Research Trends and Thematic Evolution of Gamification in Mathematics Learning: A Scopus-Based Bibliometric Analysis, 2020–2025

Abstract

Gamification has been widely investigated in mathematics education, yet existing bibliometric reviews either predate the post-pandemic acceleration or address gamification in education at large, leaving the knowledge structure of the mathematics-specific literature unmapped. This study maps the productivity, collaboration patterns, and thematic structure of research on gamification in mathematics learning published between 2020 and 2025. We retrieved bibliographic records from Scopus on 20 May 2026 using a title-abstract-keyword query combining gamification and mathematics learning terms. We screened records using a four-stage procedure adapted from PRISMA 2020, and 456 documents from 266 sources met the eligibility criteria. We conducted performance analysis and science mapping using Bibliometrix in R and VOSviewer. Publication output grew at an average annual rate of 19.92%, rising from 50 documents in 2020 to 124 in 2025, with the sharpest acceleration occurring after 2022. Spain (32 documents), China (22), and Indonesia (22) were the leading contributors, although international co-authorship accounted for only 20.39% of the corpus, indicating limited cross-national collaboration. Thematic mapping positioned gamification, mathematics, and motivation, together with engineering education, teaching, and technology, as motor themes, whereas artificial intelligence, machine learning, and behavioural research occupied the niche quadrant. Trend-topic analysis indicates a recent shift toward STEM, engineering education, and computer-aided instruction. The study contributes a mathematics-specific knowledge map for the post-pandemic period and identifies AI-personalised gamification design and cross-national collaboration as the two most tangible research gaps.