Journal of Education for Sustainability and Transformation (JESTRA)

Peer-reviewed open-access journal

E-ISSN: 3125-0130

Vol. 1 No. 4 (2026)
Articles

Research Trends and Future Directions of Sensor-Based Physics Education: A Bibliometric Analysis Toward a Real-Time Smart Thermal Learning System

  • Riyana Hermadiana,
  • Firmanul Catur Wibowo,
  • Bambang Heru Iswanto,
  • Iwan Sugihartono

Keywords

  • Bibliometric analysis
  • Misconceptions
  • Physics education
  • Real-time sensors
  • Thermal physics

How to Cite

Research Trends and Future Directions of Sensor-Based Physics Education: A Bibliometric Analysis Toward a Real-Time Smart Thermal Learning System. (2026). Journal of Education for Sustainability and Transformation, 1(4), 19-35. https://journal.serral.org/jestra/article/view/37

Abstract

Sensor-based laboratories have long been promoted as a way to connect measurement with conceptual understanding in physics, yet it is unclear how far this literature addresses thermal physics and students’ misconceptions. This study mapped the performance, intellectual base, and thematic development of sensor-based physics education research and examined its coverage of thermal concepts and misconceptions. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 195 Scopus-indexed journal articles published between 1987 and 2026 using bibliometrix/Biblioshiny, complemented by a content screening of titles and abstracts. Output grew at an annual rate of 8.92%, with 131 articles (67.2%) published from 2020 onward. Physics Education formed the single core source (78 articles), authorship was highly dispersed (91.1% of 615 authors contributed one article), and international co-authorship was limited (11.28%). The intellectual base centred on smartphone and Arduino tools, led by Staacks et al. (2018) with 273 citations, and the most frequent keywords were physics education (41) and Arduino (28). Only 15 articles (7.7%) dealt with thermal physics: 11 reported apparatus or measurement methods, three reported learner data, and one reported expert validation. None diagnosed misconceptions, and no article in the dataset involved vocational students. The field has therefore matured technically faster than it has pedagogically. Building on these gaps, we outline a research agenda for a dashboard-assisted smart thermal learning system that couples real-time temperature sensing with diagnostic assessment of misconceptions in vocational education.

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