Review of research topics and methods in educational leadership and management: A comparative analysis of the Asian literature, 1995-2012

Over the past two decades scholars have called for a more concerted effort to develop an empirically grounded literature on educational leadership outside. This paper reports the results of a review of the research topics and methods that characterize 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 481 articles published in eight ‘core’ international journals in educational leadership and management over the specified period. Generally, scholarly interest in different topics appears to have waxed and waned across this 18 year period. Significant growth trends were observed in terms of scholarly interest in studying Leadership in K-12 Schools, Change, School Effects, and Improvement in Education, and Organizational Behavior in Education. As for analysis for research method, the qualitative and mixed research methods took the majority of the total number of publications over 18-year period. Before 2006, the publications employed were dominated by qualitative research methods, followed by mixed research method, but after 2006, the number of publication with quantitative research methods increased sharply. Quite surprisingly, approximate 33% of these quantitative publications employed advanced modeling statistical methods and 60% employed causal factor, multiple factor, or advancing modeling methods. Limitations for this review and implications for future research in the field are proposed.