TITLE:
The Geography of Evidence: A Bibliometric Analysis of U.S. Research on Inclusive Mathematics Instruction for Students with Disabilities (2020-2025)
AUTHORS:
Aloy Idoko, Cephas Ahuno, Prince Kankam, Abraham Nsiah, Sherif Abdul Ganiyu
KEYWORDS:
Inclusive Mathematics Education, Bibliometric Analysis, Knowledge Production, Students with Disabilities, Special Education Research
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.4,
April
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: Although the United States has invested extensively in research on mathematics instruction for students with disabilities, the structural organization of this evidence base remains largely unexplored. Understanding who produces the evidence, which works shape the intellectual foundations of the field, and how research agendas evolve is critical for evaluating the scope and diversity of knowledge informing inclusive mathematics education. This study employs bibliometric methods to map the institutional, intellectual, and conceptual structure of U.S. research on inclusive mathematics instruction for students with disabilities published between 2020 and 2025. Drawing on 424 articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and analyzed using the bibliometrix R package, the study integrates performance analysis, co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, bibliographic coupling, and thematic mapping. The results reveal a rapidly expanding but structurally concentrated research landscape. Scholarly production is clustered within a relatively small group of U.S. research universities and shaped by a limited set of highly influential authors and journals. Citation patterns further indicate that the intellectual foundations of the field are strongly anchored in U.S. policy frameworks and evidence-based instructional models. These findings suggest that while the evidence base supporting inclusive mathematics instruction is robust and cumulative, it remains institutionally and geographically concentrated, raising important questions about knowledge diversity, contextual generalizability, and the global transferability of research evidence.