A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis of International and Chinese Research on Fieldwork in Geography Education

Fieldwork in geography education is an important inquiry-based approach for developing students’ integrative thinking and geographical competencies. This exploratory bibliometric study compared 379 articles and review articles from the Web of Science Core Collection with 614 academic journal articles from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure published between 2000 and 2025. Studies were included when fieldwork or related field experiences formed a substantive part of geography teaching or learning. Chinese publication output increased from the mid-2010s, whereas international output increased more markedly after 2022. The largest connected components comprised 24.8% and 10.6% of institutional nodes in the WoSCC and CNKI networks, respectively. Learning-process themes were more visible in the WoSCC results: experiential learning had a network frequency of 21 and betweenness centrality of 0.19, while active learning occurred 13 times. Curriculum-related themes were more visible in CNKI: practical teaching and core competencies each occurred 26 times, with core competencies showing a sustained burst during 2020–2025. Interpreted alongside the supporting literature, the findings suggest examining cross-institutional collaboration, connections between learning processes and locally grounded curriculum design, digital support for geographical inquiry, and assessment of learning processes and outcomes.