A bibliometric study on the use of AI in History Education: A global research overview

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most rapidly expanding research areas in education, offering transformative opportunities for teaching, learning, and educational management. Despite this growing interest, a comprehensive understanding of global research trends and intellectual developments in AI-related educational studies remains limited. This study aims to map the global research landscape of AI in education through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in the Scopus database. A total of 1,632 journal articles published between 2020 and 2024 were retrieved using the search query TITLE (“Artificial” AND “Intelligence” AND “Education”). The bibliographic data were exported and analyzed using Microsoft Excel for descriptive statistics and VOSviewer for bibliometric network visualization, including publication trends, citation performance, institutional productivity, and international collaboration. The findings reveal a substantial increase in scholarly output over the five-year period, with publication volume reaching its highest level in 2024 (559 articles). Citation analysis indicates that publications released in 2023 achieved the greatest academic impact, while leading institutions were predominantly located in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Network visualization further demonstrates that China, the United States, India, and the United Kingdom constitute the principal hubs of global scientific collaboration in AI and education research. These findings highlight the accelerating growth and internationalization of AI research in education while revealing unequal global research participation. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of AI scholarship in education and identifies future research opportunities, particularly for expanding AI applications in underexplored domains such as history education.