Finding Europe’s niche: science mapping the knowledge base on educational leadership and management in Europe, 1960–2018

ABSTRACT

This review of research used science mapping to document European literature in the field of educational leadership and management (EDLM) and assess the extent to which there is a distinctive ‘European niche’ in this field. The review documents the volume, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of EDLM scholarship and analyzes the intellectual structure and key topics studied in this literature. The authors identified 1,039 articles authored in continental European societies that had been published in 22 Scopus-indexed, EDLM journals. Bibliographic data associated with these articles were exported from Scopus and analyzed using Excel and VOSviewer programs. The review identified a robust European literature distinguished by 4 Schools of Thought. Two of these, ‘School Improvement and School Effectiveness’, and the ‘Social-Economic Effects of Education’ evidenced strong contributions from European scholars. Our results provide a baseline for future reviews of this literature and a basis for benchmarking the European literature against other regional literatures in EDLM from around the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational leadership
• educational management
• bibliometric review
• Europe
• science mapping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jasna Kovačević works at the Department of Management and Organization, School of Economics and Business at University of Sarajevo. Dr. Kovačević does research and is interested in leadership, educational leadership and administration, organizational behavior, complex adaptive systems, and social psychology.

Philip Hallinger is the Thailand Sustainable Development Foundation Chair Professor of Leadership in the College of Management, Mahidol University (Thailand) and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Management, University of Johannesburg (South Africa). His research interests include instructional leadership, sustainable leadership, leadership effects, and international educational leadership.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.