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Worldwide Trends in Bilingual Education Research: A Half-Century Overview

Despite the wealth of studies on bilingual education, there is a dearth of meta-research on the worldwide development and trends of this area of investigation over the past few decades. The occupation of this gap allows scholars to take stock of current states of research, get overviews of the contributions made to the field, foresee future research trends, and identify research needs and gaps that may be addressed in future investigation. This study analyses the evolution and trends of bilingual education research during a 50-year period (1969–2018) from a bibliometric perspective. The results show a steady increase in the number of publications, and was exponential in the last decade, mainly in the form of research articles, which makes bilingual education a truly consolidated and increasingly evolving research field. The US is the leading country with respect to the number of publications, affiliations, and sponsors, followed, primarily, by some other North American (e.g., Canada), European (e.g., UK and Spain), and Asian (e.g., China) countries, as well as Australia. There is a large research network cluster led by the US involving intercontinental interaction among institutions from Europe, Asia, and, to a lesser extent, South America. However, a scant level of internationalisation of scholars publishing works on bilingual education was observed, with most author collaboration being limited to different US institutions. The most influential authors belong to institutions from the US, Canada, Spain, and Israel, and, to a lesser extent, Australia. The main research topics in the field depend on the contexts and include regulations of language institutions, bilingual education models, language skills, pedagogical strategies, education levels, and ages, among others. These results may contribute to the identification of new research needs and therefore, to the development of future directions in bilingual education research.