Research on the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Basic Education: A Global Trend Analysis Based on Bibliometrics

Based on the bibliometric method, this study visually analyzed the application research literature of artificial intelligence (AI) in the domain of basic education in the Web of Science Core Collection from January 1, 2014 to November 1, 2024 with the help of VOSviewer and CiteSpace. A total of 344 valid articles were selected from 588 institutions and 1090 authors in 60 countries. They were published in 126 journals and cited 13855 references from 6922 journals. The study found that the number of papers published in China is the largest, and the quality recognition of papers in the United States is high. The journals with the greatest number of articles were mostly related to educational technology and computational intelligence, and Computers & Education had the greatest number of citations per article. Keyword co-occurrence analysis shows that the study focuses on deep learning and the application of large language models (LLMs) has increased. The timeline analysis shows that the domain research has moved from the stage of data driven and educational technology application exploration to the stage of AI empowerment and personalized education. The co-citation analysis reveals that the interdisciplinary characteristics of educational technology research are obvious, and the literature co-citation network reflects the multi-dimensional application research type of AI in basic education. All in all, the popularity of AI application research in basic education is increasing, the research focus has changed, and generative AI is developing rapidly.