Review of research on educational leadership and management in Asia

Abstract

Over the past two decades scholars have called for a more concerted effort to develop an empirically grounded literature on educational leadership outside of mainstream “Western” contexts. This paper reports the results of a review of research topics and methods that comprise the literature on educational leadership and management in Asia between 1995 and 2012. The review of research employed a quantitative descriptive form of systematic review of 478 articles published in eight “core” international journals in educational leadership and management over this period. The review examined trends in publication volume and impact, as well as research topics and methods used by scholars studying educational leadership and management in Asia. The study concluded that Asian scholarship in educational leadership and management remains in the early stages of development. Knowledge production is highly uneven across the continent, with only a few pockets of research excellence. Significant growth trends were observed in terms of scholarly interest in studying leadership in K-12 schools, school change, effects and improvement, and organizational behavior in education. Although qualitative research methods were more popular in this literature prior to 2006, the use of quantitative research methods has increased sharply during the past six years.