Comparison of Chinese and international research on physical literacy in education – a visual analysis based on CiteSpaceV

Abstract

In order to explore the comparison of Chinese and international frontier hots pots and development trend on physical literacy in education (PLIE) research, 118 research articles included in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and 1439 research articles included in Web of Science (WOS) core collection related to “physical literacy in education” were used as the research objects. CiteSpace V (version 5.8.R3 - 64 bit) is used to create a visual knowledge map of this research field and analyzed the time distribution, authors, institutions and keywords. The results show that the time distribution of research stages in China is generally consistent with that of international research. Although Chinese research in this field is also among the top in the world, the distribution of authors and institutions is more homogeneous than international ones, and the cooperation between authors and institutions is very weak. In terms of the age distribution of the study population, international studies cover almost all age groups and are more diverse in research content. In contrast, Chinese research is limited to focus on adolescents and college students, and the research content is mostly on physical education and school physical education. There is still a gap between China and the international advanced level in the field of PLIE research, and it is necessary to strengthen the longitudinal and interdisciplinary exploration in the future. The concept of physical literacy needs to be further researched and defined and more research results need to be published in influential journals to expand the influence of the field of PLIE research both in China and internationally.