Mapping the Research Landscape: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of Self-Determination Theory in Higher Education

In recent years, Self-DeterminationTheory (SDT) proposed by Deci and Ryan has been a major theoretical framework for understanding and describing college students' motivation, due to its emphasis on individual subjective initiative, ability, relationship satisfaction, etc. This helps students identify their motivation, happiness, and the importance of grades. Because SDT plays an irreplaceable and extremely important role in stimulating students' intrinsic motivation, and plays an important decision-making role in academic performance, it is necessary and legitimate to carry out the verification of SDT in colleges and universities. However, there have been many studies on SDT using traditional methods, but those new teaching models based on SDT such as SOP are in the blank stage. Therefore, this study used holistic literature statistical analysis to draw the overall outline of SDT research in higher education, used VOSviewer to conduct statistical analysis of 862 papers from Scopus, and found common networks and subject clusters. We came up with six theme clusters, two of which are "academic achievement", and the other five are "autonomous support" and "digital learning platform role". This shows that the current era attaches great importance to SDT, even including the change of online teaching forms under the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic. It is not difficult to infer that SDT can be implemented in targeted applications in various educational scenarios. There is no doubt that SDT has a lot of space worth exploring in the combination of digital multimedia environment and teaching theory. This work can serve as a basis for future work and provide direction for practice in order to generate an environment conducive to promoting and protecting teacher motivation.