Chapter Highlights

The following highlights summarise the research landscape, growth trends, and thematic structure of game-based learning in STEM education, highlighting key developments, dominant research themes, and emerging directions. The chapter provides evidence-based insights to inform future research, educational practice, and policy decisions.

• Presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 407 publications on game-based learning in STEM education (GBL-STEM) published between 2006 and March 2025, revealing a rapid annual growth rate of 16.43% in the field.
• Identifies the United States as the leading contributor in terms of publication output, with Education Sciences as the most active journal and Computers & Education as the most highly cited source in GBL-STEM research.
• Demonstrates the interdisciplinary and collaborative structure of GBL-STEM research through analyses of key authors, institutions, influential publications, and frequently used keywords.
• Reveals five major research clusters through keyword co-occurrence network visualisation, highlighting dominant themes as well as emerging and underexplored research directions within the field.
• Provides practical implications and evidence-based insights for educators, researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders seeking to design effective game-based STEM learning environments, guide future research agendas, and support informed decision-making in STEM education.