Research on school choice: a bibliometric study.

Research on school choice: a bibliometric study. In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of neoliberal educational policies to regulate education. Proponents argue that the challenges of school massification should be addressed through the commercialization of education, which would increase school efficiency and promote greater equity within the education system (Ball et al., 1996). These policies typically consist of promoting school choice and implementing measures to increase competition between schools in the education market. However, sociological research outlines a more complex reality. It demonstrates that unequal distribution of resources among families and configurations of the school market shapes school choice (Ball et al., 1996; Zanten, 2001). Even though families from disadvantaged groups can adopt strategies to choose a school, it is the socially and racially advantaged groups that tend to have more power to achieve the chosen place (Ball et al., 1996; Schneider et al. 1997). This article analyzes the development of research on school choice in the social sciences and education. The methodology first involved a bibliometric survey in the Scopus and Web of Science databases using the Biblioshiny software. We found 2,519 indexed scientific articles in these databases, published between 1977 and 2023. Subsequently, we used data on keywords, authors, author affiliations, countries of production, titles, and abstracts of the 2,519 documents. Using this data, we analyzed the evolution of production during the period, highlighting its geographic distribution, institutions, authors, research themes and approaches, and trends in academic production in the field. Our data indicate that family school choice has been a growing topic in education research since the 1980s. Researchers’ interest, reflected in articles produced in more than 60 countries, has accompanied the global dissemination of policies to liberalize the education system. In general, the countries with the highest production are those in which liberalizing reforms in the education system have been most intensively, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Sweden, and Chile. On the other hand, since the 2010s, there has been a decentralization and an expansion of research in developing countries like China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Türkiye, Argentina, and Colombia. Until the 1990s, the most cited studies were those that analyzed the formulation and implementation of school choice policies (Mintrom, 1997; Wells et al., 1999) and, on the other hand, those that focused on understanding how families from different classes and social groups dealt with the choice of educational institution (Ball et al., 1996; Ball and Vincent, 1998; Schneider et al., 1997). In the 2000s, analyses of the relationships between school choice policies and the logic of organization of the educational system gained more space (Lubienski, 2003), as well as on the interactions between schools, the configurations of educational provision and their effects on choice (Lubienski, 2005; Zanten, 2001). In the 2000s and 2010s, two of the most important trends of recent years also gained traction. It was during this period that spatial turn reached more intensely the research in the field. It began to reflect in analyses about the interactions between school choice, the configurations of the school market, social stratification, and spatial organization (Zanten, 2001; Lubienski et al., 2009). Particularly in the past 10 years, research analyzing the relationships between school choice policies and school segregation became widespread (Wells et al. 2019). On the other hand, another important trend in the field is the diversification of themes associated with school choice. In this regard, we can highlight the analysis of specific identities their relationships with school choice. Our data found an increase in research on school choice for Black, Indigenous, other ethnic minority, migrant, special education, and homeschooling families. These approaches tend to add complexity to the analysis of school choice by considering the actions of actors across various layers of the social structure. They contradict certain messages and ideals present in the public debate, disseminated by advocates of free choice policies. Finally, it is worth noting that the research identified an increase in the production of articles by authors linked to liberal political-ideological think tanks in the last decade. References Ball, S.J.; Bowe, R.; Gewirtz, S. (1996). School choice, social class, and distinction: the realization of social advantage in education. Journal of Education Policy, 11 (1), 89–112. Ball, S.; Vincent, C. “I Heard It on the Grapevine”: “Hot” knowledge and school choice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 19, no. 3, p. 377–400, 1998. Lubienski, C. (2003). Innovation in Education Markets: Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Competition and Choice in Charter Schools. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 395–443. Lubienski, C.; Gulosino, C.; Weitzel, P.(2009) School Choice and Competitive Incentives: Mapping the Distribution of Educational Opportunities across Local Education Markets. American Journal of Education, Vol. 115, Number 4. Mintrom, M. “Policy Entrepreneurs and the Diffusion of Innovation.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 41, no. 3, 1997, p. 738–70. Schneider, M.; Teske, P.; Roch, C.; Marshall, M. (1997). Networks to Nowhere: Segregation and Stratification in Networks of Information about schools. American Journal of Political Science, 41 (4), 1201–1223. Wells, A; Lopez, A.; Scott, J.; Holme, J. (1999). Charter Schools as Postmodern Paradox: Rethinking Social Stratification in an Age of Deregulated School Choice. Harvard Educational Review (1999) 69 (2): 172–205. Wells, AS; Keener, A.; Cabral, L.; Cordova-Cobo, D. (2019). The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Resegregation of Public Schools Via Charter School Reform. Peabody Journal of Education, 94 (5), 471–492. Zanten, A. École de la périphérie: scolarité et ségrégation en banlieu. Paris: PUF, 2001.