What do we know about novice school principals? A systematic review of existing international literature

Abstract

For much of the past half-century, scholars from various parts of the world have studied the early stages of school principals’ careers. This article presents the results of a review of research on novice principals (NPs) regarding its current status, intellectual structure and conceptual structure. The review conducted bibliometric and content analysis of relevant articles accessed through Scopus. The findings primarily concerned patterns in the knowledge production related to novice school principals. Our findings indicate that this line of research is still in its infancy, but has been growing rapidly in recent years. Related studies have mostly focused on three broad areas: preparation and development of NPs; NPs’ socialization process and the challenges they face; and NPs’ role in school improvement. Most of the related studies are found to be lacking in terms of a solid theoretical grounding. The implications of the results for the related literature are discussed.