Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education: Bibliometric Analysis of Trends, Innovations and Institutional Commitment to the SDGs (2018–2025)

Abstract

Abstract

In a post-consensus institutional landscape—where higher education systems face intensifying pressure to demonstrate strategic governance and measurable commitment to global sustainability mandates—understanding how the scholarly field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has itself structurally evolved acquires both analytical urgency and policy relevance. This study maps the intellectual structure of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and institutional commitment in higher education through a PRISMA 2020-guided bibliometric analysis of 126 articles retrieved from Scopus for the period 2018–2025. Annual output rose from a single article in 2018 to 32 in 2025, with 46.8% of the corpus concentrated in the 2024–2025 biennium—a pattern indicative of rapid field maturation. Keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals a dual thematic architecture comprising four clusters: a Curriculum Innovation and Pedagogical Transformation axis and a strategic governance and institutional commitment axis. A notable pattern is a reorientation in the relative weight of research themes, evidenced by the growing density of terms such as governance, strategic approach, and institutional commitment in the recent literature. This governance-oriented cluster, consolidated by a core of prolific authors, shows a higher recent growth rate in co-occurrence frequency than the traditional curriculum axis. An emerging tendency toward disciplinary specialization—particularly in engineering education—and toward impact assessment is consistent with a gradual thematic consolidation of the field. The observed co-occurrence patterns are consistent with theoretical frameworks that associate scalable pedagogical innovation with institutional-level commitment and systemic governance frameworks aligned with the SDGs, although bibliometric data alone cannot establish this dependency. These patterns may signal a reorientation in the scholarly framing of ESD toward institutional design and governance questions, although confirming whether this reflects substantive epistemic change or shifts in publishing incentives requires evidence beyond bibliometric indicators.