Growth without coherence? Fragmentation and structural tensions in global research on collaborative learning and critical thinking

Abstract

The rapid expansion of research on collaborative learning has intensified scholarly attention to its potential for fostering critical thinking across diverse educational contexts. Despite the growing body of literature, there remains limited synthesis regarding how the relationship between collaborative learning and critical thinking is conceptually structured, geographically distributed, and positioned across educational levels, particularly within social studies education. This study aims to map and critically examine the global research landscape on collaborative learning in relation to critical thinking and social studies over the past decade. A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze scholarly publications indexed in the Scopus database between 2016 and 2025. Using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny, the analysis examined publication trends, citation patterns, country productivity, thematic evolution, and keyword co-occurrence networks to identify the structural dynamics of research in this field. The results reveal a rapidly expanding body of literature characterized by significant structural fragmentation. While certain countries demonstrate high research productivity, their influence within the citation network remains uneven, indicating misalignments between publication output and intellectual impact. Thematic analysis shows that collaborative learning operates as a central conceptual bridge connecting multiple research streams, whereas critical thinking functions as the dominant organizing focus shaping contemporary scholarly discussions. Furthermore, the conceptual structure of the field is strongly concentrated in higher education and professional learning contexts, while primary education and social studies appear comparatively underrepresented.These findings highlight important structural imbalances in the current research landscape and reveal emerging tensions between thematic expansion and conceptual coherence. By providing a systematic mapping of global scholarship, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how collaborative learning and critical thinking are currently framed within educational research and identifies key directions for future theoretical and empirical development.