Representation of knowledge production of leadership and educational management in international specialized journals and global databases

The aim of this study was to identify knowledge production of leadership and educational management of the faculty members of the educational management departments of Iranian public universities in international specialized journals and Web of science and Scopus databases.

A comprehensive search without time limit was conducted in 8 international specialized journals of educational leadership and management in Web of Science and Scopus databases. 150 articles were extracted and all of them were analyzed. Required information including titles of articles and journals, year of publication, author(s), gender, organizational affiliation, keywords, number of citations and abstracts were extracted using a checklist.

The results showed that in recent years the number of articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science has increased. The role of women in publishing articles was so prominent that 122 women were involved in writing 56/67% of articles. The field of "higher education" had a wide range of articles (47/33%). Examining the titles of the journals, it was found that the variety of journals was very high and only 8 articles (5/33%) were published in international specialized journals on educational leadership and management. 18 articles (10/6%) had authors (authors) whose organizational affiliation was outside of Iran. The average citation rate of articles indexed in Scopus was 3.01 and that of Web of science was 1.78. This literature focused on themes and issues of leadership and organizational behavior. This study identified 8 main areas (leadership and management, evaluation, knowledge management, organizational culture, educational economics, teaching-learning, organizational behavior and organizational performance). The findings also showed the paradigm shift from "management" to "leadership".

Research findings can provide a deeper insight and understanding of the quantity and quality of educational leadership and management products to be used in future decision making for educational management departments and leads faculty members to focus their efforts on the areas that most promise to strengthen the educational leadership and management knowledge in Iran.