Research Status and Evolutionary Trends of Student Ideological Education: A Knowledge Mapping Analysis Based on CiteSpace

Student ideological education is a key pathway for shaping students' sound personalities and correct values, which not only concerns individual growth but also serves as an important guarantee for social harmony and development. This paper uses the information visualization software CiteSpace to perform a visual knowledge map analysis of 2,838 papers on student ideological education published between 2000 and 2024 in the CNKI database. The aim is to explore the research overview, hotspots, and trends in this field. The study finds that the overall number of publications follows a trend of increasing and then decreasing, with a large number of authors, but no well-established collaborative network. The main research hotspots focus on four areas: ideological and political education, educational methods, vocational college students, and university counselors. At the same time, seven keyword clusters are generated, with strong connections between them. In terms of emerging terms, "curriculum-based ideological education" and "ideological education" have higher emergence intensity, while "ideological political work" and "university counselors" have longer emergence durations. In terms of research trends, recent studies on student ideological education have placed more emphasis on topics such as the new era and curriculum-based ideological education.