Mapping the Landscape of Reflective Practice in Inquiry Based Physics Education: A Bibliometric Analysis
Keywords:
Reflective practice, Inquiry-based learning, Physics education, Bibliometric analysis, Science educationAbstract
Reflective practice is widely recognized as a key mechanism for enhancing inquiry-based learning; however, its role and implementation within inquiry-based physics education (IBPE) remain fragmented and insufficiently mapped. This study aims to systematically examine the scholarly landscape of reflective practice in IBPE by identifying publication trends, influential sources and authors, collaboration patterns, and dominant thematic structures. A bibliometric research design was employed using data retrieved from the Scopus database, covering journal articles published between 2015 and 2025. After applying inclusion and refinement criteria, a total of 916 relevant documents were analyzed. Bibliometric analyses were conducted using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer to generate descriptive statistics, citation networks, keyword co-occurrence maps, thematic evolution, and collaboration visualizations. The results indicate a steady growth in research output with an annual growth rate of 9.88%, highlighting increasing scholarly attention to reflective practice within inquiry-oriented physics education. The findings also reveal that the field is dominated by collaborative research, concentrated within a small number of core journals and institutions, and led primarily by researchers from Western countries. Conceptually, reflective practice is strongly associated with human-centered, qualitative, and teacher-focused themes, while physics-specific epistemic practices such as modeling and uncertainty analysis remain underrepresented. The novelty of this study lies in its exclusive focus on the reflection–inquiry nexus within physics education and its comprehensive bibliometric mapping of the field. The findings provide valuable insights for researchers and educators by identifying research gaps and future directions to strengthen the integration of reflective practice in inquiry-based physics education.
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