Evolution of Education for Sustainable Development Across Science and Sustainability Education: Intellectual Structure and Scholarly Influence
Abstract
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has become a central framework for addressing global sustainability challenges through education, yet its intellectual organization and scholarly foundations within science and sustainability education remain fragmented. This study mapped the intellectual structure and scholarly influence of ESD research through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in Scopus from 2005 to 2025. Following a systematic screening process, 1,245 English-language journal articles were analyzed using VOSviewer (version 1.6.20). Bibliographic coupling was employed to examine the intellectual structure of the field, while citation analysis of sources identified the journals that have most strongly influenced ESD scholarship. The bibliographic coupling analysis revealed six major intellectual clusters encompassing sustainability competencies and transformative learning, curriculum integration and institutional change, environmental literacy and learner engagement, teacher education and socioscientific issues, systems thinking and climate change education, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-oriented higher education. Citation analysis identified Sustainability (Switzerland), the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Environmental Education Research as the most influential scholarly sources, illustrating the multidisciplinary nature of ESD research. Together, the findings demonstrate that ESD has evolved into an integrated field supported by sustainability science, environmental education, science education, and higher education scholarship. This study provides a comprehensive synthesis of the intellectual organization and scholarly foundations of ESD research and offers valuable directions for future investigations, interdisciplinary collaboration, and evidence-based curriculum development.