Knowing Diversity to Teach Diversity: A Bibliometric Mapping of Teacher Knowledge in Multicultural and Social Studies Education (2000–2025)

Rafika Putri; Muhammad Rusli; Arizkylia Yoka Putri

doi:10.47175/rissj.v7i4.1335

Rafika Putri Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education, State University of Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8528-6911
Muhammad Rusli Elementary School Teacher Education Study Program, Cokroaminoto Institute of Pinrang, Pinrang, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2835-2705
Arizkylia Yoka Putri Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education, State University of Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8402-6362

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47175/rissj.v7i4.1335

Keywords: teacher knowledge, multicultural education, social studies education, pedagogical content knowledge, bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Teachers cannot teach diversity well without knowing it, yet research on what teachers know about diversity sits in separate strands of multicultural education, social studies, and teacher education. This study maps that literature to show where it is concentrated, how teacher knowledge has been framed, and where measurement is thin. A bibliometric design combined performance analysis and science mapping of Scopus records published between 2000 and 2025, run in RStudio through the biblioshiny interface of bibliometrix. Of 387 records retrieved, one duplicate was removed and 386 were screened by title, abstract, and keywords against written criteria, which left 141 documents. Output grew from 6 documents in 2000–2009 to 74 in 2020–2025. The corpus drew 2,722 citations across 79 sources and 309 authors, and more than 94% of authors wrote a single document. First authors affiliated with the United States wrote 59.7% of the documents with a known country. Teacher education formed the hub of the keyword network, while teacher knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and culturally responsive teaching sat in separate clusters. Shulman's two foundational papers were cited by 34 documents and Ladson-Billings's culturally relevant pedagogy papers by 23, yet only 10 documents cited both, and only two documents reported an instrument built to measure teachers' knowledge of multicultural content. The map exposes a measurement gap and thin links between knowledge frameworks and culturally responsive frameworks. Future work should build case-based instruments for teacher knowledge of diversity and test them outside North America and Western Europe.

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