Diversity and equality in academic publishing: the case of educational leadership

Abstract

There have been ongoing criticisms of the field of educational leadership and management with respect to over-reliance on research from ‘Western’ contexts. However, evidence on the extent to which voices alternative to the dominant ‘Western’ discourse are represented in the international English-medium discourse of educational leadership and management is thin. Using a three-phase sequential mixed-methods approach, this paper explores knowledge production in the field by analysing the prevalence and impact of empirical articles published in four English-medium international journals. Additionally, the membership of editorial boards and editors is analysed to geographically locate key decision makers. Findings demonstrate that an exceptionally small set of core inner-circle Anglophone and non-inner-circle Anglophone settings enjoys disproportionate influence in the field. There is need for a knowledge base enriched with leadership and management practices from different sociocultural contexts and system structures with a multiplicity of voices to portray a more nuanced and balanced picture of leadership and management practices.

Keywords:

• Academic publishing
• knowledge production
• educational leadership
• educational management

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Ciaran Sugrue and Professor Simon McGrath for their invaluable comments on this manuscript and Ece İlhan Özkök for her help during data collection. This is much appreciated.

Notes

1. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

2. Wallerstein’s and Kachru’s theories were first used together by Curry and Lillis (2013).