study by Husaeni and Nandiyanto (2023), this study is not intended to explore the number, growth trajectories, the geographic distribution of studies on CG in general schools, nor prominent influential authors, sources, publications, and new research issues on CG.

Research by Yu and Zhou (2016) used bibliometric analysis and knowledge mapping software Cite Space to analyze 719 articles on the topic of international vocational education in the SSCI database. This study points out a number of geographical factors related to international vocational education publications that are advantageous for Europe and the United States (US) in the process of internationalizing vocational education, while China still seems to be paying little attention to this area. This study has also shown that research on vocational education can be divided into some main sub-fields: social psychology research on vocational education, the relationship between vocational education and economic development, and lifelong vocational education.

Thus, it is possible to see a number of different bibliometric analyses of CG, but there is a lack of studies aimed at drawing a scientific map of this topic in general education. As mentioned, CG in general schools plays an important role for each student, family, and the society as a whole. Therefore, this study will contribute to filling the above gap as well as help researchers and policy makers to have an initial understanding, an overview of the growth, and knowledge structure in publications about CG, the most influential authors, and magazines on this topic.

Research methodology

Data search

Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar are the most popular sources of data in the academic community. Google Scholar, known as a web-based database, has strengths in document information retrieval. Meanwhile, Scopus and Web of Science have an advantage in evaluating performance citation analysis by the consistency and completeness of the database. In addition, the Scopus database is considered to be more extensive than the Web of Science’s database in the field of social sciences (Hallinger & Nguyen, 2020; Pham et al., 2021). Hence, Scopus is chosen as the source for data collection.

The first main keyword of this study is ‘CG’. However, in order to cover all research publications on the topic of researchers in many different countries, the research team also pays attention to terms which have similar meaning with ‘CG’, including ‘career orientation’, ‘vocational guidance’, and ‘career exploration’. For example, ‘CG’ and ‘career orientation’ both refer to CG for learners but ‘CG’ includes seeking career information, career counseling, and career planning. Besides, ‘career orientation’ refers to guiding students to find career information (Clements, 1977). Next, ‘vocational guidance’ is used to talk about vocational guidance for learners in a particular profession aged 15 years and above, while ‘CG’ is widely used in many other contexts for learners of all ages (Clements, 1977), especially CG in general schools mainly uses this term. Therefore, this study uses ‘CG’ consistent with the usage in the cited documents to match those presenting this subject matter to general schools. In addition to the term CG, the keyword ‘career education’ is also used a lot in general education and is quite similar to the concept of CG. For example, ‘career education’ in the UK mainly focuses on career decision-making and ‘career education’ in the US extends to the development of specific vocational skills and work habits, and attitudes necessary to have and keep a job (Watts & Herr, 1976). Recently, the term has been commonly used in many countries to describe ‘career education’, reflecting an orientation towards CG in general rather than a single profession (OECD, 2010). UNESCO's proposed revision defines ‘career education’ to include not only specific preparation for a particular career field but also general preparation for the world of work as ‘part of universal education for everyone’ (UNESCO, 2001). So, the main keywords of this study are ‘CG’ and ‘career education’ along with keywords related to general schools (high school, junior high school, middle school, secondary school, grammar school, dame school, primary school, K-12) which may include all research publications on the topic.

The steps of searching, filtering, and analyzing data are carried out as follows (Figure 1):

Figure 1. PRISMA diagram of the cleaning process of the scientific studies list for Bibliometric analysis.

In particular, each step is carried out as follows:

• Step 1 - Identification: Our initial search query turned up 996 studies with the search command

  TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘CG’ OR ‘career education’) AND (‘K-12’ OR ‘primary school’ OR ‘secondary school’ OR ‘ high school’ OR ‘middle school’ OR ‘junior high school’ OR ‘grammar school’ OR ‘dame school’).

  (Retrieved from Scopus database, 16:30 dated 23/3/2022).

• Step 2 - Screening: To ensure that the selected articles were in line with the research objectives, we conducted a screening. At the first screening stage, we excluded articles without an abstract or having an author name but no title. A total of 267 publications were eliminated, and 729 publications were kept for further screening.

• Step 3 - Eligibility: In this step, the research members were assigned to read abstracts and titles of the articles to determine if the research topic of a paper is relevant to ‘CG’ and in the general school field or not. For articles that could not be immediately confirmed for needed information (Nassar et al., 2019; Kenny et al., 2019; Robinson et al., 2018), we read their abstracts together, and if necessary, read the full article in order to make a final decision. Some publications with relevant keywords but unrelated content were removed (see for example, Deb, 2018; Rozhina & Baklashova, 2018; Saputra & Sudira, 2019; Supriatna et al., 2019). Thus, after this step, 347 studies were rejected.

• Step 4 - Included: Finally, the clean data that can be included in the analysis has a total of 382 publications, including articles, books, conference papers, and book chapters for analysis.

Data analysis

Bibliometric analysis, first announced by Pritchard (1969), is one of the most widely applied research methods for statistics, analysis, and general evaluation of scientific publications with the same theme or based on some specific features (Chahrour et al., 2020; Kakouris & Georgiadis, 2016). This method allows researchers to detect research trends over a long period of time and to forecast and make recommendations on future potential and viable research topics (Hallinger & Nguyen, 2020; Pham et al., 2021). In this study, we used bibliometrics analysis to analyze the data, which focused on analyzing co-authorship, co-occurrence keywords, co-citation by authors, and sources. Co-authorship analysis between authors can reveal the authors’ collaboration in research as well as a picture of the collaboration of different countries in research on a given field (Do et al., 2021; Hallinger & Nguyen, 2020; Nguyen et al., 2023). Citation analysis has been employed as a methodology to ascertain noteworthy authors and documents within various domains of knowledge (Zupic & Čater, 2015). Co-citation, a phenomenon arising when two distinct documents receive references from a common third document, offers valuable insights into the interrelationships and intellectual connections among published works (Chen et al., 2001). Notably, when two authors are consistently cited by different authors, thereby being co-cited, it signifies a propensity for shared intellectual affinities and similarities (Small, 1973). Through the application of co-occurrence keyword analysis, it was discovered that the prevailing keywords were indicative of documents encompassing a shared subject matter (Nguyen et al., 2023; Lozano et al., 2019). By examining the patterns of keyword co-occurrence in scholarly literature over time, researchers are able to discern interconnected topics of interest, delve into the underlying structure of these topics, and ascertain emerging research trends within the field (Zupic & Čater, 2015).

Through the descriptive statistical analysis, together with VOSviewer software, this method can show scholars, groups of scholars, academic institutions, and countries with publication productivity, publication influence, and cooperation between the above subjects.

This method is widely used in many different research fields. In education, many researchers have applied this method to conduct their research (Bui et al., 2020; Cao et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2020), especially in the field of general schools research (Brika et al., 2021; Cao et al., 2020); research areas in higher education (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019; Phan et al., 2022); lifelong learning (Do et al., 2021); scientific society (Pham et al., 2020, 2021; Nguyen et al., 2023); Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education (Phan et al., 2022; Phuong et al., 2023); and International Vocational Education (Yu & Zhou, 2016).

Results

RQ1: What are the number, growth patterns, and geographic distribution of publications on CG in general schools around the world?

Figure 2 represents the amount of publications over the given time period as well as the distribution of the number of publications, wherein most of them are journal articles with 317, followed by 37 conference papers. Book chapters and review articles have an equal number of 12 publications. There are only three editorial articles and one note article.

Figure 2. Annual development of scientific studies on CG in general schools from 1964 to March 2022 and quantity distribution by publication type.

The line indicates annual growth in the number of publications on CG, showing a rapid rise in the final 14 years. The pie chart shows the percentage of each type of publication. The reviewed publications, based on number of publications per year, can be divided into two stages:

Stage 1: Low-interest stage (1964–2009), in which the topic of CG received little attention from scholars and only 45 studies were published (accounting for about 11.8% of the total published studies from 1964 to 3/2022).

Stage 2: Growth stage (2010–March 2022): The number of publications on this topic increased significantly compared to the previous stage (337 publications, accounting for about 88.2% of the total number of published publications) from 1964 to March 2022) and the number of publications increased steadily over the years, averaging 27 articles per year (excluding the first three months of 2022).

It can be seen that within the first stage, lasting 45 years, the publication rate of studies related to CG in general schools was very limited with an average of only 1.28 publications per year. Also, the rate of increase in research during this period was almost constant over the years. In 2007, the maximum number of publications was 9. Over the past decade from 2010 to March 2022, the number of publications on CG in general schools grew significantly. In the past 13 years, the total number of publications reached 337, reaching an average of 28 publications per year. Especially in the last three years, including 2019, 2020, and 2021, the number of publications on CG in general schools increased significantly to 36, 50, and 40 respectively. Particularly in the first three months of 2022, the number of publications on this topic is 11 and this number is predicted to increase to about 44 publications for the whole year, which continues the rising trend in the number of publications compared to the previous years.

Table 1 shows the number of studies related to CG in general schools in different countries. According to the obtained data, 67/204 countries have published research on this topic. In terms of the number of publications, it can be seen that out of 20 countries with the highest number of publications on CG, the most prominent ones include the US (72 studies), Russia (38 studies), the UK (28 studies), and Australia (23 studies) (accounting for about 66% of total published studies); the US has the largest number of published articles, nearly twice that of the next country. In the above list, apart from significant contributions from America like Canada (North America) and Brazil (South America); from Africa like South Africa; and from Asia like Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Indonesia, a large number of publications are from European countries.

Table 1. Rank order of countries with the highest number of publications for CG in general schools from 1964 to March 2022 (with total citations).

No	Country	Research publication	Citation	No	Country	Research publication	Citation
1	US	72	692	11	Germany	10	86
2	Russian Federation	38	121	12	Portugal	10	19
3	United Kingdom (UK)	28	311	13	Japan	10	15
4	Australia	23	134	14	Netherlands	8	172
5	Canada	16	94	15	Turkey	7	46
6	South Africa	16	52	16	Italy	7	44
7	South Korea	14	50	17	China	7	40
8	Hongkong	13	47	18	Spain	7	22
9	Brazil	11	16	19	France	7	13
10	Indonesia	11	11	20	Latvia	6	3

Note: For countries with the same number of publications, those with higher number of citations are ranked in higher order.

In terms of citations, as illustrated in Table 1, the US, the UK, Australia, and Russia have the highest number of citations. Meanwhile, although Canada has more than twice as many publications (16 studies) as the Netherlands (8 studies), its total number of citations is only slightly more than half that of the Netherlands. Most countries in all three regions of Europe, America, and Asia with the highest number of publications continue to appear in this table.

To identify research collaborations between countries, a co-authorship analysis between countries was conducted. The results in Figure 3 show that the US (total link strength: 7) and the UK (total link strength: 6) are the two countries with the strongest research collaboration with other countries followed by Estonia, Germany, and Switzerland which has a co-authorship link strength of 3. However, research cooperation through co-authorship between pairs of countries is not too strong with an average link strength of about 1 or 2.

Figure 3. Map of co-authorship on CG in general schools over time between countries in the period from 1964 to March 2022 (threshold: 3).

The colors of the nodes in Figure 3 also show new countries participating in the publication of studies related to this topic. The brighter the color of the nodes in the yellow spectrum, the more recent the studies were published. Accordingly, the latest countries participating in the publication of this field include Finland (number of studies: 3, average publication year: 2020:67), Estonia (3, 2020:33), Italy (7, 2019:29), China (7, 2018:71), and Hong Kong (13, 2018:62). Meanwhile, earlier research publications are from developed countries such as the US, the Netherlands, and the UK with an average publication year of 2012:12, 2013:88 and 2015:43, respectively.

RQ2: What authors, and documents have the greatest influence on CG in general schools?

Table 2 lists the 20 authors whose studies on the topic of CG in general schools are the most cited, ranked by the total number of studies and citations in the Scopus database. These 20 authors come from 10 institutions, including Università degli Studi di Padova, the University of Oregon, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, University of Northumbria, Tartu Ülikool, Open Universiteit, Kazan National Research Technical University, Kazan Federal University, and Kazan State Agrarian University in 7 countries, including Italy, The US, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the UK, Estonia, and Russia. Among the 20 most prominent authors, 4 have more than 1000 citations, and 14 have more than 100 citations. Particularly, there are four most prominent authors with more than 1000 citations: Frans Meijers of The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Salvatore Soresi of Università degli Studi di Padova, Laura Nota of Università degli Studi di Padova, and Benedict McWhirter of the University of Oregon.

Table 2. 20 authors with the highest number of citations on the topic of CG in general schools according to the Scopus database from 1964 to March 2022.

Rank	Author	Workplace	Nationality	Scopus H-index	TC	LC	PY
1	Nota L.	Università degli Studi di Padova	Italy	27	3255	29	2003
2	Soresi S.	Università degli Studi di Padova	Italy	24	2737	29	1990
3	Mcwhirter E.H.	University of Oregon	US	22	2084	173	1993
4	Meijers F.	The Hague University of Applied Sciences	Netherlands (Netherlands)	20	1263	162	1988
5	Yuen M.	The University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	14	757	20	2001
6	Ginevra M.C.	Università degli Studi di Padova	Italy	16	750	9	2010
7	Strachan R.	University of Northumbria	UK	11	683	3	1986
8	Chen G.	The University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	13	646	13	2006
9	Rannikm E.M.	Tartu Ülikool	Estonia	9	604	0	2007
10	Kuijpers M.	Open Universiteit	Netherlands	12	551	162	2006
11	Santilli S.	Università degli Studi di Padova	Italy	13	522	29	2013
12	Gilmanshin I.R.	Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev -KAI	Russian	11	292	15	2014
13	Gilmanshina S.I.	Kazan Federal University	Russian	11	249	15	1998
14	Di Maggio I.	Università degli Studi di Padova	Italy	8	161	9	2015
15	Sibgatova K.I.	Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev -KAI	Russian	5	58	49	2014
16	Fassakhova G.R.	Kazan State Agrarian University	Russian	4	54	22	2015
17	Emembolu I.	University of Northumbria	UK	3	42	3	2018
18	Shimwell J.	University of Northumbria	UK	2	19	3	2018
19	Davenport C.	University of Northumbria	UK	2	18	3	2016
20	Ortega R.	University of Oregon	US	1	13	12	2019

Note: TC: number of citations according to Scopus database; LC: number of citations in the analytical dataset; PY: Published year of the first study.

Most of these researchers are from developed countries, of which European researchers account for 80%. Researchers from the Americas and Asia each account for only 10%. However, only the US from the Americas and Hong Kong from Asia make the list. In addition, although the US only has 2/20 authors on the list, one of them is among the three most cited authors. Specifically, among the 20 authors with the highest number of citations, two are from the US and four are from the UK, one author from the US is ranked 3rd on this list. This is consistent with the co-authorship map as the US (total link strength: 7) and the UK (total link strength: 6) are the two countries with the strongest co-author link (Figure 3). Furthermore, it is worth noting that the top two authors in the list are from Italy, while it is a relatively new country to publish in this field (Figure 3).

The top four authors in the list include: Laura Nota (H-index = 27) (The H-index is an indicator of the impact of a researcher on the development of his or her scientific field), Salvatore Soresi (H-index = 24), Ellen Hawley McWhirter (H-index = 22), and Frans Meijers (H-index = 20). All of them have over 1000 citations and have founded or held important roles in major CG associations. Professor Laura Nota of the Università degli Studi di Padova, is the first on the list. She not only teaches, but also holds many important positions in CG associations, major programs in CG and is also the editor-in-chief or editor of many prestigious magazines in the field of CG. One of them is the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, which ranks 3rd in the list of the most influential publications on CG in general schools for the period 1964-2022 (Table 4). Professor Salvatore Soresi from Padua University (2nd highest number of citations), professor Ellen Hawley McWhirter from the University of Oregon (3rd highest number of citations), and professor Frans Meijers from Hague University of Applied Sciences (4th highest number of citations) have also founded, managed, and are members of many associations, centers, and laboratories on career orientation and integration as well as participate in editing prestigious journals in this field.

Next, we identify the most influential articles of the topic. Table 3 presents 20 studies with the highest number of citations of CG in general schools according to the Scopus database. All of these studies were published in 2000 or later.

Table 3. List of 20 most cited studies on CG in general schools according to Scopus database in the period 1964 - 2022.

Rank	1^st Author, PY	Title	DT	LC	GC	Source
1	Gushue, G. V., 2006	The relationship of career decision-making self-efficacy, vocational identity, and career exploration behavior in African American high school students	JA	90	340	Journal of Career Development
2	Tanuja Agarwala, 2008	Factors influencing career option of management students in India	JA	82	332	Career Development International
3	Marinka Kuijpers, 2011	The relationship between learning environment and career competencies of students in CG	JA	80	283	Journal of Vocational Behavior
4	Itamar Gati, 2001	'Should I use a computer-assisted CG system?' It depends on where your career decision-making difficulties lie	JA	49	145	British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
5	Frans Meijers, 2013	The relationship between career competencies, career identity, motivation, and quality of choice	JA	44	151	International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance
6	Ronald G. Sultana, 2012	Learning career management skills in Europe: a critical review	JA	35	185	Journal of Education and work
7	R Zinser, 2003	Developing career and employability skills: A US case study	JA	35	176	Teaching and Teacher Education
8	VJ Sun, 2012	CG and Counselling for University Students in China	JA	23	72	International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling
9	Watts and Kidd, 2000	Guidance in the UK: Past, present, and future	JA	22	119	British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
10	Lee B., 2016	Between- and within-person level motivational precursors associated with career exploration	JA	21	56	Journal of Vocational Behavior
11	Kristyn M. Fowkes, 2007	Evaluation of computer-assisted CG in middle and secondary education settings: Status, obstacles, and suggestions	JA	15	43	Journal of Career Assessment
12	Annemie Winters, et al., 2013	The Narrative Quality of Career Conversations in CG	JA	15	41	Journal of Constructivist Psychology
13	Frans Meijers, 2017	A Dialogue Worth Having: Vocational Competence, Career Identity, and a Learning Environment for Twenty-First Century Success at Work	BC	13	26	Enhancing Teaching and Learning in the Dutch CG System
14	Zhang J., 2018	Teacher support for career development: an integrative review and research agenda	JA	11	20	Career Development International
15	Natal’ya Galliott, 2017	Online CG: Does Knowledge Equate to Power for High School Students?	JA	9	34	Journal of psychologists and counsellors in general schools
16	Kariene Mittendorff, et al., 2011	Students’ perceptions of career conversations with their teachers	JA	8	39	Teaching and Teacher Education
17	Frans Meijers, 2014	Career learning and career learning environment in Dutch higher education	JA	8	21	Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
18	Elena V. Soboleva, 2020	Professional Self-Determination Support for Students in the Digital Educational Space	JA	7	29	European Journal of Contemporary Education
19	Gulnaz Zahid, et al., 2020	Careers work in higher education in Pakistan: current practice and options for the future	JA	6	19	British Journal of Guidance & Counselling
20	V. A. Gurtov and Khoteeva, 2018	Schoolchildren’s career trajectory planning: focus on ‘want’, ‘can’ and ‘need’	JA	6	9	Integration of Education

PY: Publication year, DT: Document type, JA: Journal article, BC: Book chapter, LC: Location citations, GC: Global citations.

Table 4. The most influential publishers on the topic of CG in general schools in the period 1964-3/2022.

Ranking	Source	Publisher	Scope	TC	NP	H-index	SJR	Ranking
1	British Journal of Guidance and Counselling	Routledge	Applied Psychology	51	19	48	0.29	Q3
2	Journal of Career Development	SAGE Publications Inc.	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Applied Psychology Psychology (miscellaneous) Education	215	17	48	0.61	Q2
3	International Journal for Educational and Vocational guidance	Springer Netherlands	Visual Arts and Performing Arts Education	114	14	27	0.47	Q1
4	Career development quarterly	Wiley-Blackwell	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Applied Psychology Psychology (miscellaneous)	94	10	55	0.94	Q1
5	Australian Journal of Career Development	SAGE Publications Ltd	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Education	47	9	12	0.32	Q3
6	Journal of Vocational behavior	Academic Press Inc.	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Applied Psychology Education Life-span and Life-course Studies	244	8	161	2.81	Q1
7	Journal of career guidance and training	Routledge	Education	34	6	36	0.65	Q2
8	Career development international	Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Social Sciences (miscellaneous)	48	4	67	0.94	Q1
9	Journal of career assessment	SAGE Publications Inc.	Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Applied Psychology Psychology (miscellaneous)	40	4	64	1.23	Q1
10	Journal of counseling psychology		Medicine (miscellaneous) Psychiatry and Mental Health Social Psychology Clinical Psychology	165	3	143	1.59	Q1
11	Research papers in education	Taylor and Francis Ltd.	Education	26	3	47	0.8	Q1
12	Australian Education Research	Springer Netherlands	Education	25	3	32	1.03	Q1
13	Integration of education	National Research Ogarev Mordovia State University	Education	11	3	9	0.24	Q3
14	Sustainability (Switzerland)	MDPI AG	Energy Engineering and Power Technology Renewable Energy, Sustainability, and the Environment Environmental Science (miscellaneous) Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law Geography, Planning and Development	5	3	109	0.66	Q1
15	Journal of Psychology and Counselling	Ball State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies	Social Psychology Clinical Psychology Education Sociology and Political Science	11	2	2	0.16	Q3
16	British educational research journal	Routledge	Education	26	1	94	1.07	Q1
17	European journal of contemporary education	Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o.	Education	7	1	18	0.62	Q2
18	Journal of applied research in higher education	Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.	Education	8	1	15	0.32	Q3
19	Educational psychology	Routledge	Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Education	0	1	73	1.08	Q1
20	British journal of educational studies	Taylor and Francis Ltd.	Education	0	1	52	0.76	Q1

Note: TC: Number of citations according to Scopus database; NP: Number of publications; SJR: data from scimagojr.com; Q1 includes the top 25% of journals with the highest SJR, Q2 includes the next 25%, Q3 includes the next 25%, and Q4 includes the bottom 25%.

The most cited study is the article ‘The relationship of career decision-making self-efficacy, vocational identity, and career exploration behavior in African American high school students (Gushue et al., 2006)’. It explores the relationship between the social cognitive structure of career self-determination ability and the outcome variables of occupational identity and career discovery behavior in a sample of 72 African American high school students residing in urban areas.

The second most cited study is the article ‘Factors influencing career option of management students in India (Agarwala, 2008)’. Based on data collected from 93 students from a management institute in India, the paper explores the influence of a range of factors on the career options of management students in India. Besides, the study seeks to address the relationship between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and general career orientations of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students from India, and factors as well as people affecting career options.

The article ‘The relationship between learning environment and career competencies of students in CG (Kuijpers et al., 2011)’ is the third most cited study. One of the co-authors of this study is Professor Meijers F., one of the four most prominent authors cited in Table 2. This is a study of 3,499 students and 166 teachers in 226 classrooms in 34 schools to find out which aspects of the learning environment promote the professional competence development of 12 to 19-year-old students in the Netherlands.

RQ3: What are the main sources of publications on CG in general schools?

Table 4 lists 20 journals/publishing units (edited books/sets) with the highest number of articles related to CG in general schools. The unit with the highest number of publications (19 publications, Q3, Scopus) is the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. The second most notable magazine related to CG is the Journal of Career Development (17 publications, Q2, Scopus), which provides professionals, the public, and policymakers with the latest information on theory, research, and practice in career development. CG in general schools, career development for adults, career development for special needs population, career and family development, career, and entertainment are the mentioned topics. The 3rd largest contributor among the journals with the highest number of articles related to CG in general schools is International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance (14 publications, Q1, Scopus). The journal publishes articles related to work and entertainment, career development, CG and counseling, and career education, in which the best is international content (e.g. comparative research, cross-cultural or cross-cultural perspectives, regional surveys, etc.) or contribution to wide international concerned topics (e.g. theoretical developments, ethical issues, etc.). This is also the magazine edited by Prof. Laura Nota, the first in the list of 20 authors with the greatest number of citations on the topic of CG in general schools according to the Scopus database for the period 1964 -2022 (Table 2).

It can be seen in Table 4 that, in terms of the number of publications, the top five sources include: British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Journal of Career Development, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Career development quarterly, and Australian Education Research. Meanwhile, in terms of the number of citations, the top five sources include British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Career Development, Journal of Counselling Psychology, and International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance. Our findings on top sources show that there are several journals leading in both citations and publications. Specifically, they are the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Journal of Career Development, and the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance.

Subsequently, the co-citation map by sources (depicted in Figure 4) elucidates the impact exerted by journals specializing in general education on the field of CG. Notably, the most prominent nodes within the map represent the highly cited journals within the database, namely, the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, the Journal of Career Development, and the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance. These journals have demonstrated considerable influence on scholars and have served as significant references for other journals operating within the same academic domain.

Figure 4. Science mapping of source relationship based on the citation on CG between 1964 and 3/2022 (Number of Sources:53, threshold: 2, bigger nodes represent more-cited journals).

RQ4: What are the main trends and the most popular topics investigated by CG in general schools?

To identify the main trends in current research and predict future research trends, keyword co-occurrence analysis in bibliometric analysis was used. Figure 5 shows the results of keyword co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer software.

Figure 5. Map of keywords by co-occurrence analysis for the period 1964-3/2022 (55 keywords, threshold: 5, bigger nodes represent more-cited journals).

In this map, the node size represents the number of occurrences of the keyword in the database, and the links between the two nodes represent their relationship. To establish a relationship between them, only keywords that appear at least 5 times are selected. The results of the analysis show that out of the total of 1570 keywords, 55 meet the threshold of being mentioned 5 times. The six clusters presented in Figure 5 represent the most relevant and popular keywords in the field of CG in high schools. The details of each cluster are as follows: For cluster 1 with the sub-topic of ‘CG’, the main keywords are career education, career option, career development, high school students, career counseling, motivation, youth, career assessment, career exploration, career maturity, and vocational interests. For cluster 2, the keywords questionnaire, decision making, humans, article, human, male, female, career, human experiment, and high school student relate to the topic of ‘vocational guidance’. In the sub-topic ‘student’ in cluster 3, the keywords education, personnel training, teaching, engineering education, curricula, careers, surveys, employment, and secondary schools are popular. The sub-topic of ‘high school’ in cluster 4 refers to keywords such as counseling, career planning, and secondary education. In cluster 5 with the sub-topic ‘higher education’, the main keywords include labor market, stem, gender, and Hong Kong. In cluster 6, for the sub-topic of ‘CG’, the prominent keywords are student, school, university, and professional self-determination.

To clarify the number of keywords co-occurrence, a statistical table on the number of keywords appeared (Table 5).

Table 5. Keywords with the highest number of occurrences in the dataset (ranked in order from highest to lowest).

No.	Keyword	Occurrences	Total link strength
1	Career Guidance	130	241
2	Career Education	54	72
3	Students	42	153
4	Career development	31	38
5	High school	26	99
6	Career option	20	85
7	Human	17	143
8	Education	17	64
9	Vocational guidance	16	76
10	Article	14	126

Note: Each keyword has at least five co-occurrences; total link strength indicates the number of publications in which five keywords occur together.

From Table 5, Figure 5, the most popular keywords can be seen as follows: CG, career education, students, career development, high school, and career option. The keywords ‘CG’, ‘Students’, ‘Human’, and ‘Article’ are also the keywords with the highest link strength. The linked keywords are shown in Figure 5, and Figure 6:

Figure 6. Time distribution map of keywords, using co-occurrence analysis for the period 2011 – March 2022 (55 keywords, threshold: 5).

As depicted earlier, the graph depicting keyword co-occurrence over time provides insights into both longstanding and emerging research topics within a specific discipline. The keywords that appear in lighter shades correspond to those that have been most prominently present in recent years, while those in darker shades indicate keywords that have been more prevalent in earlier periods. Figure 6 shows the most popular research topics and trends in CG in general schools over the past 11 years (2011-2022).

It can be seen from the yellow nodes in Figure 6 that the research topics on CG in general schools are of great interest in recent studies, including CG in secondary schools, influencing high school students to prepare for career readiness, opportunity to create social justice in understanding and deciding on career options, and how to find social support for CG activities in general schools. In addition, career learning in general schools is also of particular interest.

Discussion

This is the first study to apply bibliographic analysis and scientific mapping to illustrate the knowledge base of CG in general schools. We analyzed 382 publications indexed in Scopus in relation to the research scope.

The growth in the number of publications, especially in the past 13 years, maybe the result of a change in the meaning and concept of CG in the context of many innovations in technology and the influence of globalization (Watt, 2009), leading to a transforming role of CG in the policy system: from the role of a peripheral service group to a main service group in public policy. This is consistent with reports from international organizations such as the OECD (2004), the World Bank (Watts & Fretwell, 2004), as well as the Council of the European Union and its affiliates (Sultana, 2003, 2004; Sultana & Watts, 2006, 2007) along with issued policy guidelines during this period for both high-income countries (OECD & EC, 2004) and medium or low-income countries (ILO., 2006). Furthermore, the outstanding developed education and long-standing policy system related to CG can be the explanation for the large number of studies on this topic coming from developed countries in the Global North. For example, in the UK, along with the well-established CG system, leaders of general schools and universities also consider that the integration of CG into curricula is one of the key factors for school development (The Careers & Enterprise Company, 2020). In addition, the curriculum reform at all levels in 2008 or the Education Law 2011 in the UK emphasizing the role of CG in the general school system (Fuller et al., 2014) may also be the reason for the emergence of many related studies in this country. Similarly, since 1989, the US has implemented the National Career Development Guidelines with a career development competency framework and proficiency index with suggestions for strategies to implement career development programs for all ages. Also, in Australia, the government has also demonstrated its commitment to making career counseling a part of school education through the introduction of a national career counseling system in 2006, the Australian Blueprint for Career Development in 2010, and the National Career Education Strategy in 2019 (Rothman & Hillman, 2008; Keele et al., 2020).

Recently, the increase in the number of studies on CG in general education in some countries in Asia or Africa can be attributed to the change in educational attitudes towards the flexibility of the education system and focus on career orientation for students. The increase of globalization and technological development has led to a change in the occupational system and new requirements on the capacity of the workforce, so there have been many studies to respond to this change. Therefore, in order to improve the effectiveness of CG in general schools, governments need to develop national guidance on professional development, including a framework for professional development and implementation of a career development program for students of all ages, and to make CG counseling a part of the school education program, to issue a National Plan on Career Development or a National Strategy for Vocational Education.

The present investigation reveals that the authors who have been most frequently cited in research on CG predominantly hail from developed countries, with a significant proportion originating from Europe. Notably, two Italian authors are ranked highest in terms of citation count, and only one country has recently emerged as a new contributor to the field. These findings suggest that the research on CG is gradually becoming more geographically concentrated. Despite the prevalence of highly cited European authors, the US continues to play a pivotal role in global research collaborations on CG, as evidenced by the co-authorship map between countries.

The journal with the highest number of publications related to CG in general schools is the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. The second is the Journal of Career Development, which provides professionals, the public, and policymakers with the latest information on theory, research, and practice in career development, focusing on the impact of theory and research in practical application. Topics covered extensively in these journals are CG, adult career development, career development for special needs population, career development and family, and career and entertainment. The third is the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, which publishes articles related to work and entertainment, career development, career counseling, CG, and its strongest feature is international content. This is a general picture that introduces prominent authors and peer-reviewed journals within this research field to researchers and career planners in general schools. It provides more information channels and reliable addresses to look up data and find sources of high-quality, reliable information for the purpose of research or development of career strategies in general schools in different countries.

The results of the co-citation analysis also point out diverse and comprehensive topics related to CG. Our analysis reveals the most popular research areas and reflects changing trends in the field according to keyword citation analysis. Concerned research topics in recent years are social justice, career readiness (Dodd et al., 2022), career learning (Skovhus & Poulsen, 2021), and social support (Astuti, 2019; Wong et al., 2022). The studies related to these keywords reflect many different aspects of CG in general schools. For example, Astuti’s research (2019) shows that the role of career support resources in general schools is still weak. Specifically, this study finds that instructors and counselors think that the model of applying CG programs practically still has weaknesses as principals, head teachers, and subject teachers have not participated yet. Therefore, the basis for developing ideas for designing CG programs needs to clearly show the participation of these stakeholders in the process. Research by Wong and Yuen (2019) suggests that the participation of all teachers and other resources in society plays an important role in CG and career counseling in a comprehensive curriculum. The effectiveness of CG and counseling activities in general schools should be based on modern theories of career development.

Conclusion

The number of publications about CG in general schools can be divided into two periods, the initial period from 1964 to 2009 accounted for 11.8% of the total publications, and the latter stage had a high growth rate and accounted for 88.2% of the total number of publications. Most of the most published and cited works come from developed countries in Europe, America, and Australia (Global North) and has recently showed research participation from countries in Asia or Africa.

Although the US and the UK are the two countries with the strongest co-authorship links, the US, and the UK only account for 10% and 20% of the list of 20 authors with the most citations. It is worth noting that, despite being new to publication in the Career field, many European and Asian countries have contributed to the list of 20 most cited authors such as Italy, Hong Kong, and Estonia. In particular, the two most cited authors come from Università degli Studi di Padova, and Italy. In addition, the study also revealed that the most influential articles on this topic were published from 2003 onwards. The main content of interest and exploration of these articles is the relationship between the social cognitive structure of career decision-making ability and the outcome variables of occupational identification and career discovery behavior; industry (Gushue et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2016); future career orientations; and skills, competencies, and abilities being the most important factors affecting students’ career choices (Agarwala, 2008; Watts & Kidd, 2000).

The top five journals that publish works on CG in general schools are the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Journal of Career Development, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Career development quarterly, and Australian Education Research. These journals are the world’s leading prestigious journals. Among them, there are three leading journals in terms of both the number of citations and the number of published works, namely the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Journal of Career Development, and the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance.

From the analysis of the Co-occurrence Map of keywords, the research discovered that the topics of interest in the research on CG in general schools essentially focused on three main areas. The first focuses on vocational education, career counseling, career exploration, career interests, and career development. The second is concerned with career choices and human resource development, and gender differences. The third deals with curricula, teaching, and technical education related to vocational training and CG in secondary schools. In addition, new research trends in this topic are the psychology of career choice readiness of general school students, social justice in understanding and deciding on career choices, social resources (social support) for CG, Vocational issues in general school, and the role of teachers in guiding students to plan their own careers (Wong at al., 2022).

The significance of vocational education in general schools is crucial in advancing developed and developing countries towards having highly skilled labor resources. As a result, further research in this field is required to address the changing demands of the workforce. This research emphasizes the importance of CG programs in general schools, particularly for adolescents aged 13-18, to prepare them psychologically for making informed career choices and adapting to a constantly evolving world that necessitates highly skilled labor. Additionally, investigating social resources to support fair CG and decision-making is also essential.

The outcomes of this study provide valuable insights for early-career researchers, policy makers, and educators who are interested in the field of CG in general schools. Specifically, they can gain an understanding of the developmental stages of research publications, become acquainted with notable authors, works, journals, and publishers, and keep abreast of recent research trends to inform their future plans. Young researchers can leverage this information to connect with authors, examine the publications of highly cited or published authors, or seek their assistance in their own research endeavors on this topic. Meanwhile, policy makers can consult with these experts to inform their decision-making. Furthermore, both young researchers and policy makers can enhance and update their knowledge by reading regular publications from the most prestigious and influential journals in the field of CG.

Limitations

This study has several limitations that need to be addressed in future research. One limitation of bibliometric analysis is that it only describes in general the intellectual structure of the research topic (Kakouris & Georgiadis, 2016; Nylander et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2017). Our analysis partially describes emerging themes and contributions from previous research on the development of CG in general schools. Bibliometric analysis cannot allow us to analyze the details of a CG-related topic and assess the quality of each piece of research. Furthermore, the bibliometric analysis does not accurately reflect the effect of an article on a topic according to the Matthew effect (Zitt, 2005). Therefore, further studies are needed to overcome this limitation.

In addition, the database used in our study is incomplete. The Scopus dataset was chosen for analysis. Although Scopus is one of the largest scientific databases globally, there are still many important general school CG-related scientific documents that are not indexed there. Other sources, such as the Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Dimensions, can be considered for further study. Moreover, this database ignores scientific literature in non-English languages. However, according to Hallinger and Kovačević (2019), this limitation has been alleviated somewhat by the use of co-citation analysis, which allows the identification of ‘co-cited’ documents located in a larger database excluded from Scopus.

Finally, bibliometric analysis cannot conceptualize the topic of CG in general schools. The selection of the database for analysis and interpretation of results is based on the authors’ subjective opinions (Hallinger & Nguyen, 2020; Zupic & Čater, 2015). It requires a broad background in the field and different perspectives to provide a more holistic view of the research topic.

Despite the limitations, this study offers some promising implications. This paper analyzes and identifies notable topics, keywords, and influential publications in each topic, which is expected to support both researchers’ and practitioners’ search strategies when learning about CG in general schools. Especially for researchers, the findings act as a map and a path to where they can find core documents, recent and omitted topics, and also identify potential research problems. Furthermore, the ranking of countries with high-quality publications as evidenced by the number of citations also helps future researchers to determine sources of quality literature from publications of countries with a high number of outstanding studies. Similarly, policymakers on CG in general schools, higher education, leaders and managers, and general school career counselors can also use this research as an input knowledge base for their policy and decision-making practices as well as effective experiences in implementing CG for students.

This study, at the methodological level, represents a sample of how to perform bibliometric analysis, a method increasingly demanded by the public, political, and funding authorities for assessing research productivity and relevance, as well as the effectiveness of research activities and collaborations at the regional and national levels.

Ethical approval

The authors assure that this research paper was done in compliance with Ethical Standards.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training for funding this study. We would like to express thanks to Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman for developing VOSViewer software.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training under grant number B.2021-SP2-02.

Notes on contributors

Thi Hong-Hanh Pham

Thi Hong-Hanh Pham is a PhD in Mathematics Education from Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, Vietnam. Her main research direction is Methods of teaching Mathematics. She is the author and co-author of 42 articles and books. She is also the main member of 07 scientific projects and the head of the other 03.

Thi Hong-Chi Le

Thi Hong-Chi Le, PhD in Education, is a lecturer at Hung Vuong University, Phu Tho, Vietnam. Her research focuses on teacher training and innovation in elementary schools.

Thi Hong-Lien Do

Thi Hong-Lien Do, Ms.Ed in Educational studies, is a lecturer at Vietnam National University, Hanoi-International School. She is now a PhD candidate and a member of the research group on educational science at Vietnam National University, Hanoi with publications in curriculum development, internationalization of education, and educational management.

Phuong-Lien Lai

Phuong-Lien Lai, PhD in Education, a lecturer at VNU University of Education, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam, with over a decade of teaching and research experience. Her research focuses on teacher development, learner-centered science education, STEM, and technology integration in education.

Thi-Trinh Do

Thi-Trinh, Do, PhD in Mathematics Education, works as a lecturer at Thai Nguyen University of Education, Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam. She is an Associate Professor with main research interests in developing professional capacity for pedagogical students in teaching Mathematics and Teaching mathematics in context.

Tien-Trung Nguyen

Tien-Trung, Nguyen, PhD, is an editor at the Vietnam Journal of Education, Vietnam. He is an Associate Professor and co-leader of the leading research group on educational science at Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam. Nguyen has published more than 40 articles SSCI/ESCI/Scopus-indexed journal articles, and book chapters.