Innovative approaches in cybersecurity education: a bibliometric study of pedagogical practices and trends

With the rapid digitalization of today’s world and the consequent rise of cybersecurity threats, there has been an increase in educational initiatives that are committed to teaching essential skills for tackling evolving threats. Traditional lecture-based style and fixed content courses for cybersecurity are no longer sufficient as students need real-time, dynamic, and practical skills to deal with new and ever-changing cyber threats. For that reason, several researchers have begun to explore innovative pedagogical strategies in cybersecurity education. This study carries out a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of global research on innovative teaching methods in cybersecurity education and identifies the key trends, influential publications, and emerging pedagogical practices. A dataset of relevant publications in the areas from the past 15 years from Scopus database was analyzed using relevant bibliometric tools like Biblliometrix and VOS viewer. It sheds light on the evolution of the research focus, top authors, journals, and collaboration networks, and mappings of the main teaching methods like gamification, simulations, virtual labs, and flipped classrooms. It also shows the trends in journal word co-occurrence. Additionally, this study highlights the distribution of research and reveals understudied areas of the field. Findings help deepen understanding of the nature of pedagogical innovations that are transforming cybersecurity education and provide useful guidance for educators, curriculum developers, and policymakers. This study closes with a research agenda to address gaps and increase the integration of innovative teaching methods in cybersecurity curricula.