Delora Jantung Amelia, Wahyu Sukartiningsih, Hendratno, Suryanti
Reading literacy is a fundamental competency in 21st-century education, particularly at the elementary school level, as it forms the foundation for students’ cognitive, linguistic, and social development. In increasingly diverse educational contexts, the integration of cultural perspectives into reading literacy has gained growing attention, as culture plays a critical role in shaping how students interpret texts, construct meaning, and connect reading experiences with their social realities. Over the past decade, research on culture-based reading literacy in elementary schools has expanded across multiple disciplines, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive understanding of research trends, thematic structures, and scholarly contributions in this field. This study extends previous bibliometric research on reading literacy by providing a focused science-mapping analysis of the intersection between reading literacy, cultural dimensions, and the elementary school context. The study maps the development of research on culture-based reading literacy during the period 2010– 2025 using bibliometric analysis. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database and analyzed through publication trends, citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence, and thematic evolution. The PRISMA framework was used solely to document the screening process, resulting in a final dataset of 50 articles (n = 50). The findings indicate limited and scattered publications between 2010 and 2014, followed by sustained growth after 2018, with literacy and reading remaining the dominant core themes. Culturally responsive and multicultural approaches become more visible over time, whereas themes such as teacher professional development, digital literacy, and integrated instructional support appear with lower frequency and weaker thematic connectivity, indicating areas that remain empirically underexplored. This study provides a longitudinal overview of the intellectual structure of the field and identifies evidence-based directions for future research and pedagogical development. © 2026, Malque Publishing. All rights reserved.
Department of Elementary Education, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia; Elementary School Teacher Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang, East Java, Malang, Indonesia
