In the context of deepening globalization, global citizenship education (GCE) serves as a crucial pathway for cultivating citizens with global perspectives and cross-cultural competencies, with its underlying social psychological mechanisms increasingly attracting scholarly attention. This study employs bibliometric methodology to systematically analyze cultural adaptation and identity construction mechanisms in the field of global citizenship education, grounded in environmental psychology and social identity theory frameworks. Through retrieving 407 relevant publications from the Scopus database spanning 2002-2023, utilizing analytical tools including VOSviewer and Microsoft Excel, this research comprehensively examines the developmental trajectory of this field across five dimensions: publication trends, citation patterns, geographical distribution, international collaboration networks, and research foci. The findings reveal that GCE research has demonstrated a steady upward trend since 2013, reaching publication peaks during 2020-2021 amid the pandemic, reflecting urgent individual needs for identity reconstruction and cultural adaptation in global crisis contexts. Citation analysis indicates that 2016 represents a pivotal node of influence in this field, with both h-index and g-index reaching their peak values. Geographical distribution exhibits pronounced regional concentration characteristics, with multicultural nations including the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada maintaining dominant positions, demonstrating the facilitating effects of specific sociocultural environments on GCE research. While the international collaboration network spans 59 countries, it presents a fragmented landscape, with environmental and linguistic factors remaining significant constraints on transnational academic cooperation. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies four core research clusters: cosmopolitanism and social justice, sustainable development and human rights education, global education and civic competency, and globalization and higher education. This study elucidates the psychological mechanisms of cultural adaptation and dynamic processes of identity construction in global citizenship education, providing crucial theoretical foundations for understanding individual psychological adaptation strategies in multicultural environments, while simultaneously offering scientific guidance for GCE policy formulation, curriculum design, and teacher training, thereby promoting the organic integration of theoretical development and practical innovation in this field.
Almohaimeed et al. (Tue,) studied this question.