Parents and caregivers in dyslexia research: A bibliometric review

Abstract

Background: Parents and caregivers play an important role in supporting children with dyslexia, particularly through home-based reading activities and informal learning support. Although parental involvement is widely acknowledged in dyslexia research, studies that explicitly examine parents’ challenges, expectations and roles in home-based support remain fragmented across disciplines.
Objectives: This study aimed to map global publication trends, thematic emphases and intellectual structures in research on parents and caregivers in the context of dyslexia.
Method: A bibliometric review was conducted using 437 peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in the Scopus database and published between 2000 and 2026. VOSviewer was used to examine international collaboration patterns, keyword co-occurrence networks and author co-citation structures.
Results: The findings show that research output and collaboration are concentrated in high-income Western countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, with limited representation from non-Western contexts. Keyword analysis indicates that parental involvement is mainly framed within child-centred, clinical and school-based research paradigms, while parent-centred perspectives and home-based support remain peripheral. Author co-citation analysis further shows that the field is shaped by developmental and cognitive research traditions, with limited consolidation around parent-focused or design-oriented scholarship.
Conclusion: This review identifies a gap in research addressing parents’ challenges and design-related expectations in home-based dyslexia support.
Contribution: The study contributes a structured bibliometric overview of parental dyslexia research and offers directions for developing parent-responsive, context-sensitive and design-informed dyslexia support initiatives.