Sustainability Literacy in Higher Education: A Bibliometric Overview

Abstract

Sustainability literacy is an competence that must be developed in sustainable education. This study aims to examine research trends on sustainability literacy in higher education through bibliometric analysis. The research uses the Scopus database with the keywords "Sustainability Consciousness" or "Sustainability Awareness" or "Sustainability Literacy" or "Sustainable Literacy" and "Higher Education" for the years 2015-2024. A total of 136 documents were retrieved, and after filtering for English language, journal publications, final publications, and open access, 44 documents were selected. Biblioshiny and VOSViewer programs were used for bibliometric analysis. The results show that the last two years (2022) had the highest number of studies on this theme. It was revealed that the United States is the most country in producing research in this area, followed by the UK, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Australia. Sustainability (Switzerland) was identified as the journal that published the most articles on the topic and is the most cited. The most frequently used terms in these articles were "sustainability", "higher education", "student", "sustainable development", and "university". The results of research analysis indicate that there is a variation in evaluation tools used by researchers worldwide to measure sustainable literacy. However, in general, researchers around the world use questionnaires and tests to assess sustainable literacy. On the other hand, the analysis also reveals that integrating sustainable literacy into higher education curricula is a crucial effort in achieving sustainable development