Introduction. The increasing demand for future skills in the 21st century has led to a growing emphasis on technology-driven learning approaches. However, traditional games have been empirically proven to enhance essential competencies such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. Despite this evidence, their role remains underexplored in the global research landscape.
This study aims to examine the extent to which traditional games are represented in the discourse on future skills and to identify potential gaps within the literature.
Methods. Employs a systematic review integrated with bibliometric mapping to analyze 180 publications indexed in Scopus (2000-2025) to address: 1) identify leading countries, affiliations, and authors; 2) examine influential sources and citation patterns; 3) explore thematic clusters and keyword co-occurrence; and 4) highlight research gaps. Data were processed using VOSviewer for network visualization, while the systematic review adhered to PRISMA guidelines to ensure methodological rigor and depth.
Results. The findings reveal a dominant techno-centric paradigm in future skills research, as evidenced by the prominence of keywords such as gamification, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence in the co-occurrence network. The technological orientation studies are reinforced by the geographical distribution of research, where countries from the Global North (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy) emerge as leading contributors in terms of publication volume and collaboration networks. Moreover, the absence of a central cluster in the source and organizational networks suggests fragmented knowledge production and the lack of a unified epistemic core. This indicates that the field, while expanding, has not yet reached conceptual maturity. Notably, traditional games are significantly underrepresented in the keyword network, despite extensive empirical evidence demonstrating their effectiveness in fostering collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. This reveals a critical misalignment between empirically validated learning practices and the dominant research discourse, which continues to prioritize technology-driven approaches.
Conclusion. The findings demonstrate a structurally imbalanced and techno-centric future skills discourse that overlooks culturally embedded learning practices such as traditional games. This study calls for a paradigm shift toward a more inclusive and human-centered understanding of future skills.
Implication. The need to broaden the conceptualization of future skills beyond technology-driven approaches by integrating culturally grounded learning practices, particularly traditional games, into educational research and policy.
Keywords
future skills, traditional games, bibliometrics
For Citation
Mardiani, D. P., Lestari, G. D., & Hariyati, N. (2026). Rethinking Future Skills Education through Traditional Games: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Mapping. Perspektivy nauki i obrazovania = Perspectives of Science and Education, (5), 589–605. https://doi.org/10.32744/pse.2026.5.38
Authors
Desika Putri Mardiani (Indonesia, Surabaya City) — Department of Educational Science. Universitas Negeri Surabaya. Email: desikamardiani@unesa.ac.id
Gunarti Dwi Lestari (Indonesia, Surabaya City) — Department of Educational Science. Universitas Negeri Surabaya. Email: gunartilestari@unesa.ac.id
Nunuk Hariyati (Indonesia, Surabaya City) — Department of Educational Science. Universitas Negeri Surabaya. Email: nunukhariyati@unesa.aac.id
© Desika Putri Mardiani, Gunarti Dwi Lestari, Nunuk Hariyati, 2026
The authors declared no conficts of interest
Received: 20 April 2026 | Approved: 15 July 2026 | Published: 31 October 2026
This is an open access article distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike International License (CC-BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal
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