Exploring the research trends of mathematics in STEM education: A systematic review using bibliometric analysis

In recent years, the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in education has received increasing attention from academics. However, to date, there have been no reports in scientific publications on the development of STEM education studies that explore the dynamics and phenomena related to mathematics knowledge. Therefore, this study aims to present a bibliometric and bibliographic review of mathematics in STEM education studies. A bibliometric analysis was used to conduct this study, thereby using 1296 selected documents from the Scopus database published between 2015 and 2025. Some analyses, such as performance, citation, co-word, and co-authorship, were conducted to analyze the data using VOSviewer. Results of this study revealed that the number of studies on mathematics in STEM education gradually increased, although the progress in citations for these studies was not consistent each year. In addition, the most productive and influential documents, authors, countries, institutions, and sources have contributed to the development of mathematics in STEM education research. Furthermore, educational innovation, student engagement, design thinking, and academic performance are expected to be newly trending research topics in mathematics in STEM education. Consequently, studies on educational innovation, student engagement, design thinking, and academic performance can be directed to further educational studies that focus on mathematics in STEM education.