Lean-Agile Education: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

There are several studies on the application of Lean Thinking, as well as the Agile Mindset, in the literature, including the sectors of healthcare, technology, agriculture, industry, finance, among others. However, few works focus on the joint exploration of both themes, especially in the education field. This article aimed to develop a bibliometric analysis on Lean-Agile Education, mapping the global scientific production on this topic and focusing on the process of education management in the digital age. Therefore, an exploratory and descriptive study was developed with a quantitative approach based on the collection and treatment of secondary data. Between 2000 and 2021, only 34 articles were identified on the Web of Science database, organized into three categories according to management, pedagogical, and curricular content perspectives, mostly found in English and published in the US and Europe, with three publications from the Aalto University (Finland) affiliation. It was observed that this discipline does not follow the main bibliometric laws (Lotka’s Law, Zipt’s Law, and Bradford Law) with only 6 authors with more than one publication, high dispersion of journals responsible for publications, and frequency of words without constant proportion within the field of study, with emphasis on “software”, “lean”, “agile”, and “education”. Therefore, this bibliometric analysis pointed out trends for the area, indicating that Lean-Agile Education is a contemporary topic and still scarce in number and diversity of publications with an opportunity to go beyond new studies.