Trending Themes on the Nature of Science in Science Education: A Bibliometric Analysis with VOSviewer

This study aimed to identify themes that indicate trends in the nature of science (NoS) in science education. The Web of Science (WoS) database was used for this purpose. A bibliometric approach was adopted, and the VOSviewer software was used to identify and systematically map research trends in the field of scientific innovation and to identify intellectual relationships in this network. In this context, the study covered the years 2013-2023. The categories “Education & Educational Research” and “Education Scientific Disciplines” were selected in the WoS database, and only article-type studies were included by excluding other publication categories obtained in the breakdown of the results. Finally, 263 articles were analyzed . According to the findings, the “Education Educational Research” WoS category is at the forefront. The publications made according to the years show alternating trends of increase and decrease. Lederman, N.G. is the author with the highest number of citations. Erduran, S. is the author with the highest number of studies and the highest total link strength. The majority of publications were in the journal “Research In Science Education.” The words “scientific literacy” and “history of science” were used most frequently after “nature of science” and “science education” among the keywords. The most frequently repeated words in the abstracts of the articles were "questionnaire" and "interview". Finally, the countries ranked in the top three in terms of total link strength and the most cited countries were the USA, England, and Türkiye, respectively.