REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF "EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP" IN THE PUBLISHED ARTICLES OF JOURNALS IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION

This paper aims to to describe and interpret of how researchers and practioners understand the concept of "educational leadership" in their published articles in relevant refereed research journals on educational studies towards identifying major issues and approaches were applied by the authors to tackle the concept of educational leadership.

Using interpretive-critical approach and a qualitative meta-analysis strategy,‌ researchers were trying to answer research questions. The research scope was all aritcles in the field of educational leadership which have been published in Iranian research journals respectively. According to the agreed criteria, 62 quite relevant papers were selected and analyzed qualitatively.

The findings on the applied research strategies showed that about 89% of the reviewed articles were conducted quantitatively via the positivist approaches. It was also seen that different leadership patterns such as transformational leadership, distributional, moral security, spirituality, and servant have been taken into account by the studied cases showing that they were in line with current international practices. It seems that some leardership patterns have been influenced by the Islamic culture and values rather than relevant international theoretical issues. Additionally the findings indicated that despite the importance has been given to some modern leadership patterns such as justice-centered leadership, technology-orientation, and instructional leadership by foreign researchers, these patterns have not yey been addressed by Iranian researchers. Further analysis showed that the concept of educational leadership and its content, patterns of writing and research paradigms have been changing increasingly in recent decades resulting in some kind of intellectual flourishing. As a result, despite its limited scope as an international subject heavely rooted in organizational ideas and male single-person writers, it has been transformed to a multifaceted topic in which not only the number of published articles has been sharply increased but also the number and combination of authors in particular female authors and contributers has increase too. Along with these positive changes, it seems that the contribution of young researchers in publishing articles is reduced.

The findings emphasize the role of the editors and the monitoring committees for publications in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in examining the content of specialized educational management journal and preventing the unplanned extension of topics beyond the boundaries of the field. It also emphasizes the role of supervisors and advisors in universities and education providers to encourage graduate students to focus on leadership issues in schools in order to