Abstract:

In recent years, human activities have negatively impacted socio-ecological systems. Since September 2015, all United Nations (UN) member states have adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at improving life globally, considering sustainability in all its forms, including environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These goals are outlined in Agenda 2030, and each one pertains to a specific global issue. In particular, goal number 4 emphasizes the importance of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. This is because education and learning, in the context of sustainable development, are recognized as key factors and fundamental components in achieving the goal of creating a sustainable system. Indeed, the topics centered on sustainable education development have gained increasing attention from academic researchers, leading to the publication of numerous scientific works. This paper aims to identify the themes on which research has developed in recent years and to bring to light the current trend of scientific interest in this area. To achieve this goal, the authors conducted a literature review through the keywords analysis methodology. This analysis technique consists of constructing an organizational framework based on the combination of two variables, the persistence and the dominance. The persistence indicates the number of years in which the keyword was used, while the dominance indicates the number of papers a word appeared as keyword. The final output of this analysis is a four-quadrant framework in which each quadrant defines a category of research topics: trendy, core, emerging or phantom, and intermittent. However, for the purposes of this study, the authors decided to focus the study and its discussion on the keyword categories related to the core and trendy quadrants. Indeed, the core quadrant identifies the theoretical basis for the study of the research topics under consideration, while the trendy quadrant focuses on the topics that have most captured the scientific interest in the academic world in recent years. In this way, the results that emerged contribute positively to the study of the scientific evolution regarding the topics of sustainability-oriented education systems.

References:
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Keywords:

Education System, Sustainability, Agenda 2030, Bibliometric Analysis.