This study employs bibliometric and the CiteSpace-based visual analytic approach to conduct a quantitative analysis of 790 core journal articles on the topic of “curriculum standards” from CNKI spanning 2001-2025. The analysis encompasses dimensions such as annual publication trends, keyword co-occurrence and clustering, burst keyword detection, and timeline mapping, constructing the first comprehensive knowledge map of Chinese curriculum standards research from 2001 to 2025. The findings reveal that core issues concentrate on five major dimensions: the construction and translation of core competencies, teaching-learning-assessment alignment, international comparison and historical evolution, subject-specific standard development, and curriculum standard-oriented instructional design. The research evolution exhibits a three-phase characteristic: from policy-responsive fluctuating growth (2001-2010), to practice-sedimented continuous decline (2011-2016), and then to systematic reconstruction under the overarching framework of core competencies with significant fluctuations (2017-2025). This evolution highlights the interactive and coupled logic among policy, research, and practice. This study compensates for the limitations of macro reviews through quantitative visualization, providing empirical support for deepening curriculum theory, optimizing educational policies, and planning future research. Future efforts should shift toward breakthroughs in empirical research on key areas, promote the localized adaptation of international experience, and strengthen the coordinated design of curriculum standards across multiple educational stages and various instructional links.
Hu et al. (Sat,) studied this question.