The Trends in Entrepreneurship and STEM Education Studies: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

STEM education and entrepreneurship have gained increasing attention with the advancement of technology and globalization. Various research has shown the importance of STEM education and entrepreneurship separately, but a growing number of studies is now to point to their connection due to the utmost importance of innovation in STEM. The results of a non-systematic literature review, however, indicate that although there is review research on STEM education and entrepreneurship separately, there is no research on their relationship. This study examines the relationship between STEM education and entrepreneurship using bibliometric and co-occurrence analyses to identify trends and suggest future research directions. Using the Web of Science database, 2865 publications were identified on the topic. Following the selection and eligibility process, the study was conducted with remaining 61 publications. The Vosviewer and HistCite software were used for the analysis. The analysis focused on the distribution of the research categories according to the number of publications, distribution of publications according to the yearly citations, countries, and authors, the trending keywords, and the analysis of the journals. The results showed that the topic is becoming more popular between education and educational research as well as business and management. There was significant increase in the studies published in 2020, which may be the result of government documents published in this year. This study shows the need for further research on entrepreneurship and STEM and recommends future research to focus more on the importance of sustainability and gender issues in entrepreneurship and STEM integration.