Mapping Research on Social Studies Education in Turkey: A Bibliometric Review

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the social studies education literature in Turkey through systematic bibliometric analysis. The science mapping method was employed to analyze studies. 252 studies that were extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) database were analyzed. The findings revealed that the number of studies has been dramatically increased in the last decade. Besides, It was found that the majority of publications were published in local journals. Moreover, theses produced in this field are the most cited sources in the articles. It was also concluded that even though there are 65 social studies education departments in Turkish universities, only a few numbers of them made collaborations in the publications. Besides, it was found that there are no multi-country collaborations in social studies education literature in Turkey.


Introduction
Social studies as a concept were first defined in the United States in 1916 as "the body of knowledge about the human being, because its subject is directly an element of the organization, development and social unions of the human community" and began to take place as a course in schools (Moffat, 1957). In Turkey, Civics, History and Geography lessons are taught in primary and secondary schools before 1960 as the single disciplined courses that are directly related to the Social Studies. These courses, which were combined with the name of Society and Country Studies in 1962, were given the name "Social Studies" in 1968 and started to be taught in primary schools for the first time in 1968, and then in the secondary schools in the academic year of 1970-71 (Akpınar & Kaymakçı, 2012;Çayır & Gürkaynak, 2007). With the effect of the political developments in the 1980s, one-disciplinary courses named National History and National Geography were taught instead of the Social Studies course. With the educational reform in 1998, the National History and National Geography courses were abolished and the Social Studies course, which was prepared by adopting the collective education principle, took its place in the curriculum (Öztürk, 2012).
As a reflection of Turkey's European Union candidacy process, radical reform in education was carried out in 2005, and education, as in all areas, has witnessed radical changes (Aksit, 2007;Grossman, Onkol, & Sands, 2007). As a reflection of this, revision studies were also carried out in the Social Studies Curriculum (Şahin, 2017). The biggest change that emerged as a result of the revision studies was the adoption of the constructivist teaching approach in the curriculum. The adoption of this approach has focused the curriculum on gaining skills and value rather than transferring knowledge. In the measurement-evaluation dimension, using alternative measurement and evaluation methods together with written and multiple-choice exams were recommended to teachers. In the rather local Social Studies curriculum, a separate learning area called "Global Connections" was created in the curriculum by emphasizing the global perspective, with the effect of the education reform realized. Although the 2005 social studies curriculum contains radical changes, it can be said that it is quite similar to the Social Studies curriculum created by NCSS in both content and structure (Açıkalın, 2014;Tarman, 2014). Finally, the requirements that emerged in line with current developments and technological innovations led to development efforts in the Social Studies course curriculum in 2018(MoNE, 2018. The most significant difference of the 20 Social Studies curriculum compared to the previous program is that it is quite simple and shortened. The content of the intensive curriculum was diluted by reducing the number of outcomes from 174 to 132. Besides, some skills and values have been added. However, the philosophy and structure, which it is based on, has not changed significantly (Çoban & Akşit, 2018, Selvi, 2018. Within this change process, the need of social studies teachers was appeared after primary education law and amendment about the social studies course in primary schools in 1998. In order to satisfy this need Social Studies Education Department was started to be established in the education faculties of universities. The lecturers working in the Social Studies Education Department started to make researches on social studies education and in the following years, they gave consultancy to many master's and doctoral theses, with the opening of Social Studies Education graduate programs. In addition to the academicians working in these departments, academicians working in various departments, especially Elementary Education and Educational Sciences, have also provided consultancy to many postgraduate theses related to social studies education and contributed to the literature on social studies education. Between 1990 and 2009, a total of 486 graduate theses, of which 436 master's and 50 doctoral dissertations, were viewed with the keywords searches of "social studies", "citizenship" and "human rights". While the number of theses produced annually in the '90s varied between 1 and 5, it was observed that the number of theses produced annually in 2000 and following years was between 40 and 60 (Şahin, Gögebakan Yıldız, & Duman, 2011). Until today, the number of theses produced has continued to increase every year and it has been observed that a total of 117 graduate theses, 96 master's and 21 doctoral dissertations, were produced in 2020 alone (YÖK National Thesis Center, 2020). This situation shows that the number of researchers related to social studies education and consequently research on social studies education has been increasing cumulatively and continues to increase day by day.
It can be said that the literature on social studies education is expanding in scope and it is quantitatively increasing. Social studies are associated with various subject areas such as global education (Açikalin, 2010), multicultural education (Banks, 1987), human rights education (Ramirez, Suarez, & Meyer, 2007), gender (Crocco, 2001), ethnic studies, career education, character education, consumer education, environmental education, peace education (Ravitch, 2003), and in this context, the literature continues to expand. In addition, technological developments in recent years have affected social studies education and technology has made itself being felt in the literature of social studies education (Doolittle & Hicks, 2003;Whitworth & Benson, 2002). Similarly, the expansion occurred in Turkey as in other countries where the teaching of social studies, researchers conducted their research in line with these developments. This situation has enabled the literature on social studies to spread to a much wider spectrum. On the other hand, considering that studies on social studies education are carried out not only with students but also with various stakeholders of education such as disadvantaged groups, social studies teachers, pre-service teachers, academicians, parents, policymakers. Therefore it is clearly understood that social studies have a very wide and in-depth structure as a subject area of the literature. When a search carried out in Turkey's most comprehensive national database, "Dergipark" with the "social studies" keyword; 289 articles between the 2002-2012 years, 734 articles between 2012-2017 years, 582 articles between 2017-2020 years can be accessed in search results, (Dergipark, 2020). Although this increase in the number of articles is directly proportional to the increasing number of journals and the number of researchers, it is an important indicator of national literature's quantitative development on social studies education. When it is considered that researchers interested in social studies education in Turkey also made studies in many different formats such as book chapters and journal articles, it can be said that the social studies in 22 years spread over a fairly large area of education literature.
When all this information is considered in the evaluation of the literature on social studies education in Turkey, making inferences regarding the current situation and the implications of being developed with the strengths of the area in terms of providing a perspective on the clear direction are considered to be important. When the literature is examined, it has been determined that there are various studies in which evaluations regarding the social studies education literature are carried out. It is seen that most of these studies are carried out in the form of evaluating the literature on postgraduate theses related to social studies education (Oruç & Ulusoy, 2008;Aksoy, Sönmez, & Merey, 2009;Tarman, Acun, & Yüksel, 2010;Şahin, Göğebakan Yıldız, & Duman, 2011;Canbulat, Avcı, & Sipahi, 2016;Öner & Öner, 2017;Dilek, Baysan, & Öztürk, 2018;Oğuz Haçat & Demir, 2018, Uygun, 2020. Besides, it can be said that there are meta-analysis studies (Yaşar, Çengelci Köse, Göz, & Gürdoğan Bayır, 2015) examining the effectiveness of collaborative learning (Gürdoğan Bayır & Bozkurt, 2018) and student-centered teaching strategies, methods and techniques in social studies education. It is seen that the review studies conducted for the evaluation of articles on social studies education are limited to national databases (Akaydın & Kaya, 2015;Geçit & Kartal, 2010). In the study conducted by Sönmez (2020), articles on social studies education published in journals indexed in international indexes were evaluated with the science mapping method using the VosViewer program. However, it is seen that the number of articles examined in the study conducted without restricting the country is quite limited (154). Whereas, it can be achieved more Turkey-based study when making a scan through WoS. In this context, there has been no research met in the literature that systematically examines and evaluates Turkey-based articles in greater numbers published in journals indexed in relevant international indexes of social studies education through the R Bibliometrix software program (Aria & Cuccurollu, 2017). Besides, it has been observed that there are quite a limited number of studies in which the systematic review of the literature is carried out through the science mapping method. The main objective of this research is to examine the Turkey-based scientific literature related to social studies education that is displayed on the Web of Science (WoS) database with the science mapping method. In line with the main objective of the research related to social studies education of Turkey-based articles scanned at WoS; • How do publications and sources change?
• What are the publication and citation status of researchers and articles? • How are institutional collaborations shaped?
• What are the trends in the most studied topics by years?

Method
Since examining the thematic change regarding the literature of social studies in Turkey was aimed, science mapping methodology was adopted in the present study. Science mapping is a generic process technique that creates bibliometric maps to analyze the network and relationship of studies, reports, or authors conducted in certain disciplines or specialties (Cobo, Lopez Herrera, Herrera Viedma, & Herrera, 2011). This method allows analysis of multiple reports obtained from a database by science mapping through bibliometric tools (Hallinger & Kovacevic, 2019).
The use of bibliometric methods enables making more objective and reliable analyzes based on statistical techniques. This methodology enables making both general (e.g. number of studies by years) and advanced (e.g. use of co-author and co-authoring) analysis of the enormous documentation collected from a relevant database of the literature (Diodato & Gellatly, 2013). Bibliometric tools for network analysis can be used to visualize and examine the data in the science mapping and allows analyzing the social, intellectual, and conceptual structure of the research field. Specifically, these kinds of tools aim at visualizing links between sources, publications, or authors, considering the scope of the analysis (Marshakova, 1981).

Defining of sources
In science mapping studies, databases such as Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), Google Scholar are used. The data sets obtained from these databases are analyzed through bibliometric tools, and the performance of the relevant field is revealed. In this research, the WoS database was preferred due to its scope in educational researches. It can be said that the analysis by Falagas, Pitsouni, Malietzis, and Pappas (2008) was effective for this preference. In their study, Falagas et al. (2008) stated that the Pubmed database mostly indexed publications related to the field of medicine, and citation analysis was not performed, whereas Google Scholar did not compile publication and citation data and did not classify the publications. In the study, it was revealed that Scopus put more emphasis on life and health sciences and WoS on social sciences in terms of publication content. In the evaluation made by Karasözen, Bayram, and Zan (2011), it was stated that the WoS database went deeper in social and human sciences topics than the Scopus database. For these reasons, data was obtained using the WoS database to get the best results from the research. After the database was determined, the historical time interval of the research was determined. To be able to analyze a wide field of social studies education in Turkey, it was decided to scan the time interval from a starting date of 1975, the oldest date in the WoS database, until the end of 2020.

Search strategy and data collection
A systematic review was conducted in the study. PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) (See. Fig. 1) directives were applied (Moher et al., 2009). First of all, several different combinations of search terms such as "social studies education," "education," "social studies" were tried, and according to the data gathered, the keyword "Social Studies" was decided as a search term. When the concepts of direct search and the year range are entered without any restrictions, the total number of studies was determined as 4123. When the "Turkey" criterion is selected in line with the exclusion criteria in the search code, the first search result is 345. Then, to identify the studies that can be included in the analysis process, the appropriateness of all records was examined by the researchers, and 93 studies were found to be not related to social studies were removed from the data set. Therefore, a dataset including 252 studies was selected for analyzes and converted to a "plain text".

Data Analysis
Bibliometric analysis can be performed through various open-source software packages. However, many of these software packages could not assist scholars in the recommended workflow. In science mapping research, commenly used software tools are CitNetExplorer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2014), VOSviewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010), SciMAT (Cobo et al., 2012), BibExcel (Persson, Danell, & Schneider, 2009), Sci2 tool (Sci2 Team, 2009), CiteSpace (Chen, 2006), and VantagePoint (www.thevantagepoint.com). In recent years, R Studio is one of the frequently used tools in science mapping studies. The analysis of the data collected within the scope of this research was carried out with the R Studio (ver.1.3.959) program developed by R Core Team (2018). The bibliometric analyzes performed were made through the "Bibliometrix" package, which is one of the R program extensions. The bibliometrix provides various options for bibliometric studies. The existence of substantial, effective statistical algorithms, access to high-quality numerical routines, and integrated data visualization tools are perhaps the strongest qualities to prefer R to other languages for scientific computation (Aria & Cuccurollu, 2017, p. 963).
In the study, citations, authors, and keywords are the topics included in the bibliometric analysis. Citation analysis calculates the number of times a study/author in the dataset of the researchers has been cited by others. Co-citation analysis determines the 'similarity' of two items by examining the frequency of items that are cited together in the reference list of the researchers (Small, 1973). Analysis of the authors displays cooperation between authors, countries, and institutions. Keyword analysis examines the frequency of "common" words in the titles, keywords, and indexes of documents in the dataset reviewed and provide information regarding the most researched topics and concepts (Zupic & Cater, 2015). Accordingly, the general information regarding the obtained dataset is shown in Table 1. When Table 1 is examined, it is seen that the first publication about social studies education in Turkey scans in in 2007 in WoS databse. It is also seen that 252 documents in the data set between 2007 and 2020 were produced by 301 authors in total. It was found that 105 of these documents are single-authored documents and they are belonged to 76 different authors. So, it is understood that some authors produced more than one singleauthored publication. On the other hand, 225 of all documents are seen as mutli-authored publication.
Considering that the scanning covers 13 years, it is seen that the annual average production of total studies is 19.38 studies. Moreover, the avarage citation per document was found as 1,476 citations in terms of citations.

Results and Discussion
As a result of data analysis, annual scientific production in the field of social studies education in Turkey was reached. Information on the annual number of scientific publications related to the production of social studies education in Turkey is presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Annual scientific production
When Figure 2 is examined, it is seen that the annual number of scientific publications scanned in WoS increased irregularly between 2007 and 2020. It was observed that the number of publications scanned in WoS had been increased until 2018. On the other hand, it was seen that the number of publications have decreased since 2018. Although there was a decrease in the number of scientific publications between 2010 and 2013, it is seen that there was a considerable increase after 2013. Although there were occasional decreases in the number of scientific publications between 2007 and 2020, it was determined that the average growth over the years was 14.78%.
In the research, findings about the most relevant sources such as books and journal were obtained. Most relevant source where scientific publications related to social studies education are published are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.Most relevant sources
When Figure 3 is examined, it is seen that the publications related to social studies education are mostly published in "Educational Sciences in Theory and Practice (KUYEB) journal. KUYEB is followed by "Education and Science" and "Hacettepe University Journal of Education". It is considerable that the vast majority of articles related to social studies education published in journals in WOS are originated from Turkey. In other words, only a small number of articles which were conducted by researchers from Turkish universities have been published in journals of foreign origin.
In the research, findings related to the top ten mostly cited sources such as dissertations, books and journals related to social studies education were obtained. The most cited studies are shown in Figure 4.

Most cited researchers
about social studies education. It is considerable that nearly half of the most cited researchers are authors of research method books and other researchers mostly have publications about social studies education among most cited researchers. In addition, it was also found that only two of most cited researchers are from another countries and others are from Turkey.

An another result of the study is about the most relevant affiliations in the field of social studies education in
Turkey. Information about the most relevant affiliations who are most productive universities in the field of social studies education in Turkey are presented in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Most relevant affiliations
As it is shown in the Figure 6, Anadolu University and Marmara University are the most productive universities in terms of publication which are published in the journals that indexed WoS database. These universities are respectively followed by Gazi University, Kastamonu University, Niğde University, and Sakarya University. When Figure 3 is examined, it is seen that all other universities, except Kastamonu University and Ahi Evran University, were established before 2006. In this respect, it can be said that the performance of Kastamonu University in terms of its publications on social studies education is remarkable.
Findings regarding globally most cited articles published in journals scanned in WoS were obtained in the research. Information on the globally most cited articles is shown in Table 2.  Table 3 is examined, it is seen that the most globally cited article has 40 citations from 2008 to 2019 in the WoS and its annual citation average rate was found 2.86. Apart from this, it is seen that the citation average of only two publications is more than one, and the global citation averages of other publications are quite low. These resulst show that the articles conducted by researchers who works in Turkish universities have quite limited visibility or influence of publications published in reputable international indices.
One of the result of study is about most studied topics in the field of social studies education. Information of the most 10 studied subjects regarding social studies education by years is shown in Figure 7.  Figure 7 is examined, "education" as a subject was found the most studied subject in the field of social studies education in all years. Beside, "classroom" as a subject was found one of the most studied subject in the field of social studies education in Turkey. More over. "Science" as a subject has emerged as a concept that has somehow found itself a place in social studies education since 2012. Apart from these, the most studied subjects such as "motivation", "self-efficacy", "students", "knowledge", "attitudes", "technology" and "beliefs" have increased rapidly after 2012, although their pace has decreased over time to time. When the 10 most studied subjects are examined, it is remarkable that there are subjects related to the cognitive and affective characteristics of individuals rather than the disciplines included in the subject area of social studies education.
Another result of the studies is about the keywords network in the field of social studies education. Information on the findings regarding the keywords network together is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8.Keywords network
As it is shown in Figure 8, "education", "knowledge", "motivation" and "self-efficacy" are the most intense network centers in the field of social studies education reseach. On the other hand. it is observed that subjects such as "Gender", "instruction", "decision-making", "mathematics" are generally studied alone. It is also found that the concepts of "Democracy" and "Turkey", "feedback" and "organizations", "classroom" and "strategies" are studied together in the publications.
The last results of the study is about institutional collaborations in the field of social studies education. The universities cooperating in at least two researches on social studies education are shown in Figure 9. As it is shown in Figure 9, it is observed that only a few universities made collaboration in the field of social studies educatioan research in Turkey. It was found that researchers from Hacettepe University, Niğde University, Necmettin Erbakan University, Ankara University, and Sakarya University have not cooperated with different universities or have cooperated within only one study. On the other hand, it was observed that there are at least 2 articles which were conducted by collaboration between Marmara University and Anadolu University in the field of social studies education. Besides, it is seen that there are also some research that carried out in cooperation between "Gazi University", "Kastamonu University" and "Ahi Evran University".

Conclusion
Although there is an increase of approximately 14% in terms of the year of publication in relation to the distribution of the studies by years, the resarch shows that there are some fluctuations in 2013, 2017, and finally 2020. Dilek, Baysan and Öztürk (2018) have concluded their research that there is a decrease in the number of master's and doctoral thesis carried out in Turkey in the years of 2012-2013 and 2017. In this sense, it can be said that thesis publication in the WoS database and the production of publications in the areas of social studies education have similar trends in terms of production. Finally, in 2020, it was seen that there was a significant decrease in the number of publications in the studies. It is stated in the literature that this decline, which is also associated with the Covid-19 epidemic process, is also experienced by some fields and researchers (Chapman & Thamrin, 2020;Hobday, Browman, & Bograd, 2020).
In the present study, it was seen that the studies conducted in the field of social studies education were mostly published in local journals. The findings obtained in the study conducted by Sönmez (2020) also support this result of this study. It has also been observed that there is a similar situation in educational sciences, teacher training (Çiftçi et al., 2016), educational leadership and management (Gümüş et al., 2020). In this sense, it is stated that culture and scientific tradition are related to publication production (İnönü, 2003) and that a "center" and a "periphery" outside this center are formed as a natural result in scientific researches (Hsiung, 2012;Salager-Meyer, 2014). In this sense, it can be said that the center-periphery concept by the impact of culture in social science research and publishing production is confirmed in educational researches in Turkey. Indeed, the studies conducted by Gülmez Özteke and Gümüş (2021), which are Turkey-based educational research published in international journals are also published in Turkish-originated journals.
In the present study, it was seen that the most cited studies were the theses made in the field of social studies education. In the research carried out by Geçit and Kartal (2010), it was seen that while 414 graduate theses were produced between 2000 and 2010, 110 articles were produced in the same years. In this sense, when we consider that social studies were developed in the last 20 years in Turkey as an independent field from disciplines such as history and geography, and the Turkey-based publications in the WoS database in this investigation started in 2007, it can be said that citations made to the thesis may be related with the production of publications in the social studies education and the development in this field. Besides, it can be stated that the comprehensive and systematic literature reviews in the theses and the in-depth explanation of the subjects covered in the theses are among the factors that direct the researchers to benefit from theses.
In the research of Oğuz Haçat and Demir (2018), it was stated that most of the master's and doctoral theses between 2002-2018 were made in Gazi, Marmara, and Atatürk universities. In this sense, it can be said that the publications in the WoS database largely the same in terms of the affiliated organizations. Also, these mentioned universities of the results in Turkey seem to be rooted universities in this field. It can be said that these universities provide postgraduate education not only in the departments of social studies education, but also in areas such as classroom education, educational programs, measurement and evaluation, and scientific studies on social studies education, and this is also related to this result.
In the research conducted by Geçit and Kartal (2010), it was stated that various methods and techniques, knowledge and proficiency levels were measured in these theses extensively, technology and attitudes towards the lesson were studied very few in the theses in Turkey. In this sense, although it is parallel to this research in terms of the concepts related to measurement-evaluation, it differs from the research of Geçit and Kartal (2010) in terms of technology and attitude concepts.
Finally, social studies carried out in Turkey are mostly postgraduate thesis focused on the review studies on education (Geçit ve Kartal, 2010;Oğuz Haçat & Demir, 2018;Tarhan, 2010). In this sense, social science in Turkey based on the data in the database WoS have been raised at the trend in education It is important in terms of offering a different perspective of this research because this research revealed the trend in social studies education in Turkey which are based on the data of WoS database.

Recommendations
The recommendations developed based on the results and discussions obtained in the research can be listed as follows: • Various training can be organized related to publishing publications not only in Turkey-based journals but also in prestigious journals abroad, especially in Q1 and Q2 journals in SSCI and researchers may be encouraged to make more publications in these journals.
• Training can be organized to develop academic language competencies for researchers who have problems in writing in a foreign language.
• Studies can be conducted to further collaborate with universities abroad. Besides, various inter-university protocols can be signed for bilateral collaboration.
• Some topics that are not displayed in the trend topics such as various literacy and various skills could be studied more.
• Besides local sources, Turkish researchers should also be aware of and benefit from sources that are written in English by researchers from worldwide. • For researchers, researches similar to this research can be designed regarding studies on social studies education displayed in Scopus or Google Scholar databases. Besides, these researches can be carried out using different programs such as VosViewer or CiteSpace.

Limitations
This research is limited by the publications which were obtained from WoS database. There are some reasons about why only publications which were scanned in WoS database. First, considering the method of the study and the software that we used to analyze data, it was needed that information about all related documents should be downloaded in particular software format, So we preferred to obtain data from the WoS database. Because users can download the needed information for the software through WoS database. Second, WoS database is recognized as most valuable database by Inter-University Council that is the authority for the evaluating applications of associate professorship in Turkey. We believe that this study could give some considerable insights about the Turkish social studies literature even though it has limitation.