The rapid progression of technology has altered the technologies used in education, specifically in the education of children. Recently, educational robotics and robots (ERR) are utilized by various research domains to contribute to children’s life and development. For example, some research studies focused on the use of educational robotics in computational thinking (e.g., Atmatzidou and Demetriadis, 2016; Chen et al., 2017; Karaahmetoğlu and Korkmaz, 2019; Tengler et al., 2021), Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics [STEM] learning (e.g., Barker et al., 2014; Ching et al., 2019; Karim et al., 2015; Master et al., 2015; Mosley, 2016; Üçgül and Altıok, 2021), language learning and development (e.g., Kory and Breazeal, 2014; Lee et al. 2011), disabilities (e.g., Begum et al., 2016; Özdemir and Karaman, 2017; Pop et al. 2013; Scassellati et al., 2018; So et al., 2016).  While the amount of research studies has increased through the years, some systematic literature reviews were conducted in order to summarize and understand the possible contribution of the studies and possible future recommendations (e.g., Anwar et al., 2019; Benitti 2012; Toh et al., 2016). However, since the systematic reviews mostly include small-size studies for their analysis, it seems difficult to understand a broad view of the studies using large-scale research studies as well as the state of the intellectual structure and recent progress regarding children and educational robotics and robots. That is, despite the published articles related to educational robotics and robots, a broad overview is still needed to make a clear understanding of the population of children. Therefore, the aim of this study is to statistically and visually present the existing work using bibliometric analysis. Moreover, this research aims to bring a comprehensive overview and research trends in the field relating to children and educational robotics and robots (ERR).

The main research questions of the study were formed as below:

What is the contribution of the countries, institutions, and authors to global publications on educational robotics and robots for children?

What is the distribution of years, research areas, and journals to contribute global publications on educational robotics and robots for children?

What is the co-occurrence of the keywords on educational robotics and robots for children?

This study is designed to review the scientific literature in the context of children and educational robotics and robots (ERR) using bibliometric analysis. Bibliometric analysis is used to understand the research trends and map the structures of the research topic by summarizing large-scale datasets and having a broad scope of review (Donthu et al., 2021). More specifically, bibliometric analysis can help to review the contributions of the authors, countries, institutions, publications of the journals, emerging research domains, and the trends of the specific literature (Donthu et al., 2020; Mukherjee et al., 2022). The data of this study were collected from the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection database using specific search terms and inclusion criteria. The search query included the keywords as robot* and child* and education* in all fields. The first search revealed 2.214 publications and after applying the inclusion criteria related to the language and document type, 1.058 articles written in English were included in the study. No time limitation was applied. Descriptive statistical analysis was reported by frequencies and percentages of the records calculated and graphs were formed using Microsoft Excel. Moreover, in the research hotspots on educational robotics and robots with children, the VOSviewer application was used and the co-occurrence of keywords and the contribution of the authors were analyzed.

It was seen that the first article was published in 1992 (n =2) and most of the studies were published in 2021 (n = 167; 15.78%) and 2022 (n = 164; 15.5%). When the countries and the institutions were examined, it was seen that the top ten leading countries are the USA, Japan, Italy, England, China, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Germany while Osaka University, Tufts University, Harvard University, Udice French Research Universities, University of California System, Kyoto University, University of London, University of Tokyo, Kanazawa University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were the top ten institutions producing the most of the publications. The publications were mostly built on five research areas namely, Education and Educational Research, Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, and Psychology. The articles were mostly published in specific journals such as the International Journal of Social Robotics, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Computers and Education, Frontiers in Psychology, International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education, Education and Information Technologies, Plos One, Advanced Robotics, and British Journal of Educational Technology. Additionally, more results including the co-occurrence of keywords and the contribution of the authors analyzed by using VOSviewer will be presented.

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