2021 Volume 178 Pages 79-93
There have been several important surveys on the history of Japanese language education and its research, but most of them have focused on qualitatively describing the classification of research areas and the direction of efforts, and quantitative knowledge in this field has been insufficient. In addition, the mutual relationships and influences between studies or researchers are rarely clarified. In this study, we try to grasp the outline of the research community regarding Japanese language education. Using the journal Japanese Language Education Nos. 1 to 175 of The Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language, published between 1962-2020, we analyzed the longitudinal changes in citation behavior and the network structure of 1,803 published papers, 16,205 cited documents and their authors. As a result, we clarified some important facts regarding the formation of a common intellectual foundation within the research community, changes in research trends, and the relationship with global language and educational research. In addition, we discussed the background and suggestions of our findings compared to previous research.
