Integrating indigenous knowledge in elementary education: A bibliometric analysis of research trends from 1984-2025

<ns3:p>Abstract* Background Indigenous knowledge plays a crucial role in primary education by strengthening cultural identity, supporting sustainability, and enabling contextualized learning. However, despite its increasing recognition in secondary and higher education, comprehensive bibliometric mapping of its integration into primary education remains limited. Existing studies mostly focus on specific cases or regions and rely on qualitative or descriptive approaches, limiting a systematic understanding of publication trends, influential contributors, and thematic developments in this field. Methods This study employs bibliometric analysis using data from the Scopus database, selected for its extensive coverage of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals. The search, conducted on 20 October 2025 using a combination of keywords related to indigenous knowledge and primary/elementary education, yielded 355 unique English-language journal articles from an initial 530 documents. Data were exported in CSV format and analyzed using the Bibliometrix package in RStudio for performance analysis and science mapping, complemented by VOSviewer for visualizing keyword co-occurrence networks, thematic clusters, and collaboration patterns. Results The analysis shows an annual growth rate of 9.61% from 1984 to 2015, with a substantial increase in publications particularly since 2005. A total of 355 articles authored by 1271 researchers were published across 299 journals, with an average of 15.75 citations per document. The USA, Indonesia, the UK, Canada, and China emerged as the main contributing countries, although representation from developing countries with high cultural diversity remains limited. Conclusion This study highlights that research on integrating indigenous knowledge into primary education is growing and increasingly recognized as central to culture-based and sustainable education. Nevertheless, gaps persist due to limited contributions from developing countries and the absence of a robust pedagogical framework to guide the systematic integration of indigenous knowledge into classroom practice. The findings provide a foundation for future theoretical, methodological, and policy-oriented work on indigenous knowledge in primary education.</ns3:p>