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Abstract

Following the accumulation and diversification of the knowledge base in the field of educational leadership and management, we have witnessed a boom in systematic reviews of different types focusing on a diverse range of topics in specified geographical boundaries. This study aims to gain insight into the nature and composition of this fast-growing body of systematic reviews in educational leadership and management by examining the methods used, the topics explored and the geographies covered in these reviews through a three-dimensional conceptual model. We analysed 236 systematic reviews spread over 60 journals. Descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages were used to identify trends. Findings suggest that the conceptual model presented provides important insights into the past, present and future of a knowledge base through its focus on the patterns of knowledge evident in systematic reviews. While affirming the widespread recognition of the value of systematic reviews in the field, the results reveal that systematic reviews have largely focused on a narrow range of topics, suggesting evidence available on many widely explored topics that still await to be synthesised. Reviews focusing on methodological issues have been particularly rare. It is also demonstrated that the field itself has attracted significant attention as a unit of analysis, indicating the interest in mapping the research landscape and understanding the dynamics of the field at global, regional and national levels. Based on these findings, potential gaps have been identified, and suggestions have been made for future directions.

Keywords

Systematic reviews educational leadership knowledge production educational management

Introduction

The field of educational leadership and management (EDLM) has expanded significantly in terms of both geographic and topical coverage during the last several decades. The field emerged in the USA in the mid-twentieth century and slowly extended to other Anglo-Saxon countries until the end of the century (Campbell, 1979; Oplatka, 2010). It, however, only became an independent research field for most other Western and non-Western countries after the turn of the millennium (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2021). With the advancements in research methods over the years and various changes and issues encountered in educational systems across countries, the last two decades have witnessed a wide range of topics studied by EDLM scholars worldwide. This means that the knowledge base in the field has been accumulated and diversified a great deal over the years. While reviews of this knowledgebase have long existed in the field, the first conceptual paper focusing on the methodology of systematically reviewing research goes back to the early 2010s (Hallinger, 2013). This paper proposed a framework for systematic reviews, which was used a year later to methodologically examine reviews conducted over 52 years (Hallinger, 2014). Both papers called for more rigorous methods to be employed when reviewing research in the field, in contrast to research reviews conducted during previous eras.

Following this call, the field has witnessed a boom in systematic reviews of different types. During the last decade in particular, there has been a great effort of the field's scholars across nations (e.g. Flessa et al., 2018; Gümüş et al., 2018; Hallinger and Bryant, 2013a; Mertkan et al., 2017; Oplatka and Arar, 2017) to integrate the research done in various contexts or on various topics to contribute to the accumulation of the knowledge base from different perspectives. Hallinger and Kovacevic (2021) used the term ‘consolidation’ to identify this period of the field's development. While systematic reviews are now common in the field, we do not yet know which topics or national knowledge bases have been synthesised and how.

Systematic reviews ease the navigation of the field and support evidence-based policy-making by collating, synthesising and disseminating available evidence (Cook et al., 2013) while also directing future research by highlighting common findings and shortcomings of previous research (Decombe, 2018). However, their contribution changes with the review methods used since each method is used for a particular purpose. In addition, focused topics and the geographical coverage of the reviews provide important insights regarding the contributions of the existing reviews to the field as a whole. Therefore, it is important to identify and synthesise the key features of the existing systematic review literature in any field to delineate knowledge bases synthesised and inform future systematic reviews. This became particularly important for the EDLM field, given the rapid increase in the existing systematic reviews during the last decade.

This paper examines the systematic reviews published in the EDLM field since the emergence of the field as a research area through a comprehensive conceptual framework. It focuses on the following research questions:

What is the volume and growth trajectory of systematic reviews in the field of EDLM, and how have these reviews spread across journals over time?

What is the nature of systematic reviews in terms of review methods?

What is the composition of systematic reviews regarding topics and geographical coverage?

What do the nature and composition of existing systematic reviews suggest about the field's evolution and future?

Through extensive searches of Scopus and reference lists of identified papers, we located 236 systematic review studies of various types published between 1979 and 2023, inclusive of both years. Reviewing these studies has not only revealed the nature and composition of the growing body of systematic reviews in the field but also provided significant information regarding the past, present and future of the EDLM knowledge base and scholarship.

Conceptual framework

This review is organised around a three-dimensional conceptual model of systematic reviews (see Figure 1). The first dimension refers to the method. There is now a considerable degree of variation in how systematic reviews are conducted and for what purpose (Gough et al., 2012; Gough, 2013). This variation is described in terms of ‘a family of research approaches that are a form of secondary level analysis (secondary research) that brings together the findings of primary research to answer a research question’ (Newman and Gough, 2020: 4). While these methods share commonalities, each has important methodological differences, uses different types of evidence and is conducted for different reasons to address a wide range of questions (Gough, 2007; Whittemore and Knafl, 2005).

Figure 1.

Three-dimensional conceptual model.

First, we have assigned reviewed articles to one of the seven pre-determined systematic review methods: meta-analysis, bibliometrics, scoping/topographical review, narrative synthesis, meta-synthesis, umbrella review and hybrid review. Meta-analysis aims to integrate findings from quantitative studies using statistical methods to estimate effect size variance based on a body of empirical studies that are similar, if not identical, to one another in terms of the research design (Aguinis et al., 2011; Glass, 1977). Using a large and potentially diverse body of literature, scoping reviews/topographical reviews explore the volume, characteristics and nature of research conducted in a field of interest or on a broad topic to present an overview of the existing scholarship rather than synthesise the findings (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005; Levac et al., 2010; Pham et al., 2014). Such reviews generally use the descriptive content analysis method to qualitatively and/or quantitatively explore the nature and the scope of the existing literature. Bibliometrics is ‘the quantitative study of literatures as they are reflected in bibliographies’ (White and McCain, 1998: 119). Using massive volumes of bibliographic data, it evaluates the contributions of research constituents through performance analysis or portrays the social and structural relationships between these constituents through science mapping (Gutiérrez-Salcedo et al., 2018).

Narrative synthesis is a relatively new method that relies on a systematic and transparent search process to summarise and synthesise the findings of studies included in the review (Popay et al., 2006; Snilstveit et al., 2012; Xiao and Watson, 2019). It differs from narrative review, which often refers to more traditional reviews (Davies, 2000; Paré et al., 2015), ‘in moving beyond a summary of study findings to attempt a synthesis which can generate new insights or knowledge and be more systematic and transparent’ (Mays et al., 2005: 12). Both quantitative and qualitative studies can serve as data sources, but findings are reported in a narrative format (Edwards and Kaimal, 2016; Higginbottom et al., 2015). For example, Hallinger and Heck (1998) were classified as narrative synthesis even though they were quantitatively oriented and used quantitative studies in their analysis because the search process was systematic and transparent while the findings were reported in a narrative format.

Meta-synthesis is the process of synthesising the findings of qualitative studies. It offers novel interpretations and goes beyond the primary studies to present interpretations that ‘will not be found in any one research report but, rather, are inferences derived from taking all of the reports in a sample as a whole’ (Thorne et al., 2004: 1358). Frequently called a systematic review of reviews, umbrella reviews use a sample of systematic reviews to provide an overall picture of the existing evidence on a particular topic based on the information collected and evaluated from a number of systematic reviews (Faulkner et al., 2022; Papatheodorou, 2019). Our paper is an example of an umbrella review that aims to explore the nature and composition of the existing systematic reviews in a specific field of study, EDLM. The hybrid approach uses a combination of any of the six methods explained above and presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Overview of systematic review methods.

Type of review	Purpose	Focus	Overall tendency	Description of the approach	Examples from reviewed studies
Scoping review/topographical review	Describe	Scope of a body of scholarship	Focuses on the development of the field or popular models/theories in the field. Provides information on popular authors, topics, methodological components, etc. Generally use large numbers of studies	Arksey and O’Malley (2005) Peterson et al. (2017) Pham et al. (2014)	Flessa et al. (2021) Hallinger and Bryant (2013b) Gümüş & Bellibaş, (2019) Aravena (2022)
Narrative synthesis	Describe/synthesise	Findings of past research	Focuses on knowledge production regarding specific concept(s). Generally use small numbers of studies	Popay et al. (2006) Rodgers et al. (2009)	Daniëls et al. (2019) Gaol (2023) Lochmiller and Cunningham (2019) Khalifa et al. (2016)
Meta-analysis	Test	Population effects and variability in effect sizes	Tests a relationship between different variables based on the results of previous related quantitative studies. Can use either small or large numbers of studies	Glass (1976) Egger et al. (1997) Kelley and Kelley (2012)	Witziers et al. (2003) Robinson et al. (2008) Karadağ et al. (2015)
Bibliometrics	Describe	Impact of research constituents, collaboration patterns and intellectual structure of a field	Relies on the bibliographic information of the reviewed studies and provides various author, keyword and citation analyses. Generally use large numbers of studies	Donthu et al. (2021) Gutiérrez-Salcedo et al. (2018) Osareh (1996)	Hallinger and Kovačević (2019) Kuzhabekova (2023)
Meta-synthesis	Synthesise/extend	Findings of qualitative research	Re-analyses the findings of the reviewed papers and produce new knowledge. Often aims to develop new models/theories. Generally use small numbers of studies	Thorne et al., (2004) Zimmer (2006) Walsh (2005)	Gümüş, Hallinger, et al. (2021)
Umbrella reviews	Describe, synthesise, test or extend (depending on the nature of the included reviews)	Findings or the scope of multiple systematic reviews	Collects information from multiple systematic reviews to compare and contrast findings to provide an overall picture of the existing evidence on a particular topic	Papatheodorou, (2019) Aromataris et al. (2015)	Hallinger (2014) Tan et al., (2024)

Note: Adapted from Xiao and Watson (2019).

The second dimension, topic, can be divided into four: a field (e.g. EDLM), a theme (e.g. leadership effects), methodology (e.g. statistical applications) and a journal (e.g. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership). When the topic is the entire field, the review includes articles regardless of the theme as long as they focus on the field of interest (e.g. Hammad and Hallinger, 2017). Reviews focusing on a specific theme include articles only if they focus on the theme examined (e.g. Hobson and Sharp, 2005), while those concentrating on methodology explore methods adopted in EDLM studies. The scope of reviews focusing on methodology is quite extensive and can range from the formulation of research questions, data collection and analysis to reporting (Mbuagbaw et al., 2020). Lastly, some reviews are interested in the coverage of certain journals without any thematic or methodological focus.

The third dimension of our conceptual framework is about geographical coverage, which provides insights into the geographical boundary of included systematic reviews. It can take three forms: global, regional and country-specific. Global reviews take into account the topic without any geographical restrictions. They include papers regardless of where the study was conducted or where the authors were located. Reviews examining a topic on a regional or country-specific scale employ a regional or country-specific perspective. They include papers in the study corpus only if they focus on a specific region (e.g. Asia) or a specific country (e.g. South Africa).

Overall, each review focuses on a topic at a global, regional or country-specific scale using a variety of approaches (e.g. Bennett et al., 2007; Breault and Breault, 2010; Bush et al., 2018; Trujillo, 2013). Reviews broadest in scope focus on an entire field (topic) on a global scale (geographical focus), most probably using scoping/topographical review or bibliometrics methods (e.g. Hallinger and Kovačević, 2019).

Method

Selection of the reviews

This study used PRISMA guidelines to review systematic reviews published in the field of EDLM (Moher et al., 2015). At the outset, 24 journals were selected to identify the articles for this review. Twenty-one of these were core EDLM journals identified by Hallinger and Kovačević (2019), and three were educational review journals that publish reviews in the field of education (see Table 2 for the journal list). We started with a journal-based search to ensure we entirely covered the most relevant EDLM sources. This stage was followed by a database search not bounded by field-specific journals and reference checking to extend our reach and identify relevant papers published elsewhere, resulting in a considerable number of additional papers published in 36 additional journals not included in our original journal list.

Table 2.

List of journals included in the initial journal-based search.

Educational leadership and management journals
1	NASSP Bulletin (NASSP)
2	Educational Leadership (EdLd)
3	Economics of Education Review (EER)
4	Education and Urban Society (EUS)
5	Journal of Educational Administration (JEA)
6	International Journal of Educational Management (IJEM)
7	Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ)
8	Urban Education (UrbEd)
9	Educational Management Administration and Leadership (EMAL)
10	School Leadership and Management (SLAM)
11	Management in Education (MiE)
12	School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI)
13	Journal of Educational Administration and History (JEAH)
14	Improving Schools (ImpSch)
15	International Journal of Leadership in Education (IJLE)
16	Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education (JPEE)
17	Journal of Educational Change (JEC)
18	Advances in Educational Administration (AEA)
19	International Journal of Management in Education (IJME)
20	Education as Change (EAC)
21	Leadership and Policy in Schools (LPS)
Educational review journals
22	Educational Research Review (ERR)
23	Review of Educational Research (RER)
24	Review of Research in Education (RRE)

Pre-determined keywords of ‘science mapping’, ‘bibliometric’, ‘meta-analysis’, ‘systematic review’, ‘critical synthesis’, ‘meta-synthesis’, ‘meta-ethnography’, ‘topographical review’ and ‘review’ were identified to search EDLM journals. Selected keywords were based on our understanding of the literature on systematic reviews and reflect the core systematic review types. We also used eight keywords when searching core educational review journals to delimit reviews published in these outlets to EDLM. These keywords were ‘educational lead*’, ‘educational adminis*’, ‘educational manage*’, ‘school manage*’, ‘principal’, ‘lead*’, ‘manage*’ and ‘administrat*’. After identification of the keywords, we searched Scopus. At this initial stage, we delimited our search to articles published in 24 journals specified in Table 2. The search process was completed in April 2024 and included articles published before 2024.

The search yielded a total of 1523 papers, 1362 of which were from EDLM journals and 161 from educational review journals. We followed the initial journal-based search with a more comprehensive unbounded search using the following search string:

(TITLE (review) OR KEY (review) AND TITLE (educational OR school AND leader* OR manage* OR administra* OR principal) OR KEY (educational OR school AND leader* OR manage* OR administra* OR principal) AND NOT TITLE-ABS-KEY (teaching OR university OR “higher education” OR health OR college OR medic* OR nurs* OR surg*) AND NOT TITLE-ABS-KEY (youth OR market*)) AND (EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MEDI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “COMP”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “BIOC”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHAR”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “HEAL”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “NURS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “IMMU”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “DENT”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENER”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “AGRI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATH”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “EART”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ECON”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHYS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “VETE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CHEM”))

This search yielded 296 articles, 109 already identified through a journal-based search. These search strategies resulted in 1710 articles imported into Excel and screened for relevance using pre-determined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Reviews published elsewhere other than journals, non-English reviews and reviews outside the field of EDLM research (e.g. Johnson, 2012), as well as those concentrating on higher education (e.g. Maheshwari, 2023) or educational policy (e.g. Kirsten, 2020), were excluded outright. Since our review does not aim to assess the quality of the selected systematic reviews, we chose a relatively broad approach to differentiate systematic reviews from traditional literature reviews. Those focusing on the EDLM field were included only if the review was defined as systematic by authors or if, at the very least, the data source was clarified and inclusion criteria were mentioned. This process reduced the number of articles to 208.

To enhance comprehensiveness, articles cited in all of the included reviews published in the last 3 years (2021–2023), a conceptual paper on the systematic review methodology (Hallinger, 2013), and three umbrella reviews previously conducted in the field (Hallinger, 2014; Tan et al., 2024; Wu and Shen, 2022) were examined for potentially relevant articles, revealing 28 new review articles. A total of 236 papers published in 60 journals were included in the review. Figure 2 gives an overview of the sampling and selection process.

Figure 2.

Search and selection process.

Data extraction and analysis

Data extraction included author name(s), the title of the article, year of publication, journal, geographical focus (i.e., global, regional and country-specific) and topic (i.e., entire field, journal, method and a specific theme). Examples of how we coded the reviews are provided as a supplemental file. Following data extraction, reviewed studies were classified into one of the seven pre-determined methods previously summarised in Table 1. The first author reviewed all articles and classified them based on the joint understanding established between the authors during the creation of Table 1. For the articles that do not easily fall into one category, a few Zoom meetings were conducted between both authors, and final decisions were made jointly. Descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages were used to analyse data. Sample coding is provided in Table A1.

Findings

Volume by publication year and publication outlets

Data suggest that the first systematic review conducted in the field of EDLM dates back to 1979 (Campbell, 1979), which mapped and critically reviewed articles published in a single journal, Educational Administration Quarterly, over 14 years (1965–1978). This supports Hallinger's findings that ‘the first “systematic reviews of research” in educational leadership only began to appear in our journals around 1980’ (2013: 128). Papers published before Campbell (1979) and previously classified as reviews of research (e.g. Briner and Campbell, 1964; Campbell and Faber, 1961; Erickson, 1967; Haller, 1979; Lipham, 1964) were not classified as systematic because they employed a normative approach consistent with ad hoc method of reviewing as was previously indicated in Hallinger's seminal paper on how to conduct systematic reviews (2013). Thirty systematic reviews were published sporadically between 1980 and 2010, with an around average of 1 article a year. As Figure 3 indicates, there was a progressive increase from 2011 to 2023. Since 2011, 204 systematic reviews have been published, accounting for 86.4% of all systematic reviews in our database. Close to 70% of all systematic reviews were published since 2017, the year systematic reviews started to spread over prominent journals.

Figure 3.

Systematic reviews per year in the field of educational leadership and management.

Our analysis demonstrates that the reviews are spread over 60 journals. Educational Administration Quarterly featured the first systematic review in our dataset (Campbell, 1979). The journal continued to be the main outlet until 1998, with only two other journals (i.e., JEA and RER) occasionally publishing systematic reviews in EDLM until 1998 and nine other journals until 2010. Systematic reviews were observed to spread to 29 outlets before 2020. The most frequent sources of these reviews were Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (n = 41), Journal of Educational Administration (n = 33), Educational Administration Quarterly (n = 25) and School Leadership and Management (n = 21).

Review methods

Figure 4 shows the number of review studies by type. Among the seven categories identified before, narrative synthesis represents the majority (42.8%) of reviewed articles (e.g. Bush and Glover, 2016; Lochmiller and Cunningham, 2019; Tan, 2024), followed by scoping/topographical reviews with 24.2% (e.g. Hallinger and Bryant, 2013a; Harris et al., 2019; Hosseingholizadeh et al., 2021). Hybrid reviews comprised 14% of the articles (e.g. Nguyen et al., 2020; Tamadoni et al., 2024; Thompson et al., 1997), followed by meta-analysis 8.9% (e.g. Leithwood and Sun, 2012; Robinson et al., 2008; Witziers et al., 2003) and bibliometrics 7.6% (e.g. Hallinger, et al., 2020; Hallinger, 2020; Kuzhabekova, 2023). Umbrella reviews (e.g. Tan et al., 2024) and meta-synthesis (Gümüş, Hallinger, et al., 2021) comprised a particularly small number of articles, 1.7% and 0.8%, respectively.

Figure 4.

Distribution of articles over review types.

Systematic reviews in the field were found to have started with scoping/topographical reviews, the first mapping Educational Administration Quarterly (Campbell, 1979), exploring the nature of the articles featured in the journal and ways EAQ articles relate to field-specific literature. Hybrid reviews were introduced to the field in the early 1980s (Leithwood and Montgomery, 1982), followed by meta-analysis and narrative synthesis in the 1990s (Eagly et al., 1992; Hallinger and Heck, 1996). These reviews all focused on school principals, with Leithwood and Montgomery examining the role elementary school principals play in programme improvement, Eagly et al. testing the impact of gender on the leadership styles of school principals and Hallinger and Heck synthesising the scholarship on the relationship between the principal's role and school effectiveness.

Bibliometric reviews and umbrella reviews were the latest additions to the review types. The first umbrella review was conducted in 2014 (Hallinger, 2014) and focused on reviews of research in educational leadership. Methodologically examining reviews of research published in nine prominent field-specific journals, this review identified ‘exemplary reviews’ and illuminated patterns of methodological strengths and weaknesses, calling for reviews that are both systematic and transparent. As we demonstrate in this paper, it has played a key role in the increase of systematic reviews in the field by setting the direction for research reviews. The first bibliometric study dates back to 2007 (Haas et al., 2007). Based on a database of 483 documents, this review focused on the citation frequency, total citation counts EAQ articles received and the ratio of citations to articles published in the journal. More recent bibliometric reviews were observed to combine performance analysis with more advanced methods of science mapping. Overall, it is still quite a new review method in the field; the vast majority (72.2%) have been conducted since 2020.

Although reviews employing narrative synthesis have accumulated the highest total citations (6099; M = 60.4), meta-analytic reviews yielded the highest citations per paper (2855; M = 136). These review types not only excelled in terms of citation counts but also featured the most influential reviews. With a citation count of 1209, the most influential review was a meta-analysis measuring the differential effects of leadership on student outcomes (Robinson et al., 2008). This was followed by Hallinger and Heck's (1996) narrative synthesis on the role of school principals in school effectiveness and Hallinger and Heck's (1998) narrative synthesis on principals’ contribution to school effectiveness with a citation count of 811 and 690, respectively.

Topical focus and geographical coverage

Classification of included documents in terms of their topical focus revealed that the vast majority of systematic reviews focused on a specific theme (n = 183; 77.5%), followed by the generic studies of the field of EDLM (n = 34; 14.4%) and a much lesser extent on journals (n = 11; 4.7%) and methodology (n = 8; 3.4%). In this section, we start with the generic studies of the field, which are followed by reviews focusing on a specific theme, journals and methodology. We also presented the distribution of the geographical coverage of the reviews under each classification.

The field of EDLM

Systematic reviews in the field of EDLM have embraced local, regional and global orientations towards systematically reviewing the existing scholarship, with 10 having a global focus with no geographical limitations, 16 focusing on a particular region and 8 on a particular country. Arab societies (n = 6; Attari and Outum, 2019; Attari and Essa, 2023; Hallinger and Hammad, 2019; Hammad and Hallinger, 2017; Hammad et al., 2022; Oplatka and Arar, 2017), Asia (n = 5; Hallinger, 2020; Hallinger and Bryant, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Hallinger and Chen, 2015) and Africa (n = 3; Hallinger, 2018, 2019a, 2019b) were found to dominate regional systematic reviews with only two reviews conducted on the state of the field in Latin America (Castillo and Hallinger, 2018; Hallinger, 2020), one on Muslim societies (Ahmed, 2023a) and one on Europe (Kovačević and Hallinger, 2020). Those focusing on a particular country/jurisdiction concentrated on Hong Kong (n = 3; Hallinger and Bryant, 2016; Hallinger et al., 2013; Szeto et al., 2015), Türkiye (n = 2; Bellibaş and Gümüş, 2019; Gümüş et al., 2020), South Africa (n = 1; Hallinger, 2019b), Israel (n = 1; Hallinger and Bryant, 2016), Iran (n = 1; Hosseingholizadeh et al., 2021) and Malaysia (n = 1; Adams et al., 2023). Four different review methods were used to explore the field, as Table 3 demonstrates:

Table 3.

Distribution of articles focusing on the field over review types and scope.

Geographic coverage	Total count	Scope	Bibliometrics	Hybrid	Narrative synthesis	Scoping/topographical
Global	10	Min 436	4	0	2	4
Global	10	Max 22492	4	0	2	4
Regional	16	Min 20	3	0	1	12
Regional	16	Max 1171	3	0	1	12
Country specific	8	Min 151	1	1	0	6
Country specific	8	Max 565	1	1	0	6

Scope: Size of the database analysed.

Unsurprisingly, bibliometric studies included the highest number of articles in their study corpus, with an average of 6916 documents. The size of the database analysed by bibliometric studies ranged from 313 (Gümüş et al., 2020; country-specific focus on Türkiye) to 22,492 (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2021; global focus), those by scoping/topographical reviews from 48 (Castillo and Hallinger, 2018; regional focus on Latin America) to 1651 (Tian and Huber, 2021; global focus). Of the three narrative syntheses, one did not mention the size of the database analysed (Oplatka, 2009); one had a fairly large size, especially for reviews employing narrative synthesis (n = 436; Oplatka, 2020); and the other 48 (Oplatka and Arar, 2017). The only hybrid review focusing on the field at the country-specific level (Szeto et al., 2015) analysed 161 documents, all originating from Hong Kong.

Regardless of the level of analysis, the majority of these reviews concentrated on knowledge production, synthesising trends in EDLM research through scoping/topographical reviews (n = 22; 64.7%) or examining the intellectual structure, influential entities (i.e., authors, documents, journals), thematic strands and changes within the field through bibliometrics (n = 8; 23.5%). Tables 4 and 5 reveal the most frequently studied trends in topographical/scoping and analysis in bibliometric reviews.

Table 4.

Top five most frequently studied trends in field-based topographical reviews (n = 23).

Trends	Publication count
Topic	16
Volume	15
Research methods	15
Growth trajectory	14
Geographical distribution	13

Table 5.

Most frequently used analysis in field-based bibliometric studies (n = 8).

Analysis	Publication Count
Citation analysis	8
Co-citation analysis	6
Keyword co-occurrence	3

A small number of papers that examined the field through narrative synthesis (n = 3; 8.8%) or hybrid reviews (n = 1; 2.9%) paid more attention to the research trends and findings of the reviewed studies. These reviews focused on implications for policy-makers, leaders and trainers (Oplatka, 2020), epistemological identities, meanings and boundaries in the field (Oplatka, 2009) as well as major themes in the Arabic literature (Oplatka and Arar, 2017) and Hong Kong (Szeto et al., 2015).

As is evident in Tables 4 and 5, systematic reviews of the field have largely focused on modal trends in knowledge production from developing societies or regions, revealing ample evidence on the quantifiable aspects of knowledge production in these contexts. Typically, these reviews were largely descriptive, focusing on knowledge production patterns in isolation from the contextual conditions and forces that shape knowledge production in specific geographies rather than critical or evaluative. This suggests while there is now significant evidence about how knowledge production has evolved in specific geographies, our understanding of why this has been the case is highly limited. A few exceptions were identified (Hallinger and Bryant, 2013b; Mertkan et al., 2017), which concentrated on the regional or country-specific factors impacting knowledge production. In line with the descriptive approach employed, field-based reviews also fall short on discussions about power dynamics influencing knowledge production in any field, in particular, the power scholars from different geographies have through editorships or editorial board memberships. One review has explored this dimension (Mertkan et al., 2017). Third, these reviews have largely split knowledge production in the field into focused populations, not putting knowledge production into perspective by comparing trends across countries or regions or with general trends within the field.

A specific theme

Of 183 reviews focusing on a specific theme, 39 focused on studies about a specific country, while three concentrated on a specific region. The remaining 141 (77%) did not have a country-specific or regional delimitation. While reviews examining topics from a broad and, hence, decontextualised perspective are valuable, this imbalance suggests overviews of country-specific or regional evidence, which enrich our understanding of how political, demographic and socio-cultural realities may influence EDLM practices that are relatively low in number. Implicit in this imbalance is the search for a universal model of leadership and management free from contextual and cultural forces, which has long marked the field despite concerns that conceptualising leadership ‘somehow divorced from the powerful political, demographic and cultural influences’ (Dimmock and Tan, 2013: 1).

Table 6 shows the most prevalent themes these reviews concentrated on and the review methods they used, while Table 7 demonstrates the geographical delimitation of these reviews. In total, narrative synthesis was the most frequently and widely used method to synthesise evidence on specific themes (n = 97; 53%), followed by hybrid reviews (n = 31; 16.9%) and meta-analysis (n = 20; 10.9%). It is important to note that half of all reviews employing meta-analysis focused on leadership effects on student outcomes (e.g. Karadağ, 2020; Liebowitz and Porter, 2019). Depending on the review method, topic and geographical coverage, the size of the database reviewed was observed to change and range from 14 (narrative synthesis, Mexico, school principalship; Torres-Arcadia et al., 2022) to 1613 (bibliometrics, global, school change and improvement; Kovačević and Hallinger, 2019).

Table 6.

Most prevalent topics and the review methods used.

	Total count	Bibliometric analysis	Hybrid	Meta-analysis	Narrative synthesis	Scoping/topographical	Umbrella review	Meta-synthesis
Leadership styles/approaches	47	1	11	7	19	8	0	1
School principalship	37	3	7	2	18	7	0	0
Leadership effects	22	0	3	14	3	0	2	0
School leadership	14	0	1	0	8	5	0	0
Social justice and equity	10	1	1	0	7	1	0	0
Middle leadership	7	0	2	0	3	2	0	0
Gender	6	1	1	2	1	0	0	1
Teacher collaboration/learning communities	6	1	1	1	3	0	0	0
School change and improvement	6	1	0	0	5	0	0	0
Leadership preparation and development	5	0	1	0	4	0	0	0
School effectiveness	5	0	0	1	3	1	0	0

Note: The number of reviews does not add up because some focus on more than one topic.

Table 7.

Geographical delimitation of the most frequently synthesised themes in reviews.

Theme	Country
School principalship	Taiwan (2)	Singapore (1)	Malaysia (1)	Vietnam (1)	China (2)	Indonesia (1)	USA (2)	Mexico (1)
Leadership styles/approaches	USA (2)	Taiwan (3)	Malaysia (3)	Türkiye (3)	Singapore (2)	China (1)	Spain (1)
Leadership effects	USA (3)	Türkiye (3)	High Income OECD Countries (1)	Taiwan (1)
School leadership	Zambia (1)	Ireland (1)	South Africa (1)	Australia (1)	United Arab Emirates (1)
Social justice and equity
Leadership preparation and development	USA (1)
Gender	Zimbabwe (1)	USA (1)	Taiwan (2)	China (1)	Hong Kong (1)
School effectiveness
Teacher collaboration and learning communities	China (1)
School change and improvement	China (1)
Middle leadership	Canada (1)	USA (1)	Australia (1)	UK (1)	New Zealand (1)	Hong Kong (1)	Netherlands (1)	China (1)

Note: The number of reviews does not add up because some focus on more than one country.

Leadership styles/approaches (n = 47) and school principalship (n = 37) stood out as the most frequently studied topics. Reviews about leadership styles/approaches often focused on a specific leadership approach and were dominated by instructional leadership (n = 10; e.g. Boyce and Bowers, 2018; Ng et al., 2015), teacher leadership (n = 9; e.g. Wang and Ho, 2020; York-Barr and Duke, 2004), transformational leadership (n = 7; e.g. Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005; Sun and Leithwood, 2012) and distributed leadership (n = 6; e.g. Mifsud, 2024; Tian et al., 2016). Studies on turnaround leadership (n = 2; e.g. Liu, 2020), spiritual leadership (n = 2; e.g. Subhaktiyasa et al., 2023), student leadership (n = 2; e.g. Tortosa Martínez et al., 2022), strategic leadership (n = 1; Carvalho et al., 2021), ethical leadership (n = 1; Ahmed, 2023b) and authentic leadership (n = 1; Ahmed, 2023c) were synthesised to a much lesser extent while servant leadership has not been reviewed.

These reviews mostly have a global focus (n = 32; e.g. Gümüş et al., 2018; Okiri and Hercz, 2023), with only 15 reviews synthesising country-specific evidence (e.g. Hallinger et al., 2018). The vast majority of those (n = 9; e.g. Li, 2022; Pan et al., 2015) focused on Asia. It is important to note that no country-specific or regional reviews were conducted on distributed, spiritual, strategic, ethical, authentic and student leadership, while 42.9% of those focusing on transformational leadership, 60% of those focusing on instructional leadership and 22.2% of those focusing on teacher leadership had a country-specific focus. No regional reviews were conducted on leadership styles.

Studies reviewing research on school principalship have concentrated on a variety of sub-topics. These include novice principals (e.g. Kılınç and Gümüş, 2021; Oplatka, 2012), mentoring principals (Hansford and Ehrich, 2006; Hobson and Sharp, 2005), recruitment and selection of principals (Lee and Mao, 2023), pathways to principalship (Montecinos et al., 2022), principal turnover and succession (Aravena, 2022; Rangel, 2018), problems and challenges faced by school principals (Tintoré et al., 2020), principals’ time use (Hochbein et al., 2021), principals’ data use and decision-making processes (Kahn and Bullis, 2021) or reviewed school principalship with no focus on a specific sub-theme (e.g. Hallinger et al., 2015; Walker and Qian, 2015; Walker et al., 2012). The majority of the reviews mapping school principalship have maintained a global focus (n = 25), with only 11 reviews delimited by country (e.g. Eagly et al., 1992; Ng et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2015; Rangel, 2018; Torres-Arcadia et al., 2022) and one by region (Hammad and Alazmi, 2022). As Table 7 shows, the majority of the countries examined are in Asia.

These topics were followed by leadership effects (n = 22). Most frequently (n = 15), these reviews employed meta-analysis as the review method to estimate effect size solely on student outcomes (n = 9; e.g. Robinson et al., 2008), school outcomes (n = 1; Chin, 2007), school outcomes and student outcomes (n = 1; Liebowitz and Porter, 2019), organisational variables (n = 2; Çogaltay and Karadag, 2016; Sisman, 2016), teacher efficacy (n = 1; Kaya and Demir, 2022) and teacher trust (n = 1; Sun et al., 2023).

Journals and methodology

Seven of the eleven reviews examining a particular journal focused on Educational Administration Quarterly (Byrd, 2007; Byrd and Eddy, 2009; Campbell, 1979; Hallinger, 2023; Hass et al., 2007; Murphy et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2017), two on Journal of Educational Administration (Byrd and Eddy, 2009; Oplatka, 2012), one on Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2022), one on Journal of Educational Change (Garcia-Huidobro et al., 2017) and one on Educational Administration in Theory and Practice (Balcı and Apaydın, 2009). One article (Byrd and Eddy, 2009) focuses on two journals, Educational Administration Quarterly and Journal of Educational Administration. These reviews generally aim to explore the development of the field through the selected journal from various perspectives, while two of these reviews also have particular methodological concerns regarding the publications in the selected journal(s). Byrd (2007) focused on empirical articles published in EAQ in a 10-year frame to identify if confidence intervals and effect sizes were reported as well as interpreted correctly. Byrd and Eddy (2009) included two journals, EAQ and JEA, in their review, and focused on the statistical applications in the empirical studies published in these two journals.

We also identified six review articles focused on methodological aspects of empirical studies in the field, going beyond one or two journals. For example, Berkovich and Grinshtain (2021) focused specifically on the relevant qualitative research and explored the rigour strategies and ethical steps reported in them. Berkovich and Eyal (2017), on the other hand, focused on a specific topic, educational leaders and emotions, and investigated the methodological patterns in the relevant studies. Similarly, Hallinger (2011) and Hallinger et al. (2013) focused on a specific topic, instructional leadership, and reviewed the relevant studies that used the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) to explore the methodological patterns in those studies, while Feldhoff et al. (2016) focused on designs and methods in school improvement research. Lastly, Hallinger (2014) was interested in the methodological rigours of review studies in the field and identified a set of exemplary reviews through his analysis.

It is important to note that all but one reviewed journal are prominent journals published in the inner-centre core Anglophone contexts claiming to be highly ‘international’. It is quite surprising to see the main trend evident in field-specific reviews – examining regional and country-specific knowledge production in the field – is mostly lacking in journal-based reviews, except one (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2022). It would be quite interesting to examine how well different journals have responded to the calls to develop a truly international and contextually bounded scholarship by moving away from the ‘Anglo-American axis of influence’ (Sugrue, 2005: 3) and how this changed over time.

Discussion

Limitations

This review has three major limitations. First, we focused explicitly on journal articles published in English, excluding conference papers, books or book chapters published in English and all types of contributions in other languages. This means potentially relevant content published in outlets other than journals and languages other than English has been left out. Second, our search strategy excluded reviews concentrating on EDLM research in higher education contexts or educational policy. Thus, the findings of this review do not apply to these specific areas. We also caution readers that our results about review methods only reflect on the classifications identified and named in our conceptual framework. We acknowledge that review methods have been defined, named and utilised differently across fields, and variations can be found even within the same field. While creating a simplified classification that covers a broad range of reviews was necessary to make this comprehensive review possible, it is crucial to note that some other review methods (e.g. integrative review and critical review) could have also been used. Third, due to the nature and the aims of this review, the findings of the reviews included in our database were not examined. Hence, our review does not elaborate on how systematic reviews have particularly contributed to the different areas of the educational administration knowledge base. Lastly, we used a relatively broad approach to identify systematic reviews by differentiating them from traditional literature reviews, while some of the selected systematic reviews may not be fully compatible with the recommended systematic review approaches. Further research could use more specific criteria to assess the quality of systematic reviews from different aspects (e.g. research questions and goals, search and selection processes and analysis and synthesis) of applying the systematic review method (see Hallinger, 2013, 2014).

Interpretation of findings and suggestions for future reviews

This review has made two important contributions to the literature. First, we applied a comprehensive conceptual framework specific to umbrella reviews. Even though models focusing on similar dimensions were used in previous systematic reviews (e.g. Bellibaş and Gümüş, 2019; Hallinger, 2020), our model includes aspects such as the type of systematic review and the relevant classifications. Previous frameworks used in umbrella reviews concentrate either on synthesising the findings on a particular topic to assess whether the results of existing systematic reviews provide a consistent or contradictory evidence base (Aromataris et al., 2015) or on methodological aspects (Hallinger, 2014). In contrast, the three-dimensional conceptual model presented in our review focuses broadly on the patterns of knowledge production evident in systematic reviews, which provide significant information about the past, present and future of a knowledge base or a scholarship, with specific attention to the review methods, investigated topics and geographical coverage. This allows for a better understanding of how the reviews of existing research across different contexts vary regarding applied methods and topical foci. Therefore, this multidimensional approach would enhance the rigour and transparency of umbrella reviews, facilitate the identification of gaps and guide future reviews. Thus, it significantly contributes to the umbrella review literature by providing a clear, robust and adaptable tool for comprehensive syntheses.

Second, we aimed to reveal the growth trajectory of systematic reviews conducted in the field of EDLM, their spread across journals over time and the nature and composition in terms of review approaches employed along their geographical and topical focus. Our intention, in so doing, was to shed light on the field's evolution and draw suggestions for future research based on the nature and composition of existing systematic reviews.

Our results clearly show a dramatic increase in the number of systematic reviews conducted in EDLM, indicating the field has moved into a new phase in which scholars increasingly examine EDLM research to synthesise existing evidence, also assessing what has been studied, by whom, where, how and to what degree. The growth pattern of systematic reviews, both in terms of their number and spread over journals, suggests these reviews were in their infancy from 1979 to 2012, followed by a booming period. Rapid proliferation in the number of systematic reviews over the growing number of journals demonstrates widespread recognition of their value in the field and their contribution to knowledge accumulation, which shows no signs of fading away soon. This is consistent with the broader trend in the social sciences, where systematic reviews have become increasingly popular as a way to synthesise research findings (Gough et al., 2012; Petticrew and Roberts, 2008).

While this move is laudable in many respects, the contributions systematic reviews make to the advancement of knowledge depend very much on their reporting and methodological quality, which can vary widely across reviews. Quality assessment analyses conducted in other disciplines suggest an exponential increase in the volume of systematic reviews might, at the very least, lead to information overload and a decrease in quality (Lee et al., 2022; Riaz et al., 2016). Because no quality assessment analyses have been conducted in the EDLM field since Hallinger's review in 2014, we do not know how this growth has influenced the review quality. It is, thereby, imperative that future umbrella reviews assess the methodological and reporting rigour of systematic reviews published in the EDLM field. The conceptual framework suggested by Hallinger (2013) could be used to assess whether quality caught up with quantity.

In addition, the reviews have largely focused on a narrow range of topics, with the majority concentrating on school principals, leadership styles/approaches and leadership effects. The focus of reviews on such themes indicates the significant role these aspects play in EDLM research. School principalship, for example, has been identified as a critical factor that significantly influences the school’s effectiveness by setting the direction and shaping school culture (Hallinger and Heck, 1998). The focus on leadership styles/approaches and their effects reflects the increasing emphasis on certain leadership models such as instructional leadership, transformational leadership and distributed leadership (Leithwood et al., 2008) and their influence on the various school outcomes (Özdemir et al., 2024; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2006; Robinson et al., 2008). However, studies on some other leadership styles/approaches (e.g. servant leadership) have been underexplored. Reviewing the literature using narrative synthesis on various leadership styles/approaches, even if they are not large in size, could provide a nuanced understanding of the role and the effect of school leadership. Given the number of reviews on principal leadership and leadership styles/approaches, it is also important to note compiling evidence from existing reviews through umbrella reviews is both timely and relevant to provide an overall assessment of these topics. Bibliometric studies on leadership styles/approaches are also rare (Hallinger et al., 2020 and Gümüş, Arar et al., 2021). These studies could unpack the evolution of these styles/approaches while also shedding light on emerging trends and areas in these topics. It is important for future research to focus on the evolutionary nuances of leadership styles/approaches through bibliometric analysis.

In addition, systematic reviews focusing on the methodology of the empirical studies have been quite rare, although such reviews might provide useful meta-insights into the evolution and methodological rigour of the field. This mirrors the need for more methodological reviews in the EDLM field to enhance research quality and transparency. It is also quite surprising to note no topographical/scoping reviews were conducted on gender, teacher collaboration, school change and improvement and leadership preparation and development. These reviews would enhance our understanding of modal trends in research on these topics and the gaps in our knowledge.

Our results also suggest that the field itself has attracted considerable attention as a unit of analysis, with scholars largely exploring knowledge production in the field through topographical/scoping reviews or bibliometrics. While the interest in topographical/scoping reviews indicates the field’s interest in providing comprehensive overviews and mapping the research landscape (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005), the increasing use of bibliometric analyses suggests a growing interest in understanding the structure and dynamics of the field (Moed, 2006). This scholarship mostly originates from geographies outside traditional Anglo-American centres, providing important insights regarding the development of the field and the current trends across the world. However, they solely focus on quantifiable modal trends evident in reviewed literature through content analysis or the analysis of the bibliographic data. Exploring quantifiable trends provides an important but limited aspect of the EDLM field, which is highly complex in nature with diverse conceptual lenses, epistemological issues, varied topics and significant shifts as a result of changing politics and policies (Wang et al., 2017). Consequently, the continued development of educational leadership scholarship requires an enriched understanding of diversification in the field that includes but goes beyond quantifiable trends in geographical diversity. This would, nonetheless, require review methods such as narrative synthesis and meta-synthesis.

While the dominance of reviews focusing on specific countries or regions (particularly Asia) reaffirms the contextual nature of educational administration and leadership, only limited attention has been paid to the socio-political, socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions that shape knowledge production in those countries and regions. In so doing, they provide rather overall snapshots of the state of scholarship originating from a specified geography at a specified period, with rarely sufficient explanation of why this is the case. It is also rare for these reviews to put knowledge originating from specified societies into perspective by comparing trends across countries and with the general trend within the field (Hallinger, 2020). Therefore, umbrella reviews of a more comparative nature, with particular attention to the social contexts, are desirable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our umbrella review provides a rich and nuanced picture of the EDLM field by highlighting key trends, research foci and methodologies used in the existing systematic reviews. It also points to potential gaps and future directions, such as the need for more reviews on underexplored topics (e.g. servant leadership and ethical leadership) and regions (e.g. Europe and Latin America), and the need for more methodological and comparative reviews. Overall, this review offers valuable insights for future research and systematic reviews in the field, as well as a new conceptual framework for umbrella reviews.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ema-10.1177_17411432241291197 - Supplemental material for Review of systematic reviews in educational leadership and management: Methods used, topics explored and geographies covered

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ema-10.1177_17411432241291197 for Review of systematic reviews in educational leadership and management: Methods used, topics explored and geographies covered by Sefika Mertkan and Sedat Gümüş in Educational Management Administration & Leadership

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sedat Gümüş

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biographies

Sefika Mertkan is a professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the Eastern Mediterranean University. Her research interests are varied and include meta–research, research integrity, and research evaluation policies as well as leadership conceptualizations and school leadership;

Sedat Gümüş is an associate professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the Education University of Hong Kong. His current research focuses on the relationship between school leadership and various teacher and student outcomes as well as the contextualization of leadership models and practices.

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Review of systematic reviews in educational leadership and management: Methods used,topics explored and geographies covered

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Conceptual framework

Method

Selection of the reviews

Data extraction and analysis

Findings

Volume by publication year and publication outlets

Review methods

Topical focus and geographical coverage

The field of EDLM

A specific theme

Journals and methodology

Discussion

Limitations

Interpretation of findings and suggestions for future reviews

Conclusion

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ema-10.1177_17411432241291197 - Supplemental material for Review of systematic reviews in educational leadership and management: Methods used, topics explored and geographies covered

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Supplemental material

Author biographies

References

Supplementary Material