Teacher Compensation and Educational Sustainability: A Bibliometric Analysis

This study aims to map global research on teacher compensation and educational sustainability, identify publication trends, leading contributors, intellectual structures, and conceptual themes, and explain their implications for educational management and policy. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on Scopus-indexed journal articles published from 2014 to 2024. The data were screened through PRISMA-based procedures and analyzed using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer through performance analysis, co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence. The results show a sharp increase in publications after 2020, indicating growing scholarly attention to the sustainability of the education workforce. The keywords sustainability, education, teacher education, engagement, and technology-related themes occupy central positions in the network, whereas explicit compensation-related terms remain peripheral. This finding suggests that teacher compensation is still underrepresented as a core theme within the sustainability discourse, even though the literature consistently links fair and transparent compensation with teacher motivation, well-being, retention, and educational quality. This study concludes that teacher compensation should be repositioned as a strategic component of educational sustainability rather than merely an administrative or fiscal issue. It also highlights the need for compensation policies that are fair, transparent, workload-sensitive, and supportive of long-term teacher retention.