This research presents a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis of the studies on character education in Indonesian Islamic boarding schools from Scopus datasets from 2011 to 2020. With a determined flow diagram and interactive Vosviewer visualization, the urgent goals are to describe the important elements of the bibliography, i.e., publication trends, the collaboration of the authors (co-authorship), and the terms used in the title and abstract (co-occurrence). It also synthesizes applied methods and classifies noble moral values. The summary of the findings are (1) networks visualization shows detailed links for mapping the status of topics that have or have not been widely explored or discussed, (2) many names are grouped, which means that they are working together, (3) the co-occurrence visualization shows the most dominant keyword is “Islamic boarding school,” (4) the instilling methods are classified as role models (exemplary), habituation, media-assisted, and integrated daily activities, and (5) the humanitarian values are classified as religious, friendliness, communication, environmental and social awareness, also responsibility. This SLR and BA’s major contribution is an extensive summary of the systematic classification and mapping of character, moral, and ethical values, and methods, as well as of the relevant literature. The growth of these developing topics is a recommendation for researchers to integrate methods in multi-disciplines and for achieving typical positive values. Finally, this review provides ideas and recommendations for determining the direction of further research. By examining connected or disconnected networks, readers may independently research using online mapping to generate fresh study ideas.

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