Research Hotspots and Trends in Aesthetic Education over the Past 30 Years——A Quantitative Analysis of Literature Based on CiteSpace in WoS and CNKI

Abstract

Introduction: Against the backdrop of educational digitalization and the leap forward in quality-oriented education, aesthetic education research has been continuously gaining momentum, yet it lacks a macroscopic quantitative framework.

Methods: This paper employs CiteSpace to conduct co-occurrence, clustering, and burst detection analyses on 909 Chinese and English literatures indexed in Web of Science and CNKI from 1995 to 2025, systematically revealing the global knowledge structure and evolutionary trajectory of aesthetic education.

Results: The results indicate that the development of aesthetic education can be divided into four stages: "idea foundation – practice deepening – policy driving – crisis expansion". The research focuses on four major themes: "theory and practice, policy and social responsibility, talent cultivation and evaluation, technological innovation and interdisciplinary integration", with five emerging frontier directions: "technological empowerment, global collaboration, equity in aesthetic education, social responsibility, and literacy integration". The focus of aesthetic education has expanded from traditional art teaching to the integration of AI/VR, educational equity, and humanistic care.

Conclusions: The constructed cross-corpus knowledge graph provides a quantitative basis for policy-making, curriculum reform, and cross-civilization cooperation, and also points out the direction for the future transformation of aesthetic education paradigms characterized by technology-driven approaches and value co-creation.