Visualising trends in computational thinking research from 2012 to 2021: A bibliometric analysis.

• The review study was conducted to provide a descriptive, bibliometric analysis of the Computational Thinking research published between 2012 and 2021. • This multi-dimensional analytical approach relying on CiteSpace provided a holistic view of the scope of the field and its progression, with identifying the major topics, themes, disciplinary domains, journals, and the contributions of authors, institutes, counties/regions, and influential papers. • Further research could focus more on the areas of CT research in early childhood education, secondary education, and higher education; the potential of CT education for developing other learning skills (e.g., creativity, collaboration, problem-solving); pedagogical principles, and teaching strategies for CT education; and teacher education in CT research. • Further research is needed on the development of CT in different subject domains (e.g.,language, arts, engineering) other than computer science, science, and mathematics. • Collaboration and partnership are encouraged to be established among the researchers in different institutes in different countries/regions. Using the analytical tool CiteSpace, this review study conducted a bibliometric analysis of the characteristics of 249 studies on Computational Thinking (CT) indexed in the Web of Science from 2012 to 2021. The multi-dimensional analytical approach provided a holistic view of the scope of CT research and its progression,and enabled the major topics, themes, disciplinary domains, and prominent authors, institutes, countries/regions, and papers to be identified. Based on the general descriptive data analysis, the results showed that CT has gained increasing influence as a field of research over the past decade. A clustering analysis of the retrieved keywords showed that the development of CT in K-12 education was the most frequently discussed topic. The co-occurrence knowledge maps identified the 11 main research themes and their progress. The research was from a wide spectrum of disciplines including education, science education, computer science, interdisciplinary application, psychology, engineering, and information systems. The highest co-citations were found in the journals of Communication of the ACM, Computers and Education , and Computers in Human Behaviors. The researchers, institutes, and countries/regions that have made the most significant contributions to CT research and the 10 most highly cited CT studies were also identified. Overall, the findings of this review study indicate the paths for future research on developing CT in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]