JURNAL BASICEDU The Use of Games for Learning in Primary Schools: A Bibliometrics Analysis of the Scopus Database

Elementary school learning that is integrated with games can increase student motivation in learning so that it can have a positive impact on learning outcomes. The bibliometric review used in this research aims to analyze articles that discuss the use of games at the elementary school level published in the Scopus database indexed journal for the period 2013-2022. A total of 122 articles discussing the integration of games in primary school level learning were analyzed. The review findings show that there was a significant increase in the number of publications in 2016-2021, around 77.87% of articles were published in that period. Spain and Indonesia dominate the number of publications. Four authors with 3 publications each are influential. Data visualization shows that this research topic can be grouped based on the type of game, type of game, subject of study, learning approach, type of learning, the subject involved in research, and a number of topics that have the potential to be integrated with other topics to obtain novelty. The findings of this study can help relevant researchers to recognize research trends in the use of games for primary school learning globally and recommend directions for further research.


INTRODUCTION
The use of games in learning is an important element in the teaching and learning process in elementary schools. Game-based learning has been widely used in elementary schools (S A Zabala-Vargas et al., 2022). The use of digital games can stimulate children cognitively in a fun way (Moron et al., 2022). Games can relax children's brains (Dewi & Verawati, 2022). The use of games can turn a boring learning environment into a smarter one (Kamalodeen, Ramsawak-Jodha, Figaro-Henry, Jaggernauth, & Dedovets, 2021). Collaborative learning activities can be done through team games (Sumtsova et al., 2018) so as to improve interpersonal relationships among students (Fernández-Gavira, Espada-Goya, Alcaraz-Rodríguez, & Moscoso-Sánchez, 2021).
Previous research has discussed a lot about the use of games for learning at the basic education level which has an impact on a number of aspects that students have, but there is very limited information regarding the results of the analysis and summaries of a number of state-of-the-art research. Research on the impact of video games has been carried out in Ireland which has shown that statistically, it can improve math performance and student engagement in learning. However, there are also other results in the form of math anxiety experienced by female students after playing games (Rocha & Dondio, 2021). In China, experiments have also been carried out regarding the integration of educational games in language learning that can increase vocabulary acquisition (Chen, Yang, & Mei, 2021). In Indonesia, non-digital games are used in physical education to develop social skills (Hartanto, Kusmaedi, Ma'mun, & Abduljabar, 2021) and locomotor skills (Sahudi, Priyono, & Saputra, 2021).
The summary of relevant previous research can be done using bibliometric analysis. This methodology was initiated by Eugene Garfield in the mid-20th century (Cronin, 2001). Bibliometrics implements a series of mathematical and statistical methods in various scientific literature for analysis (González-Zamar & Abad-Segura, 2021). Bibliometric analysis is used to review various aspects such as countries, institutions, authors, and journals and can also be used to analyze patterns of collaboration among various actors such as countries, institutions, and authors (Cardella, Hernández-Sánchez, Monteiro, & Sánchez-García, 2021).
Using the Scopus database from 2013 to 2022, this study intends to examine a variety of studies on the use of games in primary school education. Six research questions were posed to investigate the current trends and patterns in the use of games in primary school: 1. How did the publication output profile of game usage in elementary school learning change from 2013 to 2022? 2. How did the publishing of game usage in elementary school learning spread across the world's nations and institutions? 3. Who were the world's leading researchers on the use of games in elementary school learning? 4. How did publishing trends on the use of games in primary school learning change between 2013 and 2022? 5. How did the presentation of study findings on the usage of games in primary school learning reveal a trend? 6. How significant was the 2013-2022 contribution of Indonesian scholars to the study of the use of games in primary school learning?
This review provides a useful summary of how to utilize games in elementary school education. The structure of our article is as follows. In the next section, we describe the datasets and methods used for this investigation. The Results Part gives responses to our study questions in the third section. The limits and ramifications of our study are then discussed before we deliver our results.

Research Design and Database
The study followed the guidance of a bibliometric study. Bibliometric review is very powerful in examining and evaluating a number of works of literature in a particular field of study (McNicholas, Floyd, Fennimore, & Fitzpatrick, 2022). This study supports several Scopus database articles. Since this collection contains journals and conference proceedings that are regarded as more authoritative by the scientific community, as well as for their consistency and regularity, it is a valuable resource. The investigation began by doing an online search on February 15, 2022.

Article Search Strategy
To get some relevant articles, keywords are entered into the search engines. The keywords are "game" and "primary education". To broaden the search, the equivalent words used in "primary education" are: "primary school", "elementary education", "elementary school", "basic school", and "basic education". From the results of entering these keywords, it was recorded that there were 3,266 documents.
For a more precise search, several inclusion criteria were applied, including 1) the type of open access is limited to the Gold type so that all articles to be analyzed are easy to obtain; 2) the analyzed articles were published in the last 10 years (2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022) to have high relevance to the development of this topic, 3) this review is limited to the field of Social Science; 4) the language of the article to be reviewed is English to make it easier to read the article; and 5) this review only focuses on articles published by the Journal, not from the results of the Proceedings.
Using the following search query, the main database was extracted from Scopus: TITLE-ABS-KEY(game* AND "primary school" OR "elementary education" OR "elementary school" OR "primary education" OR "basic school" OR "basic education") AND ( LIMIT-TO ( OA,"publisherfullgold" ) ) AND In the end, 122 documents were collected for examination. In the final data, the following fields were captured for each document: article identifying number, topic indicates, publisher journal, cited connection, authors, institution, nation, document link, and publication year.

Data analysis
Scopus Analyzer and VOSviewer were used to process these data for bibliometric and networking analysis, respectively. The VoSViewer program was used to determine the study trend for any issue (Jiménez-García, Ruiz-Chico, Peña-Sánchez, & López-Sánchez, 2020; Shah, Lei, Ali, Doronin, & Hussain, 2020). The study was conducted to analyze research trends, such as characteristics of publication outputs, document publications, language source materials, distribution of countries and organizations, distribution of outputs within subject categories, leading authors, leading citations, and articles published trends from 2013 to 2022.  year. This topic also attracted 370 authors from various countries in the world. Other general information such as the average citation for each document per year, the number of references, and other information can be seen in Table 1. In general, the growth in the number of documents from year to year has increased dramatically. Figure

How did the publishing of game usage in elementary school learning spread across the world's nations and institutions?
The production of articles on the topic of using games in primary schools is spread across some countries ( Figure 2). It is clear, sequentially, that Spain (30) and Indonesia (19) dominate the production of the number of articles. Brazil (8), Taiwan (7), the United Kingdom (6), and Turkey (5) came in next. Croatia and United States were able to produce the same number of papers, namely 4 works. China and Colombia managed to donate 3 publications each related to this topic.

Who were the world's leading researchers on the use of games in elementary school learning?
In the context of the most prolific authors, Freu, Gamero, García-Ceberino, and Ibáñez were able to produce 3 articles each. For the rest, several authors can contribute 2 documents each (See Figure 3).    International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 3 10 Journal Of Physical Education Maringa 3

How did the presentation of study findings on the usage of games in primary school learning reveal a trend?
Visualization of research trends on game integration in elementary school learning was obtained from 122 woks indexed by the Scopus database. In the data visualization ( Figure 5), it can be seen that there are seven clusters with their respective colors (red, green, blue, yellow, purple, light blue, and orange). Cluster 1 (red) indicates the use of collaborative learning in primary education and higher education. Cluster 2 (green) relates to the use of games in physical education and mathematics education by considering gender. Students learn by using serious games, which is the theme of Cluster 3 (blue). Cluster 4 (yellow) illustrates e-learning in elementary schools that integrates digital educational games and educational technology. Cluster 5 (purple) discusses the discussion on the application of game-based learning to motivate student learning. Cluster 6 (light blue) is related to education for children using video games to promote academic performance. The last domain, Cluster 7 (orange) relates to the discussion of the use of augmented reality through mobile learning in inclusive education.

Figure 5. Overview of Research related to Game Utilization in Elementary Schools (2013-2022)
Some topics were not included in the previous clusters, namely special education, computational thinking, and PMRI (Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Approach). This means that the three topics can be combined with other topics so that they can provide novelty for future research (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Next Research Opportunity
The relationship between variables can be found if a more in-depth analysis is carried out on each of these variables. Figure 7 shows what types of games are used in learning at the basic education level. The types of games include digital games, traditional games, serious games, and educational games.

Figure 7. Types of Games Used in Learning in Elementary Schools
When viewed from the field of study, there are two main subject areas such as mathematics, and physical education, which utilize games in the implementation of Figure 8 learning.

Figure 8. The main fields of study that use games in their learning
Another finding is related to the learning approach used in state-of-the-art articles. Game-based learning (e-learning), collaborative learning, problem-solving, gamification, STEM, and computer-aided instruction is learning approaches that are often used. The relationship between these variables can be seen in Figure 9.  Research on the topic of using games in elementary school learning involves a number of research subjects. The subjects frequently mentioned in these articles are pre-service elementary education teachers, primary school teachers, and primary school children (Figure 10).

How significant was the 2013-2022 contribution of Indonesian scholars to the study of the use of games in primary school learning?
Indonesia donated 19 documents related to the integration of games in primary school level learning. The papers were spread across some universities (Table 5). Jakarta State University and Indonesia Education University competed with each other being able to publish 4 articles. Sriwijaya University and Yogyakarta State University were next with the achievements of 3 and 2 articles respectively. For the rest, some universities were able to publish 1 article during that period.  The growth of jobs that discuss the use of games in primary school learning has increased significantly over the past decade. Starting with 6 papers in 2013 and reaching a peak in 2021. Articles discussing this topic in 2022 have the potential to exceed the achievements in 2021. The rapid increase in the number of documents occurred when COVID-19 hit all countries from 2019 until now. Until this manuscript was compiled, there have been 4 authors who published their documents, namely Xenofontos & Alkan (2022), Sibgatullin et al. (2022), Santurio & Fernández-Río (2022), dan Nur et al. (2022).
Games take many forms. Based on the use of technology, games are grouped into digital games and traditional games. Digital games can attract and develop learning motivation (Tazouti, Boulaknadel, & Fakhri, 2019). Video games can be used by teachers to train students to solve problems (Mee Mee et al., 2021). Traditional games are more focused on the use of physical activity (Syaflin et al., 2021). Serious games are not used for entertainment but can increase the independence and motivation of elementary school students (Papanastasiou, Drigas, & Skianis, 2017). On the other hand, educational games can be used by teachers to assist students in improving language vocabulary at the elementary school level.
Various kinds of digital games are used in several fields of study in elementary schools. Video games and augmented reality through mobile learning are the types of digital games used. Mathematics and physical education were the main fields of study when the previous researchers conducted their research.  Susman & Pavlin, 2020;Yaşar, Kıyıcı, & Karataş, 2020), and primary school children (Chiazzese, Fulantelli, Pipitone, & Taibi, 2018;Kayumova, Gainullina, Akhmadieva, Matvienko, & Kabakhidze, 2021). This learning is also related to mobile learning which is considered to be able to penetrate space and time (Jen- Yi, Chuan-His, & Yi-Hsin, 2020), and e-learning which is promoted to increase student motivation, engagement, and learning (T. Alshammari, 2020).

CONCLUSION
Through bibliometric analysis, this research intends to review technical papers for the period 2013-2022 related to the use of games for learning at the elementary school level. The results of the review show a significant increase in terms of the number of papers published in the 2016-2021 period. Some countries, such as Spain and Indonesia, are very dominant in terms of the number of documents. Four authors are considered to have had more influence in this field. The data mapping display shows that relevant previous research can be classified based on the type of game, type of game, subject of study, learning approach, type of learning, the subject involved in research, and a number of topics that have the potential to be integrated with other topics to obtain novelty. The results of this review report can provide mapping and identify research trends, especially on the topic of game integration in teaching in elementary schools so that it can be used as an alternative reference for future research. This review is limited to the elementary school level and uses only the Scopus database. The next review paper should be made at other levels of education and use a combination of prestigious databases such as Scopus and Web of Science.