Citation
Richardson, J.W. and Khawaja, S. (2023), "Commentary: Celebrating 60 years of knowledge mobilization: a historical descriptive analysis of the
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited
The Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) published its first issue in 1963 with just four papers. Up through the end of 2021, the journal has published over 1,700 articles. JEA was the first international refereed journal in the field of educational leadership, management and administration. As noted on the website, “JEA has sought to publish research on educational administration conducted across diverse political, economic and socio-cultural contexts. Indeed, publications featured in JEA have both anticipated and traced the evolution of educational administration into a global field of research and practice.” Given that JEA is celebrating 60 years of publication in 2022, we wanted to explore the history of JEA through a historical descriptive analysis of the journal.
Methodology
This historical descriptive analysis of JEA was conducted in two phases. In the first phase of data collection and data analysis, all articles published in JEA were downloaded. This included all articles published between 1963 through 2021, which is the current lifespan of the journal. Since we wanted this review to come out in the last issue of the 60th years, we were unable to capture articles published in 2022. Obtaining the full text of the articles was not available in our databases prior to 1991, so the analyses of those articles were limited to only the abstract. Analysis of the articles included type of article, country of study, methodology and theoretical underpinning. These data were coded manually by the research team. Findings from these data represent a historical analysis of JEA.
In phase 2, the publisher, Emerald, provided data extracted from Scholar One from 2011 to 2021. Analysis of these articles was descriptive and provides the most recent picture of publication trends in the journal.
Historical descriptive analysis of JEA
Figure 1 indicates the number of articles that have been published in JEA by decade. The number of articles published generally trends upwards. The journal started in 1964 and had only 75 articles published in that decade. As of the start of 2022, there have been 97 articles published in the 2020s.
Special issues are a way for editors to highlight an area of interest in the field. For JEA, special issues might be led by the editors, members of the editorial board, or other academics in the field. Table 1 details all special issue published in JEA by titles, editors and the editors' institutions. A total of 30 special issues have been published in JEA through 2021.
JEA began publishing special issues in 2005. Since that time, JEA has published special issues once or twice every year, except for 2016 where no special issues were published. In 2021, the journal issued three special issues, being the most published in a single year. Topics ranged from moral leadership, distributed leadership, international perspectives on leadership, systems thinking, technology leadership and leading special education, just to name a few.
To better understand the theoretical underpinnings of articles published in JEA, the research team conducted deductive coding based on Wang's (2018) framework. Wang conducted a co-occurrence network analysis of educational leadership research from 2005 to 2014 and compiled a list of all theories and concepts undergirding that body of research. The theories and concepts most noted by Wang were collective efficacy, contingency theory, critical race theory, critical theory, distributed leadership, instructional leadership, institutional theory, motivation, organizational theory, organizational learning, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational/school culture, social network theory, social justice theory, social cognitive theory, social justice leadership, social capital theory, teacher leadership, transformational leadership and trust.
We used Wang's (2018) framework as the codebook that guided the analysis. Thus, we searched the content of every article for each of the theories/concepts. Doing this captured every instance when that term was used. Hence, it captured the direct and indirect use of those underpinnings. The limitation is that this approach captured passive mentions of these underpinnings including reference citations. Nonetheless, if an author cited work about a theory, it can be assumed that the theory informed the research, to some degree.
Among the top underpinnings in JEA were instructional leadership, organizational/school culture and transformational leadership. Although trust and motivation were among the top occurring codes as well, we believe the coding approach did not capture an accurate picture because of how they might be used in text. That is, these keywords might be present in the article but the authors might not be using them as the theory or concept in their paper (e.g. “teachers trust the school leaders …” or “the team was motivated to conduct this study …”) (Table 2).
Table 3 shows the types of articles published in JEA up to 2021. It is evident that empirical studies are the most common type of articles in JEA. We were not able to deduce the types of articles for many of the 402 articles in which we only had access to the abstracts. We saw that book reviews were more frequent in the first few decades of JEA, whereas the recent trend is to publish more empirical work. Table 4 details the methodology of those articles.
We wanted to understand the countries of study most represented in the articles published in JEA. Hence, we captured all countries represented in the published articles. Table 5 details how the most studies took place in the USA followed by Australia. Additionally, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Nigeria, Cyprus, Malaysia, Finland, Austria, Taiwan and Belgium were countries of study in four or more articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021.
To gain a more holistic geographic representation of studies published in JEA, the research team coded all articles by continent of study. Table 6 details the continents of study for articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021.
Table 7 details the most cited articles in JEA over time. Authors who made the top 25 list multiple times are Kenneth Leithwood (n = 4), Phillip Hallinger (n = 3), and Doris Jantzi (n = 3).
Most recent picture of JEA from 2011 to 2021
We obtained data about manuscript statistics directly from Emerald via the submission system, being Scholar One. These data captured statistics from 2011 to 2021. Analysis of these data represents the most recent trends in JEA submissions.
Table 8 depicts the number of manuscripts submitted by country from 2011 to 2021. The USA had almost five times more articles submitted than the second top submitting county which was Israel. It should be noted that the first authors from the top three countries combined submitted more articles than the remaining 22 countries combined (Table 9).
The researchers also coded the submission data by continent. Since 2011, authors from Asia are the largest contributor to JEA. North America was a close second with 672 articles submitted.
Table 10 details the top 25 countries from which manuscripts have been accepted from 2011 to 2021. In this timeframe, authors from the USA published 251 articles in JEA. Authors from Israel published 60 articles in JEA.
Table 11 shows the number of manuscripts accepted by continent from 2011 to 2021. Most of the articles published were from North America.
Figure 2 details the top 25 most prolific authors in JEA. We juxtaposed the number of articles published by the authors' h-index. Some authors did not have an h-index available online through Google Scholar, thus those are labeled as 0.
Table 12 depicts the most commonly occurring institutions from which authors have submitted to JEA from 2011 to 2021. This table captures all the institutions that have more than 10 submissions to the journal.
Table 13 details the keywords most often used by authors when submitting their articles. It is important to note that these keywords are based on what the authors entered, not what the authors selected from a pre-populated list. We condensed the keywords whenever possible. Not surprisingly, the terms “principals” and “leadership” each were used more than 750 times in these manuscripts.
Conclusion
As of July 2022, JEA has been ranked by SSCI with an impact factor of 2.152 and a five-year impact factor of 2.716. The Scopus CiteScore is 2.9 as of 2021. Earning the SSCI ranking will help JEA and its authors since many universities require this ranking to count articles towards a professor's tenure and promotion.
Give that JEA was the first journal in the field, its historical significance is well known. This historical descriptive analysis provided herein details the first 60 years of influencing the field. May the next 60 be just as impactful.
Figures
Special issue titles, editors and editors' institutions
Special issue titles | Editors | Year |
---|---|---|
Failures in schools and school failures: Lessons for leadership and management | Pascale Benoliel (Bar-Ilan University) and Izhak Berkovich (Open University of Israel) | 2021 |
Technology as a lever of innovation in school leadership | Jayson W. Richardson (University of Denver) | 2021 |
Systems thinking for excellence and equity | Haim Shaked (Hemdat Hadarom Academic College of Education) and Chen Schechter (Bar Ilan University) | 2021 |
Framing issues of leadership for special education | Mary Lynn Boscardin (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Katharine G. Shepherd (University of Vermont) | 2020 |
School administrators' well-being and mindfulness | Katina Pollock (University of Western Ontario), Fei Wang (University of British Columbia), and Julia Mahfouz (University of Colorado Denver) | 2020 |
The role of districts and other agencies in supporting school leaders' instructional leadership | Rebecca A. Thessin (George Washington University) and Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota) | 2019 |
Understanding third sector participation in public schooling through partnerships, collaborations, alliances and entrepreneurialism | Nina Kolleck (Freie Universitat Berlin) and Miri Yemini (Tel Aviv University) | 2019 |
Understanding and improving urban secondary schools: New perspectives | Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota) and Muhammad Khalifa (University of Minnesota) | 2018 |
Data use for equity: Implications for teaching, leadership and policy | Amanda Datnow (University of California San Diego), Jennifer C. Greene (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign), and Nora Gannon-Slater (Department of Performance and Data Analytics, Breakthrough Charter Schools) | 2017 |
Qualitative studies of principal instructional leadership in East Asia | Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong) | 2017 |
Systematic reviews of research on principal leadership in East Asia | Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong) | 2015 |
Principal–teacher relationships: foregrounding the international importance of principals' social relationships for school learning climates | Heather E. Price (University of Notre Dame, Utrecht University) and Nienke M. Moolenaar (University of California San Diego) | 2015 |
Methods in longitudinal school improvement research: State of the art | Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong) | 2014 |
Systemwide reform examining districts under pressure | Alan J. Daly (University of California San Diego) and Kara S. Finnigan (University of California San Diego | 2013 |
Educational leadership development in international contexts | Stephen Jacobson (University at Buffalo) and Lauri Johnson (Boston College) | 2013 |
Accountability and school leadership | Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota) | 2012 |
An anniversary issue: Reflections on a journal's first fifty years | A. Ross Thomas (University of Wollongong) | 2012 |
Building organisational capacity in school education | Stephen Dinham (University of Melbourne) and Frank Crowther (University of Southern Queensland) | 2011 |
Globalization expanding horizons in women's leadership | Whitney H. Sherman (Virginia Commonwealth University) | 2010 |
Exploring the emotional dimensions of educational leadership implications for professional preparation | Eugenie A. Samier (The British University in Dubai) and Michèle Schmidt (Simon Fraser University) | 2010 |
Sustaining successful school leadership | Olof Johansson (Umeå University) and Leif Moos (Aarhus University) | 2009 |
Building high quality schools for learners and communities | Cynthia L. Uline (San Diego State University) | 2009 |
Principal preparation international perspectives | Charles F. Webber (University of Calgary) | 2008 |
Distributed leadership through the looking glass | Alma Harris (University of London) | 2008 |
Leadership for learning in the context of social justice: An international perspective | Anthony H. Normore (California State University-Dominguez Hills) | 2007 |
The integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching | Paul Begley (Pennsylvania State University) | 2007 |
Beginning the principalship international views | Allan Walker (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) | 2006 |
Dare professors of educational administration build a new social order: Social justice within an American perspective | Alan R. Shoho (University of Texas at San Antonio) | 2006 |
The International Successful School Principalship Project | Stephen L. Jacobson (University at Buffalo, State University of New York), Christopher Day (University of Nottingham), and Kenneth Leithwood (University of Toronto) | 2005 |
Educational institutions and leadership through the lens of organization theory | Bob L. Johnson Jr. (University of Utah) and Janice R. Fauske (University of South Florida) | 2005 |
Theoretical underpinnings of JEA articles
Theories/Concepts noted in manuscripts | Count |
---|---|
Trust* | 573 |
Motivation* | 507 |
Organizational/school culture | 504 |
Instructional leadership | 354 |
Transformational leadership | 249 |
Distributed leadership | 237 |
Organizational learning | 207 |
Teacher leadership | 142 |
Collective efficacy | 89 |
Organizational theory | 75 |
Organizational citizenship behavior | 57 |
Social justice leadership | 49 |
Critical theory | 48 |
Social cognitive theory | 42 |
Institutional theory | 29 |
Contingency theory | 27 |
Social network theory | 19 |
Critical race theory | 17 |
Social capital theory | 8 |
Note(s): *Over-represented due to coding approach
Types of articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021
Type of article | Number of articles |
---|---|
Empirical research | 726 |
Commentary | 214 |
Book review | 184 |
Conceptual paper | 74 |
Research review/systematic review | 63 |
Editorial | 46 |
Most common methodologies reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021
Methodology/Article type | Number of articles |
---|---|
Quantitative quasi-experimental | 323 |
Qualitative | 296 |
Systematic review | 100 |
Mixed methods | 76 |
Conceptual paper | 41 |
Quantitative experimental | 9 |
Top 10 countries of study reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021
Country of study | Number of articles |
---|---|
The USA | 425 |
Australia | 184 |
Israel | 91 |
Canada | 72 |
The United Kingdom | 57 |
Hong Kong | 30 |
New Zealand | 29 |
China | 17 |
Turkey | 11 |
Netherlands | 11 |
Singapore | 10 |
Continents of study reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021
Continent | Number of articles |
---|---|
North America | 502 |
Oceana | 220 |
Asia | 194 |
Europe | 128 |
Africa | 20 |
South America | 8 |
Top 25 cited authors as of fall 2021
Title | Year | Author/s | Citations |
---|---|---|---|
Leadership for learning: Lessons from 40 years of empirical research | 2011 | Hallinger | 315 |
The effects of transformational leadership on organizational conditions and student engagement with school | 2000 | Leithwood and Jantzi | 306 |
Collaboration and the need for trust | 2001 | Tschannen-Moran | 266 |
The configuration of the university image and its relationship with the satisfaction of students | 2002 | Palacio, Meneses, and Perez | 201 |
Distributed leadership: According to the evidence | 2008 | Harris | 187 |
Trust in schools: A conceptual and empirical analysis | 1998 | Tschannen-Moran and Hoy | 174 |
Effective instructional leadership: Teachers' perspectives on how principals promote teaching and learning in schools | 2000 | Blase and Blase | 167 |
The future of distributed leadership | 2008 | Gronn | 164 |
Relationships in reform: The role of teachers' social networks | 2010 | Daly, Moolenaar, Bolivar, and Burke | 162 |
Relation of principal transformational leadership to school staff job satisfaction, staff turnover, and school performance | 2004 | Griffith | 162 |
Cyberbullying: Causes, effects, and remedies | 2009 | Hoff and Mitchell | 159 |
The walls speak: The interplay of quality facilities, school climate, and student achievement | 2008 | Uline and Tschannen-Moran | 158 |
Transformational leadership effects on teachers' commitment and effort toward school reform | 2003 | Geijsel, Sleegers, Leithwood, and Jantzi | 157 |
Moving into the third, outer domain of teacher satisfaction | 2000 | Dinham and Scott | 145 |
Culture and educational administration: A case of finding out what you don't know you don't know | 1996 | Hallinger and Leithwood | 143 |
Principals' leadership and teachers' motivation: Self-determination theory analysis | 2011 | Eyal and Roth | 127 |
The effects of transformational leadership on teachers' commitment to change in Hong Kong | 2002 | Yu, Leithwood, and Jantzi | 124 |
School context and individual characteristics: What influences principal practice? | 2008 | Goldring, Huff, Camburn, and May | 119 |
Toward a framework for preparing leaders for social justice | 2006 | Capper, Theoharis, and Sebastian | 119 |
A conceptual framework for systematic reviews of research in educational leadership and management | 2013 | Hallinger | 116 |
Technology leadership for the twenty-first century principal | 2003 | Flanagan and Jacobsen | 114 |
A three domain model of teacher and school executive career satisfaction | 1998 | Dinham and Scott | 114 |
Complexity and the beginning principal in the United States: Perspectives on socialization | 2006 | Crow | 106 |
ICT implementation and school leadership: Case studies of ICT integration in teaching and learning | 2003 | Yuen, Law, and Wong | 105 |
Schools as learning organisations: The case for system, teacher and student learning | 2002 | Silins and Mulford | 103 |
Top 25 manuscript submissions by country from 2011 to 2021
Country of submission | Number of manuscripts submitted |
---|---|
The USA | 596 |
Israel | 122 |
Indonesia | 100 |
Australia | 97 |
India | 83 |
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 67 |
Turkey | 62 |
Canada | 60 |
Iran | 49 |
Malaysia | 46 |
Pakistan | 44 |
China | 29 |
South Africa | 29 |
Thailand | 29 |
Nigeria | 27 |
Greece | 24 |
Hong Kong | 20 |
Kenya | 17 |
New Zealand | 17 |
Saudi Arabia | 17 |
The United Arab Emirates | 16 |
Norway | 15 |
Spain | 14 |
Sweden | 13 |
Singapore | 12 |
Number of manuscript submitted by continent from 2011 to 2021
Continent of submission | Number of manuscripts submitted |
---|---|
Asia | 712 |
North America | 672 |
Europe | 226 |
Africa | 122 |
Oceana | 114 |
South America | 17 |
Number of manuscripts accepted by country from 2011 to 2021
Country | Number of manuscripts accepted |
---|---|
The USA | 251 |
Israel | 60 |
Australia | 36 |
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 22 |
Canada | 20 |
Thailand | 15 |
Hong Kong | 10 |
Turkey | 8 |
Netherlands | 7 |
New Zealand | 7 |
China | 6 |
Germany | 6 |
Norway | 6 |
Sweden | 6 |
Taiwan | 6 |
Cyprus | 4 |
Chile | 3 |
Finland | 3 |
Singapore | 3 |
Spain | 3 |
Switzerland | 3 |
Belgium | 2 |
Ireland | 2 |
Japan | 2 |
Malaysia | 2 |
Manuscripts accepted by continent from 2011 to 2021
Continent | Number of manuscripts accepted |
---|---|
North America | 274 |
Asia | 119 |
Europe | 69 |
Oceana | 43 |
Africa | 5 |
South America | 3 |
Top 25 institutions by number of submissions from 2011 to 2021
Institution | Number of manuscript submissions |
---|---|
The Education University of Hong Kong | 53 |
Bar Ilan University | 51 |
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem | 33 |
Open University of Israel | 29 |
The University of Oklahoma | 26 |
Mahidol University | 24 |
Vanderbilt University | 24 |
Brawijaya University | 23 |
University of Minnesota | 18 |
University of Melbourne | 18 |
University of New South Wales | 17 |
Tel Aviv University | 17 |
University of Haifa | 16 |
University of Virginia | 14 |
University of Texas at San Antonio | 14 |
Universitas Riau | 13 |
Texas State University | 13 |
University of Nottingham | 13 |
George Washington University | 13 |
Gordon College | 13 |
University of Connecticut | 12 |
University of Denver | 12 |
University of Louisville | 12 |
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | 12 |
The University of Alabama | 12 |
Top 25 author generated keywords from 2011 to 2021
Author generated keywords | Number of submissions |
---|---|
Principals | 792 |
Leadership/educational leadership | 770 |
Educational administration | 516 |
Teachers | 194 |
Educational policy | 161 |
Leadership development | 156 |
Accountability | 135 |
Schools | 121 |
Instructional leadership | 116 |
Decision making | 104 |
School reform | 103 |
School improvement | 100 |
Transformational leadership | 93 |
Educational research | 89 |
Higher education | 87 |
Information and communication technology | 73 |
Distributed leadership | 68 |
School change | 65 |
Job satisfaction | 64 |
Trust | 63 |
Organizational culture | 63 |
Educational planning and administration | 61 |
Social justice | 60 |
Secondary schools | 58 |
Teacher learning | 54 |
Reference
Wang, Y. (2018), “The panorama of the last decade's theoretical groundings of educational leadership research: a concept co-occurrence network analysis”, Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 327-365.