Knowledge Mapping of the Rural Teacher Development Policy in China: A Bibliometric Analysis on Web of Science

Abstract

The rural teacher development policy plays a key role in cultivating high-quality and sufficient rural teachers in China. This study aims to apply a bibliometric analysis to explore the rural teacher development policy in China’s current education system. The advanced retrieval function of Web of Science (WoS) is used for the literature data, the core collection of Web of Science is selected for the database, and the time span of literature retrieval is consistent with the selected literature. We apply Citespace to analyze the spatial dimension, research paradigm and research method, research theme, research hotspots and co-occurrence of keywords, the evolution process of research hotspots and content of rural teacher development policy in China. It is found that with the deepening of the reform and development of rural elementary education, scholars not only pay attention to the exploration of the deep mechanism of rural teacher policy, but also to data-oriented diversified empirical research.

1. Introduction

Rural education revitalization is a key proposition of the development of education in China. Its core is to introduce high-quality and enough rural teachers. Rural teachers are the key to improving the quality of rural education, developing rural human capital, and helping with rural revitalization [1].

From a local contextual background perspective, rural teachers are the basic support for the development of more equitable and high-quality rural education, which is the core resource and strength to promote the revitalization of rural education. However, in recent years, with the continuous effort to strengthen national policy of rural teachers, the policy pattern of the development of rural teachers has undergone historic changes. For example, with the promulgation and implementation of policies, such as “Rural Teacher Support Plan”, “Plan to Strengthen Basic Education Teacher Force” and “Targeted Teacher Training Plan”, the rural teachers ‘wages, as well as working and living conditions, have been continuously improved and the shortage of rural teachers has been gradually filled. More opportunities for professional growth have been provided, and the loss of rural teachers has been alleviated [2]. In many places, urban teachers have even returned to rural areas. There are new opportunities for a teacher development policy in rural education. At the same time, there are still many challenges in the development of rural teachers. For example, the pre-service training of rural teachers lacks specificity. First, at present, all kinds of teacher education pay more attention to knowledge professors represented operating in cities [3]. For instance, the rural knowledge education in normal colleges is not enough, which makes normal university students lack an understanding of rural areas, rural education and rural teaching, and thus leads to their weak local awareness, local feelings, and the internal motivation to teach in rural areas.

To optimize the resource allocation of rural teachers in China, China has issued a series of policies to improve the status and treatment of rural teachers. With the advancement of reform and opening up, the rural teacher policy research has begun to rise and develop rapidly in China and has become an important component of contemporary philosophy and social sciences, especially within interdisciplinary science, as it is also an important strategic and policy demand of the country and local fields [4].

However, in terms of discourse system, time background and focus, there is a limited number of studies that explore the great heterogeneity between foreign rural teacher policy research and Chinese rural teacher policy research. The research gap lies in the exploration of how to solve the two educational problems of education equity and education quality. Referring to the foreign rural teacher policy is beneficial to provide enlightenment for the further perfection of Chinese rural teacher policy [5]. The main research question is: How can we analyze the literature on rural teacher policy research in WoS databases using the bibliometric analysis method?

Therefore, this study analyzes the literature on rural teacher policy research in Web of Science (WoS) databases from 2003 to 2022 and uses the bibliometric analysis method to determine the external characteristics of the overall growth trend, high-level scientific research institutions, core authors and highly cited literature of rural teacher policy research.

2. Literature Review of Rural Teacher Development Policy in China

In the academic field, there are many studies on rural teacher policy, which can be divided into comprehensive research and special research according to the breadth of the content [5]. It is suggested to enhance the vocational attraction of rural teachers, form a joint force of characteristic professional development of rural teachers, and stimulate the endogenous force of rural teachers in serving rural education [6]. However, there is still a certain gap between the policy discourse content, discourse position and policy implementation and the requirements of rural revitalization and education modernization in the new era. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the strategic attention paid to rural teachers and balance the allocation of policy discourses [7]. The policy tools are characterized by environmental overuse and a lack of demand. In the dimension of human resource management, the cultivation link is far ahead, while the use link is relatively insufficient. Therefore, it is suggested to build a systematic linkage policy tool system, coordinate, and orderly professional development link, and build a harmonious and symbiotic policy ecosystem. Although the policy system of rural teachers in our country has formed gradually, the policy effect has also appeared. To solve the existing problems, it is necessary to clarify the context and main presentation methods of policy improvement, consolidate the research foundation of policy improvement, take main body coordination as the basic clue of policy improvement, and further highlight the rural position of policy formulation.

In addition to the rural teacher policy itself, rural revitalization strategy, sustainable development strategy and other strategic background will also affect the direction of rural teacher policy making [8]. The rural teacher team is an important force in promoting the balanced development of basic education of high quality. The existing policies in our country to support the development of rural teacher’s team include free normal school students, publicly funded normal school students, a special post plan, an excellent teacher policy, a three-teacher-one assistance policy, urban and rural principal teacher exchange system, national training plan, among others [9]. In addition, the research on the development policy of teachers in ethnic minority areas is also the focus of Chinese scholars [10]. We should give priority to developing normal education for ethnic minorities and constantly improve the “quantity” and “quality” of teachers in ethnic minority areas. To establish and improve the teaching staff’s security mechanism by combining the preferential policy and preferential treatment policy, the mainland supports the border areas, cities and towns support the countryside, and establishes and improves the mutual aid mechanism for teachers [11].

However, there are many problems in the formulation and implementation of the current rural teacher allocation policy. The government does not know enough about the importance of market mechanism, and the amount of compensation for rural teachers is generally low [12]. It should improve the measures in order to improve the allocation of teachers’ professional matching rate and construct a guidance mechanism for balanced allocation of quality teachers between schools [13]. The living allowance that teachers receive is not enough to make up for the loss of teachers’ professional utility caused by the disadvantaged location of schools. Therefore, we should scientifically calculate the psychological pricing of rural teachers in remote and difficult areas and establish a highly accurate policy mechanism for matching the region and salary compensation. The measures to guarantee the salary and treatment of rural teachers should move from policy-oriented to legal regulation. The income and treatment of rural teachers should be further improved in the form of various subsidies, and the teachers of public primary and secondary schools in the compulsory education stage should be established as national special public officials to make the life of rural teachers more decent and dignified. The lack of provincial financial coordination results in the low subsidy standards in some regions. The deviation of local government policy implementation hinders the improvement of rural teachers’ actual sense of gain.

To further optimize the living allowance policy for rural teachers, it is necessary to formulate a scientific living allowance implementation plan, establish the incentive and restraint mechanism of financial input, and improve the dynamic living allowance supervision mechanism. The lack of provincial financial support for this policy increases the county-level financial burden of some underdeveloped areas; the distribution scope of this policy is facing the trend of passive expansion to high school teachers; rural outlying areas of urban districts in less developed areas becomes easy to be ignored in the process of subsidization. It is suggested that governments at all levels should further strengthen their support for rural teachers’ living allowances and establish a comprehensive support policy for rural teachers as soon as possible, including granting subsidies [14].

The implementation of the policy of teacher exchange rotation in urban and rural areas has essentially solved the problem of the shortage of teachers in rural schools. However, there is a conflict between the teacher exchange rotation policy and the interests of the school. The exchange rotation policy does not pay enough attention to the interests of floating teachers; rural schools have difficulties in the management of floating teachers, which reduces the social evaluation of rural teachers and aggravates the backward situation of rural education. Therefore, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the implementation of the teacher exchange rotation policy in urban and rural areas and promote the development of rural education, education administrative departments should strengthen the assessment and accountability of the implementation of the teacher exchange rotation policy in township schools, specify the incentives and support measures for floating teachers in the exchange rotation policy, and establish a floating teacher evaluation system suitable for rural characteristics [15].

3. Method

3.1. Research Design and Procedure of Bibliometric Approach

It refers to the discovery of potential rules and information in many literature data through quantitative analysis of literature data. Common bibliometric software mainly includes VOSviewer and Citespace. We use keyword co-occurrence clustering, which are highly refined by authors on their research, usually including research objects, research perspectives and research methods. High-frequency co-occurrence keywords reflect the long-term research hotspots of specific research topics. This index can help researchers to survey the distribution of research hotspots within the search scope and clearly discover which topics are hot (mature) and which ones are relatively insufficient. In general, the paper will introduce several main clusters formed by the research topic. Main data sources/types of bibliometric data include Web of science data, Scopus data, national fund project data, patent information data, etc. Analysis process contains data preparation, data sorting (cleaning and weight removal), different indicators running chart (drawing), map interpretation and article writing.

3.2. Research Method and Process

The main objective of this study is to use bibliometric analysis to examine the rural teacher development policy in China’s current education system. The advanced retrieval function of Web of Science (WoS) is used for foreign literature data, the core collection of Web of Science is selected for database, and the time span of literature retrieval is consistent with that of domestic literature. The search type was “rural teachers (theme) and education policy (theme)” and 668 studies were obtained. After eliminating irrelevant literature using a manual method, 296 journal papers were selected as valid samples. The search topic was “rural teacher policy” or “Rural Teacher Policy”. The time span is nearly 20 years, from 1 January 2003 to 19 October 2022. Journal sources are unlimited. By using the functions of keyword clustering, hot words outburst analysis and time zone chart, combined with Excel statistical functions and VosViewer software, the external statistical features of annual literature, core research forces and research methods of rural teachers’ policy research in the past 20 years at home and abroad are presented. At the same time, this study deeply explores the main content, development process and research trend of this field, and analyzes the internal characteristics of this field. Analyzing both the internal and external characteristics of the literature, the knowledge map and evolution path of domestic and foreign rural teachers’ policy research from 2003 to 2022 are clearly determined with the hotspots, frontier fields and research trends, and other potential or hidden value information is also presented in this paper.

The number of published papers each year shows an overall rising trend, which conforms to the development stage of our educational policy and the stage of national concern for rural education. According to the numbers of publication each year, this study divides the policy research of rural teachers in China into three stages. The first stage is the embryonic stage (2003–2006), during which a total of three papers were published, one of which was the reflection of front-line teachers on rural education policies, and the other two were the research of university researchers on policies related to financial investment in rural education. At this stage, researchers paid little attention to the policy field of rural teachers. The second stage was the stable exploration period (2007–2015), and the number of publications increased sharply compared with the previous stage. The average annual papers published in this stage was 15.6. The third stage is the stable growth period (2016–2022), during which the number of papers published in this stage is large and presents a stable growth trend. Except for a slight decline in 2020, the number of publications in this stage reaches a digital peak of 65 papers in 2021, and the number of papers published in 2022 is relatively reduced, though still remaining at a certain level (See Figure 1).

4. Result

4.1. The Spatial Dimension Analysis

In this study, the cited data of the research literature and the number of published papers of each author obtained by WOS viewer are selected as the criteria for core authors. There are 67 authors with more than 2 published papers and 48 with more than 12 cited papers. Therefore, there are 48 core authors in this paper, accounting for 8.5% of all authors. In addition, it can be interestingly found that some authors produce a high number of publications with a low number of citations, while some authors published fewer papers showing a high number of citations. The number of citations reflects the academic value of a document to a certain extent. The higher the number of citations, the higher the academic value and the higher the quality. Therefore, only a few of the authors in this field are excellent considering both the quantity and quality of publications (See Figure 2).

The explanation for why some authors of Chinese literature are on large nodes is that the maximum number of publications by a single author in Chinese literature is six, while that by a single author in foreign literature is three, resulting in the large nodes shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, a meaningful finding that can also be drawn from Figure 2 is that the cooperation density of the foreign academic community, namely the number of scholars in an academic community, is relatively greater than that of the Chinese academic community. Based on the analysis above, it is suggested that Chinese scholars can form a broader and higher quality academic community to promote a greater academic performance (See Figure 3).

Figure 3 shows the cooperation network of countries and regions that have published foreign studies evaluated in this paper. The larger the number of publications and the closer the links between countries, the smaller the density between fonts and the thicker the lines. Some large academic countries and regions with severe inequality pay more attention to the policy research of rural teachers, such as China, the United States, Australia, England, South Africa, Canada and other countries and regions (Brazil is not shown in the figure due to its lack of close cooperation with other countries and regions; however, its number of publications is relatively large). In addition, due to the small number of countries with scatter distribution, only the largest national and regional cooperation network is shown. Additionally, the figure also indicated that the links between countries and regions are relatively extensive and close, which, to some extent, reflects the common expectation of the international community to jointly eliminate poverty.

Table 1. Information table of the top 10 most cited foreign studies on rural teacher development policy.

Topic	Author	Country	Year
Doing More with Less Teacher Professional Learning Communities in Resource-Constrained Primary Schools in Rural China	Sargent, Tanja C.	USA	2009
A new model to understand the career choice and practice location decisions of medical graduates	Stagg, P.	Australia	2009
Social Responsibility as a Dimension of Intelligence, and as an Educational Goal: Insights From Programmatic Research in an African Society	Serpell, Robert	Zambia	2011
Emerging perceptions of teacher quality and teacher development in China	Peng, Wen J.	England, China	2014
Variables affecting teachers’ intentions to include students with disabilities in regular primary schools in Bangladesh	Ahmmed, Masud	Australia	2014
Prevalence and correlates of tobacco use amongst junior collegiates in twin cities of western Nepal: A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey	Sreeramareddy, Chandrashekhar T.	Nepal, India	2008
Meeting the needs of children and young people with speech, language and communication difficulties	Lindsay, Geoff; Dockrell, Julie	England, Scotland	2010
Bilingual intercultural education in indigenous schools: an ethnography of teacher interpretations of government policy	Valdiviezo, Laura	USA	2009
Constructing and Reconstructing the Rural School Problem: A Century of Rural Education Research	Biddle, Catharine	USA	2016
Are schools a good setting for adolescent sexual health promotion in rural Africa? A qualitative assessment from Tanzania	Plummer, Mary L.	England	2007

shows the statistics of the top 10 foreign studies with the highest citation rate. The research content mainly involves how to guarantee the quality of education when the number of rural teachers is short, and how to improve the ability of rural teachers in sex education, special education, drug education and other aspects of rural schools. Compared with the top 10 most cited Chinese studies, foreign literature pay more attention to micro issues, while Chinese literature pay more attention to macro content and maintain consistency with the trend of national policies.

4.2. Research Paradigm and Research Methods

This study adopts a mainstream idea of research paradigms and divides the current research paradigms of rural teachers’ policies into philosophical research and empirical research. Empirical research methods are divided into qualitative, quantitative, and mixed research methods. Additionally, the mixed research is the combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. At the same time, data collection methods in this study are divided into secondary data (mainly including statistical data, policy texts, journal papers, etc.), field survey (mainly including questionnaires, interviews, and the application of two or more comprehensive methods), secondary data combined with field survey, and no clear data collection methods. Meanwhile, the frequency and proportion of various methods are shown in the table below (see

Table 2. Research paradigm and research methods of Chinese literature in rural teacher policies.

Research Paradigm	Research Methodology	Frequency		Ratio
Speculative research		7		1.59%
Empirical research	Qualitative research	235	433	53.41%	98.41%
	Quantitative research	67		15.23%
	Mixed research	130		29.55%

and

Table 3. Data collection methods of Chinese literature on rural teacher policies.

Data Collection Methods		Frequency		Ratio
Secondary data		274		63%
Field survey	Questionnaire	32	136	31%
	Interview	11
	Mixed research methods	93
Field survey and Secondary data		22		5%
Unclear data collection methods		1		0%

).

With respect to the sources of data used in the literature, 274 samples used secondary data, accounting for 63% among the empirical research, which is mainly provided by the government. Looking at the specific research methods, it is found that these studies mainly carried out bibliometric analysis of secondary data and analysis of policy texts. This shows that most of the current research on rural teacher policy tends to “bury in paper and do research”, rather than “go into the school to do research”. A total of 136 studies were collected using field survey, accounting for 31% of the total empirical research. Among them, 32 used questionnaires, 11 used interviews, and 93 used two or more methods of data collection (including questionnaires, interviews, and observation). In 22 studies, secondary data combined with field research were used to collect data. In the field investigation, a small number of scholars used narrative research (1 article), case study (11 articles) and field investigation (7 articles). This shows that the policy research methods of rural teachers in the past 20 years are mainly based on the statistics and policy texts released by the state, and the literature measurement tools, and policy text tools are used to further interpret the national policies. At the same time, these are supplemented by field investigation carried out by the author with the intention of collecting real and rich data, to observe the actual implementation of the policy, and to provide detailed data support for the formulation of major policies concerning rural teachers. Overall, exploring the practical social needs of first-line rural teachers, the problems in the implementation process of rural teacher policies are analyzed, and targeted solutions are thus put forward, to serve the macro strategy of rural revitalization.

However, foreign researchers all adopt the empirical research paradigm, among which the qualitative research methods occupy half of the proportion. Among the qualitive practical studies, some scholars adopted the methods of life history (one article), ethnography (two articles) and field investigation (five articles). By living in rural areas, observing the living and learning conditions of residents for a long time, conducting in-depth communications with local teachers and students, the researchers can obtain real and accurate first-hand data through embedded research based on specific situations of local education and teaching, rather than superficial information. There is obvious heterogeneity in research paradigms and methods between the Chinese and foreign scholars.

4.3. Research Theme Analysis

The chart drawn in Excel can be used to intuitively understand the overall situation of the studies; meanwhile, these can be combined with the knowledge map for in-depth mining and interpretation to grasp the topic research situation and frontier trend. Based on CiteSpace software, this paper sets the time slice as 1 and the threshold as top 50, selects the shortest path algorithm, generates knowledge maps such as keyword co-occurrence, mutation word list and time zone view, and summarizes the research themes and trends of rural teacher policies at home and abroad carried out in the past 20 years.

4.4. Research Hotspots and Co-Occurrence of Keywords

Through the frequency and centrality of keywords, we can understand the research hotspots in the field of rural teacher policy at home and abroad. In the keyword co-occurrence map of WoS platform, the network density was 0.0161 (N = 331, E = 878), the clustering module value Q was 0.7951, and the average contour value S was 0.9397. The keyword co-occurrence map of platform was 0.0079 (N = 364, E = 521), the clustering module value Q was 0.8388, and the average contour value S was 0.8923. Therefore, the knowledge maps produced by relevant studies at home and abroad present reasonable clustering results and high reliability.

By sorting out the top 10 keywords with the highest frequency, the co-occurrence of keywords in

Table 4. Details of the top 10 co-occurrence frequencies of keywords in the research literature.

Platform	Frequency	Center	Year	Key Word
WoS	32	0.41 (1)	2008	education
	28	0.07 (20)	2020	rural education
	17	0.15 (5)	2003	teacher
	13	0.07 (15)	2007	policy
	10	0.06 (24)	2013	student
	8	0.1 (9)	2020	quality
	7	0.2 (2)	2009	knowledge
	7	0.18 (3)	2013	belief
	7	0.06 (27)	2016	achievement

is obtained. In the studies of the WoS database, from the perspective of frequency, “student”, “quality”, “achievement”, “belief”, “knowledge” and so on are the most important core keywords with exclusion of the search terms “ education”, “rural education”, “teacher”, and “policy” are shown. In the view of centrality, “belief” has the greatest effect on the “medium” of the keyword co-occurrence map, and the centrality value is as high as 0.18, which indicates that a considerable number of rural teacher policy studies focused on commitment and South Africa. At the same time, the terms related to rural teachers’ policies, such as “policy tools”, “policy analysis”, “compulsory education”, and “policy changes”, also show higher frequency. In terms of centrality, “rural education” is the most important keyword, with a centrality value as high as 0.52. The other words with higher centrality are “countryside”, “teacher policy”, “policy”, “education policy”, “rural teachers”, “rural teachers”, etc. The words with “low frequency and high centrality” include “public policy” (n = 6, 0.4 centrality and the third place), “rural school” (n = 6, The centrality was 0.3 and ranked 7th), and “ethnic areas” (n = 3, centrality was 0.28 and ranked 9th), indicating that these words are closely connected with research related to rural teacher policies. Similarly, by observing the time node of the earliest appearance of keywords, we can find that the keyword of rural education began to receive attention as early as 2003, and 2007 was a year when there was a significant number of hot topics in the research, such as “rural teachers”, “education policies” and “countryside”. After that, academic circles paid more attention to professional development, policy implementation and other contents. The reason may lie in the fact that since 2006, China has promulgated a series of policies to promote the balanced development of teachers in compulsory education in urban and rural areas, such as “the Plan of Special Posts Teachers”, “the Plan of Public Punded Peachers” and “the Plan of Rural Teachers Support” (See Table 4 and Figure 4).

4.5. Analysis of the Evolution Process of Research Hotspots and Content

The use of keywords to generate a time–space view can analyze the development context of rural teachers’ policies. By studying the literature content and combining with the knowledge map of the evolution path, the research vein of rural teachers’ policy can be divided into three stages. In addition, to reduce the turnover rate of rural teachers and guarantee the treatment of teachers, more attention is paid to the input of teachers’ salary, and the subsidy and performance subsidy of rural teachers are increased. According to this document, the international policy of rural teachers can be divided into three stages, which is essentially consistent with the research stage of the policy of rural teachers in China. The number of published papers in this stage is quite large, and the number of published papers begins to increase significantly in 2020, which also shows that foreign scholars attach increasing importance to rural teachers.

Using CiteSpace software and selecting “cluster”, the co-word graph was obtained with 364 network nodes and 685 connections. The network density was 0.0079. The value of Modularity Q was 0.8388, greater than the critical value 0.3, indicating that the significant community structure of the co-word network and good clustering effect. The mean silhouette value of 0.8923 is greater than the critical value of 0.5, indicating that the clustering results are reasonable. By using log likelihood ratio (LLR) algorithm, a total of 11 keyword clusters have been formed: #0 rural teacher, #1 rural teacher, #2 rural education, #3 education policy, #4 policy adjustment, #5 substitute teacher, #6 teacher mobility, #7 public policy, #8 special post plan, #9 policy analysis, and #10 professional development. Further statistics on the related indicators of cluster labels show that the number of nodes contained in the first 11 bits of cluster labels are all above 13, the maximum value of centrality is 1, and the minimum value is 0.894. The clustering results are all significant at the 0.0001 level, and the overall clustering effect is good. The high-frequency word “policy” indicates that the rural teacher policy has been the focus of domestic scholars. The research on rural teachers’ policy mainly focuses on the aspects of policy implementation, policy evaluation and policy significance. The high-frequency words “training” and “mode” indicate that the rural teacher training mode has gradually become the focus of Chinese scholars (See Figure 5 and Figure 6). In recent years, the continuing education of rural teachers has been one of the focuses of Chinese scholars.

The cluster #0 “rural teachers” appeared in 2007 and was subsequently inherited to almost every node. Rural teachers have received much attention since 2007, which is consistent with the change in the number of studies. The keywords involved are policy change, urban teachers, balanced development, education administration, etc. Cluster #1 “rural teachers” involved keywords such as rural teachers, new era, educational policies, and countryside, etc., which scholars have been concerned with to date. Cluster #2 “rural education” has attracted much attention from scholars since 2003, involved keywords such as policy, rural teachers, employment, etc. Cluster #3 “education policy” involved keywords such as countryside, change, rural schools, compulsory education, etc. Cluster #4 “policy adjustment” involved keywords such as primary school teachers, primary and secondary schools, villages, English teachers, etc. Cluster #5, “substitute teachers”, and #6, “teacher mobility”, were continuously paid attention to by scholars until 2018 and 2021, respectively. Cluster #5 “substitute teacher” involved the keywords normal colleges, rural middle schools, government-run education, enrollment policies, etc. Cluster #6 “teacher mobility” involved keywords such as policy tilt, survey report, urban and rural coordination, educational equity, etc. Cluster #7 “public policy” involved keywords such as policy tools, open recruitment, local governments, rural schools, etc. Cluster #8 “special post plan” involved keywords such as countermeasures, implementation effect, special post teachers, implementation status, etc. Cluster #9 “policy analysis” involved the keywords salary, policy research, teachers, special plans, etc. Cluster #10 “professional development” involved the keywords training policy, caring relationship, training mode, survival state, etc. Cluster #2 “rural education”, cluster #3 “education policy”, cluster #4 “policy adjustment”, cluster #7 “public policy”, cluster #8 “special post plan”, cluster #10 “professional development” have been paid continuous attention by scholars (See

Table 5. Keyword clustering of domestic and foreign studies studied in rural teacher development policy.

No.	Nodes	Key Content
#0	43	community (8.63, 0.005); smoking prevention program (4.29, 0.05); adaptation (4.29, 0.05); silence (4.29, 0.05); grandparents (4.29, 0.05)
#1	31	Vietnam (6.68, 0.01); urban (6.68, 0.01); English as language of learning and teaching (3.33, 0.1); improvisation (3.33, 0.1); upper secondary schools (3.33, 0.1)
#2	27	inclusive education (9.94, 0.005); technology integration (9.94, 0.005); teacher perceptions (9.94, 0.005); teachers’ intentions (4.94, 0.05); colleague support (4.94, 0.05)
#3	25	Africa (5.83, 0.05); Estonia (4.7, 0.05); mainstream (4.7, 0.05); planning (4.7, 0.05); basic education (4.7, 0.05)
#4	25	access (10.07, 0.005); professional development (5, 0.05); quality (5, 0.05); content knowledge (5, 0.05); excellence (5, 0.05)
#5	21	language and communication needs (7.14,0.01); transition (7.14, 0.01); speech (7.14, 0.01); parent involvement (7.14, 0.01); Bercow review (7.14, 0.01)
#6	16	teaching practices (6.63, 0.05); head start (6.63, 0.05); preschool teacher (6.63, 0.05); vocabulary (6.63, 0.05); acquisition (6.63, 0.05)
#7	15	education policy (16.57, 1.0 × 10−4); educational equality (10.96, 0.001); teaching contexts (5.44, 0.05); teacher research (5.44, 0.05); poverty (5.44, 0.05)
#8	12	maternal and child health (7.34, 0.01); sex work (7.34, 0.01); gender (7.34, 0.01); social norms (7.34, 0.01); sexual debut (7.34, 0.01)
#9	9	educational reform (12.12, 0.001); educational development (7.81, 0.01); democratization of education (7.81, 0.01); teachers’ professional autonomy (5.08, 0.05); secondary education (5.08, 0.05)
#10	9	learning environment (5.28, 0.05); attitude (5.28, 0.05); students with special needs (ssn) (5.28, 0.05); geometry (5.28, 0.05); online learning (5.28, 0.05)

).

Compared with the content clustering of the Chinese literature, the content clustering of the foreign literature shows a great difference. Cluster #0 “Community” involved the keywords community construction, community medical treatment, rehabilitation center, community relations, etc. This research content clustering mainly focuses on the remote and poor areas, taking their communities as groups, and conducts research and analysis on the education fields with the same characteristics. The internal structure of the community and the community relationship grid indirectly define the educational attributes of this region. For example, in the empirical study of Zimbabwe, communities have their own space of educational autonomy.

The concept of community in foreign literature is stronger than that in Chinese literature and has the meaning of race and group. Cluster #1 “Vietnam” involved the keywords public welfare project, leadership project, and Vietnamese-language teacher project. Vietnam’s remote areas have similar landforms and a large shared agricultural history with China. Its remote mountainous areas are less economically developed, and with limited educational resources. Vietnam has implemented the Teacher Leadership and Management Project in remote areas to promote teachers’ professional development and provide pathway channels for career advancement. Several empirical studies have tested and analyzed the effectiveness of teacher policies in remote mountainous areas in Vietnam. Cluster #2 “inclusive education” involved the keywords children with disabilities, school support, inclusive education policies, etc. Inclusive education is a new educational concept and process put forward in a declaration adopted at the World Congress on Special Needs Education held in Salamanca, Spain, on 10 June 1994.

As an educational trend, inclusive education accommodates all students, opposes discrimination and exclusion, promotes active participation, pays attention to collective cooperation, and meets different needs. It is education without exclusion, discrimination, and classification. Cluster #3 “Africa” involved the keywords South Africa, African countryside, culture, etc. Due to its characteristics of having a developing economy and scarce educational resources, Africa occupies a large proportion in the literature of rural education and education research in poor areas. Cluster #4 “access” involved the keywords educational equality, opportunity type, adult intervention, etc. Here, access to opportunities has two sides of meanings: access to educational resources, and the availability of negative influences, such as the accessibility of children in remote areas to cigarettes, drug abuse, or sexual harassment. Cluster #5 “language and communication needs” involved communication difficulties, etc. For example, the language used in some remote mountainous areas differs from the official language, making it difficult for teachers and local students to teach and learn the language.

Students, their families, and teachers also have barriers in language communication. Some countries or regions have multilingual environments, and some studies focus on the study of teachers in such schools. Cluster #6 “teaching practices” involved keywords such as non-native language teaching, student interaction, etc. As with language and communication needs, language is a practical problem for teachers derived from multilingual areas. How to teach students in their non-native language has become a research topic. Cluster #7 “education policy” involved the keywords rural education policy, rural education reform, etc. Cluster #8 “maternal and child health” involved the keywords public health, antenatal care, etc. Thess kind of research were beyond educational boundaries but essential for rural area people. The role of teachers in remote mountainous areas is not only to disseminate knowledge to children, but also to guide them and raise awareness of health concepts. Cluster #9 “educational reform” involved the keywords teacher policy reform, educational policy, reform challenge, etc. Cluster #10 “learning environment” involved the keywords interactive learning environment, online learning, preschool learning environment, etc. (See Figure 7 and Figure 8).

5. Discussion

Along with the results above, we found that the steady implementation of rural education reform is the core driving force of the rural revitalization strategy. Rural teachers are not only the decisive factor in the development of rural education, but also the key link point in shaping the harmonious ecology of rural education. To promote the guarantee of rural education equity and improve the quality of rural education is inseparable from the development of rural teachers [16]. With the deepening of the reform and development of rural basic education, scholars not only pay attention to the exploration of the deep mechanism of rural teacher policy, but also to the data-oriented diversified empirical research.

In the aspect of educational equity, with the development of the Internet, many empirical studies focus on the application of new tools to increase information transparency, to bring more effective development of educational equity. China’s remote mountainous areas, such as Yunnan, Xinjiang, Gansu, and other places, based on the “village access to the Internet” policy, multimedia teaching in rural China has developed more rapidly, using multimedia tools, more transparent and diversified teaching resources in rural schools. In terms of education quality, the most effective way to improve the quality of education is to enhance the effectiveness of teachers and provide professional development routes and training programs for teachers [17]. Chinese literature and foreign literature pay close attention to this field [18]. The research on rural teacher policy mainly focuses on the two aspects of education equity and education quality. It is mostly focus on colored people, racial segregation, racial discrimination, special education, disabled children, etc. In contrast, domestic studies mostly focus on the gap between urban and rural areas [19,20,21,22,23]. China’s rural teacher policy mainly focuses on promoting teachers’ professional development through a series of measures, such as national training programs, to improve the quality of education. In a country with a vast territory, a large population and prominent urban–rural dual structure, it is difficult to conduct empirical research on rural teacher policy.

5.1. Conclusion and Implication

We used the bibliometric analysis to examine the rural teacher development policy in China’s current education system. It was found that with the deepening of the reform and development of rural basic education, scholars not only pay attention to the exploration of the deep mechanism of rural teacher policy, but also to data-oriented diversified empirical research. The research on rural teacher policy mainly focuses on the two aspects of education equity and education quality. China’s rural teacher policy mainly focuses on promoting teacher professional development through a series of measures, such as national training program, to improve the quality of education.

5.2. Limitations of the Study

There are also some limitations on this study: for future study, a bigger sample size could be added to explore a comprehensive landscape of the rural teacher development policy in current world education system. China may be a country with higher amounts of resources; however, it is a country with an unfair distribution of wealth, an endemic problem in countries lacking democracy. Additionally, as in most countries, China offers insufficient support to teachers and ineffective implementation of policies, which produces severe and intense inequality. In addition, for the sample selection, a future study might add Chinese publications into the whole sample pooling process to carry out a more reasonable analysis of Chinese rural teacher development policy development. In the meanwhile, more comparative approaches could be used in future studies to analyze and discuss the similarities and differences in rural teacher development policy in China’s current education system. For future research, we also suggest carrying out a questionnaire with rural teachers to compare the issues that concern teachers and researchers. Moreover, we also suggest Chinese researchers to carry out investigations closer to the voices of educational agents. We suggest that they become closer to their communities and be able to move from the local to the global, from the real situation to the laws and norms, and above all, follow their fellow researchers from Asia, Africa, or Latin America in carrying out research on gender equality and fair justice.