Looking to the past for mapping the future: A bibliometric review of extant creativity research in second language...

Research on creativity in second (L2) or foreign language (FL) education has been ongoing for over a decade. However, to our best knowledge, no comprehensive review of the relevant literature has been conducted to date. To address this gap, we perform a bibliometric review using CiteSpace to analyze high-quality studies drawn from the WoS database. This review aims to identify general tendency, key themes, research frontiers, major contributors, and future directions in creativity research within L2 education, thus offering the stakeholders visualized and holistic insights. The results include: (1) Creativity research in L2 education is an emerging field that has seen rapid growth since 2020; (2) Three key themes have been explored in the literature: individual differences, L2 performance, and teaching for creativity; (3) Three main research frontiers have emerged over time: children, personality, and positive psychology; (4) There is a noticeable lack of collaboration both among authors and institutions, with much of the research being concentrated in a few institutions, primarily in China. We also discuss the findings and provide suggestions for future research.