Understanding the Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education in China: A Bibliometric Approach

Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education (SFCE) is a form of international education with Chinese characteristics and it is an integral part of the Chinese education system. The aim of the research was to examine how the SFCE developed from 1995 to 2022. For this purpose, the method of bibliometric analysis was used in this study. This systematic literature review examined 537 articles published in CSSCI, CSCD, and PKU databases. The literature was analyzed with regards to the distribution of publications by year, author, institution/organization and journal. Additionally, visual maps were created with analyses of coauthor, co-words and thematic clusters from COOC and VOSviewer. The results show that SFCE has become a compelling issue. However, the publications in the national academic community were small. The most prolific authors were found to be Lin Jinhui, Guo Qiang, and Liu Mengjin. It was also found that the Xiamen University Educational Institute was the most productive institution and China Adult Education was the top journal in SFCE research. As a result of the bibliometric analysis, there is little cooperation between scientists and institutions in the field of SFCE. According to the co-words and thematic cluster analysis, five main clusters were formed. In the future, in-depth research on vocational education, Sino-Foreign Cooperative universities and countermeasures under the epidemic will become the new trend. A mixed research approach should be more adopted in the research methodology, and the research perspective from different interest subjects should be expanded in the future.