INTRODUCTION: Moral education is an educational process of the continuation, construction, and transformation of moral and social norms, and is an important guarantee for the sustainable vitality of human morality. METHODS: With bibliometrics applied and VOSviewer and CiteSpace as tools, this paper systematically analyzes 497 articles published in the Social Sciences Citation Index of Web of Science core collection from 2000 to 2022 in the field of moral education research. RESULTS: By quantifying specific performance information in the field of moral education in terms of authors, journals, organizations and countries, this paper identifies the highly productive authors and organizations, as well as core journals (i.e., the ). A cluster analysis is used to show the knowledge structure, and an evolutionary analysis to present the macro-development trend of moral education. DISCUSSION: In this paper, the comprehensive description of the research topics on moral education clarifies the development model and disciplinary prospect of the moral education research, and provides theoretical and practical support for the continuous development and application practice of the moral education research.