Journal of Systems and Software, cilt.241, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Despite the proliferation of International Software Quality Standards (ISQS), integration into curricula and practice remains limited. This systematic literature review (SLR), conducted per PRISMA 2020 with a pre-registered, standard-neutral protocol (OSF: [URL blinded for review]), synthesizes evidence on how ISQS are taught, understood, and adopted. Searches of Scopus and Web of Science yielded 947 records; 155 peer-reviewed studies (2014–2025) were included. The corpus contains 59 qualitative papers (38.1% of the total). ISO/IEC 29,110 is the most studied standard (34, 21.9%), followed by ISO/IEC 12,207 (18, 11.6%) and CMMI (16, 10.3%). Research is concentrated in selected regions. The United States (18 papers), Mexico (15), Spain (14), and Brazil (9) together account for over one-third of the corpus. Safety-critical standards (IEC 62,304, DO-178C) appear in only 7 papers; ISO/IEC 42,001 in just one. In education (77 papers), curriculum fragmentation and complexity dominate barriers; game-based learning is the most studied intervention, though no study links it to post-graduation outcomes. In adoption (88 papers), complexity (42), resource constraints (33), and insufficient awareness (26) create compounding barriers, while management commitment and ISO/IEC 29,110 profiles are the strongest enablers. Awareness is the least-developed dimension (35 papers), with a gap between awareness and substantive understanding. Three structural gaps span all dimensions: compliance mechanism dynamics are understudied; agile-standards integration is treated as a barrier rather than a design challenge; and tool contributions are rarely evaluated against the barriers they target. A prioritized agenda targets underrepresented regions, AI quality standards, longitudinal outcomes, and scalable adoption pathways.