Mapping the research ecosystem of emotion regulation in education

Abstract

Emotion regulation is an important research area in educational psychology, given its close association with learning motivation, self-regulated learning, teaching quality, and psychological well-being in school settings. This study aimed to analyze the research ecosystem of emotion regulation in education from 2000 to 2025, thereby clarifying the authorship structure, the institutional structure, and theoretical shifts in the field. Publications were retrieved from Scopus and examined through a systematic review reported in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer, and qualitative synthesis assisted by Elicit. The findings indicated that the field was organized as a multi-layered knowledge ecosystem in which foundational authors, research institutions, and theoretical frameworks are closely interconnected. They also showed that the field has been shifting from approaches that emphasize individual mechanisms toward more contextualized and ecosystem-based perspectives. On this basis, the article contributes to systematizing the research field and proposes directions for future research in educational psychology.