Progress and Trend of Research on Overseas Education in China since Reform and Opening-up： A Visualization Analysis of 1084 CSSCI Journal Papers

Using CiteSpace 5.0 software, this paper conducts a visualization analysis of the core authors, institutions and popular themes of 1 084 CSSCI source journal papers about overseas education published on CNKI since the Reform and Opening-up. This paper finds that research on overseas education in China has experienced a three-stage development: late-start and rapid development, great fluctuation and decreasing numbers, and small fluctuation and increasing numbers. This paper also reveals that although there has been insufficient cooperation between the authors and institutions on research, there have also been some positive features such as research focus has been concentrated; there is a trend of interdisciplinarity; the distribution of age of researchers are reasonable; academic ecology is well balanced. The overall research strength of normal universities in the field is strong, while the academic influence of non-normal universities is prominent. Moreover, there have also been increasing contribution from other types of educational institutions. The popular topics in the field include "overseas students", "overseas education", "trade in service for overseas education", and "internationalization of education". The frointiers of research area in the filed include "The Belt and Road Initiative", "international students coming to China", and "cross-cultural adaptation". This paper also provides suggestions on future research on overseas education: they should be conbined with practical issues of overseas education; the number of research output should be stable; there should be more communication and collaboration between researhers from different disciplines and geographic locations; there should be more research focusing on micro-level and emphasizing interdisciplinarity.