Bibliometric and Descriptive Content Analyses for the Articles Related to Problem-Based Learning in Chemistry Education

The study aimed to reveal the research trends of articles related to PBL in chemistry education and to provide insights into the characteristics of the research activities through bibliometric and descriptive content analyses. For bibliometric analysis, a total of 119 articles were accessed from the Web of Science (WoS), and for descriptive content analysis, a total of 30 articles were eliminated from the “Education & Educational Research” category of WoS. In bibliometric analysis, author keywords, words in the abstracts, citation analyses, and co-citation analyses in the articles were analyzed to reveal an overall picture in the related literature. Then, a descriptive content analysis was performed to examine in detail the fields of research, variables, methods, sample groups, data collection tools, data analysis methods, and the results highlighted in the articles. The bibliometric analysis results showed that the most-used keywords were problem-solving/decision making, problem-based learning, undergraduate, inquiry-based/discovery learning, laboratory instruction, and collaborative/cooperative learning. The most used words in the abstracts of the articles were a problem, students, learning, study, course, approach, skill, and chemistry. The most cited authors were Leman Tarhan, Santiago Sandi-Urena, Melanie M. Cooper, and Todd A. Gatlin. The top two journals in the terms of the total number of articles and the most cited were “Journal of Chemical Education” and “Chemistry Education Research and Practice”. The descriptive content analysis results showed that undergraduate chemistry laboratories and chemistry courses were the main learning environments for PBL settings in chemistry education. Undergraduate students were the most frequently preferred sample. The most examined variables in the articles were academic achievement, views about PBL and attitude. Quantitative and qualitative studies were the main research focus, but there was a limited number of mixed studies. Also, interviews, achievement tests, and alternative assessment tools were widely used as data collection tools in the articles