Evaluation and Bibliographic Analyses of EdLAM Literature to Help Early Career Academics

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (OECD, 2018), in almost half of the 38 OECD-member countries, most of the decisions about organization of instruction, personnel management, planning and structures, and resource management are taken at the school level. This study focused on understanding the current body of EdLAM knowledge to help doctoral students and early career researchers plan, run, and publish their studies. The terms “educational administration”, “educational management”, “educational leadership” were used to search the Web of Science database for studies published between 2000 and 2019. The final data set included 1438 articles. Concepts were examined with cooccurrence analysis using the bibliographic analysis tool, VOSViewer. Citation analysis was employed for ascertaining sources of highly cited articles. Results showed that “educational leadership” was the most studied concepts. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, and Educational Management Administration and Leadership were found to be those journals with the highest average yearly influence.


Introduction
Academics, especially early career academics, are increasingly being pressured to publish papers in high-quality, leading academic journals (McGrail, Rickard, & Jones, 2006). This is because this is often considered to be the most highly valued sign of an academic's research productivity and quality (Mulligan, Hall, & Raphael, 2013;Print & Hattie, 1997). However, publishing in such journals can be a difficult code to crack as there is considerable variation in understanding across disciplines as to what defines research excellence (Lamont, 2009). Being published in these journals is even harder for authors who have English as a second language (ESL) seeking to publish in high-quality academic journals, which are mostly published in English.
Having an article published as a doctoral student and an early career academic is considered as a positive sign of future publication and citation counts (Horta & Santos, 2016). This also could affect increased international collaboration and visibility around the world (Thomas, West, & Rich, 2016). Despite these advantages, doctoral students and early career academics can experience considerable anxiety when writing for peer-reviewed journals. Doctoral supervision, study groups, publications, or writing coaches may be able to provide certain amount of guidance on writing for publication in peer-reviewed journals, which may even relieve a certain amount of their anxiety (Kamler, 2008;Lee & Kamler, 2008;McGrail et al., 2006;Nagago & Bukovszki, 2016). perform at higher levels on PISA, whatever the causal nature of that relationship." (Schleicher, 2018, p. 109). Additionally, by conducting international comparisons and analyzes, Schleicher (2018) indicated the importance of effective school management and effective leadership approaches for high-performance school systems with high functions for 21th century students and teachers. These reflections made within the practical dimension of the education emphasized the importance of educational leadership, administration, and management.
Despite EdLAM literature having been growing internationally, scholars in the field generally point out that studies on knowledge accumulation in the field have not been getting enough attention (Asuga, Scevak, & Eacott, 2016). EdLAM scholars, being members of a robust field, took this note seriously, and have conducted review and trend studies that analyze the body of the EdLAM knowledge (e.g. Hallinger, 2019a;Wang & Bowers, 2016) in order to see the growth of the field and its direction. The basic rational behind these studies, as is the case with the current study, was that knowledge accumulation in EdLAM, gathered through studies and reflection, subsequently affects universities' educational administration programs. If the work that researchers in the field have undertaken contributes to EdLAM, and informs and shapes the discipline's knowledge accumulation, then we may consider these scholarly venues have had an impact on education (Borgemenke & Brown, 2013).
In an early study, using citation analysis, Haller (1968) examined citations of those articles published in Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), investigating the publishing authors' affiliation and academic training. Results showed that educational administration mostly cited from studies in education and sociology. Psychology, social psychology, political science, economics, and anthropology were other fields that were found to contribute to educational administration (Wang, Yinjing, & Bowers, 2016).
Another early example of citation research in EdLAM was undertaken by Campbell (1979). From 1965to 1978 articles in EAQ were analyzed to find out the most cited journals in the field. EAQ, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Journal of Educational Administration were the first, second, and third most cited journals, respectively (Wang et al., 2016).
Trend analyses have also been increasing throughout the current decade. Richardson and McLeod (2009) examined articles published in Journal of School Leadership (JSL) and in EAQ between 2000 and 2007 to determine the most cited EdLAM journals. EAQ, JSL, and Phi Delta Kappan were found to be the first, second, and third most cited journals, respectively. Additionally, Richardson and McLeod (2009) indicated that EAQ generally published articles regarding empirical research, theory, and philosophy; however, JSL published on practice, practitioners, and knowledge application.
Using citation analysis, Borgemenke and Brown (2013) analyzed articles published in International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation (IJELP) between 2006 and 2010 in order to examine the knowledge base of educational leadership; they reported the most cited authors and impact factors.
Using bibliometric and content analysis, 2347 publications from 15 core EdLAM journals were analyzed from 2007 to 2016 to identify thematic strands, major research findings, and limitations in the literature (Tian & Huber, 2016). The authors present five thematic strands from school leadership for enhancing students' academic achievement and teachers' effectiveness; these strands ranged from the principal's instructional leadership for school improvement to distributed leadership and its impact on organizational climate and teachers' attitudes and stress (Tian & Huber, 2016).
Hallinger (2019a) examined 292 articles published before the end of 2016. To analyze the EdLAM knowledge base of South African literature, the author analyzed data according to volume, growth, period, distribution across scholarly journals, authors, and citation impact as well as research methods, conceptual models, and topics. Although Hallinger's work mostly concentrated on EdLAM knowledge base those societies outside of the of Anglo-American and Northern-European sphere, he has also contributed to the EdLAM field with science mapping studies. In his most recent studies, Hallinger (2020) examined EdLAM studies in Africa (Hallinger, 2019b), Asia, and Latin America. ies.ccsenet.org International Education Studies Vol. 14, No. 12; Hallinger (2019b) also studied 645 Scopus-indexed EdLAM documents published between 1960 and 2008. Via science mapping, Hallinger (2019b) examined the geographical distribution of the articles as well as highly cited authors and documents. Hallinger also studied conceptual trends in EdLAM. As a result of these studies, Hallinger (2019b) reports that the most recent concept studied in African EdLAM context appeared to be school leadership.
In his most recent article, Hallinger (2020) worked on the body of EdLAM knowledge in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Data included 1171 documents published from 1965 to 2018; the results of this study Hallinger (2020) showed that articles from the region selected for the study increased in number between 2015 and 2018. School leadership, school management, and principals were found to be the most recent concepts studied by EdLAM scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
A further study, conducted Hallinger & Kovacevic (2019), investigated research on educational administration by reviewing bibliographic mapping, size, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of EA studies published between 1960 and 2018. In addition, high impact scholars and documents were presented after the analyses. Authors also stated that a paradigm shift, from "school administration" to "school leadership", had occurred over the years studied.
Considering prior research in the field, the current study focused on the following research questions to understand the current body of EdLAM knowledge and help doctoral students and early career researchers to plan, run, and publish their studies: This literature review used the search terms "educational administration", "educational management", "educational leadership" and the Web of Science database to gather EdLAM articles.

Method
To review the body of knowledge of EdLAM bibliographic mapping, in other words science mapping were used. Bibliographic/science mapping is a computational technique facilitating the visualization, analysis, and modeling of a broad range of scientific and technological activities. This is a field lies at the intersection of scientometrics, citation analysis, computer science, information visualization, visual analytics, data mining, and knowledge discovery (Cobo et al., 2011).
The author of the current research used a systematic review method (Stansfield, Dickson & Bangpan, 2016) to systematize this review in order to better interpret the results and overcome challenges when searching online databases. Deciding to identify resources, searching a source appropriately, evaluating results methodically, deciding which data to grab from each resource, reaching relevant data in a usable format, and deciding what information to record for transparency could be considered as those challenges that researchers may confront if they decide not to follow the systematic method for their review (Stansfield et al., 2016). Along this line, the author used a three-step process, namely: 1) Planning the search, 2) Executing the search, and 3) Screening and managing information. Details of these research steps are explained in Table 1. The aim of the study was determined in order to review EdLAM knowledge base.
The resource was determined as the Web of Science.
The decision to limit data (publications) to the 2000-2019 period.
VOSviewer was chosen to map and visualize data.

Executing the search
Web of Science were searched using the keywords "educational administration", "educational management", and "educational leadership" to generate a data set for the review.
VOSviewer was run using bibliographic data and publication references.
3. Screening and managing information Data screening was conducted along with executing the search stage, since it is important to have concise results without losing the details.
Certain criteria were set for the VOSviewer to reach inclusive and concise results.

Planning the Search
The study resource was determined as Web of Science database because it is a high-quality database of scientific publications, and because it has a uniformed search tool that enables users to gather and analyze information in timely manner.
The Web of Science database was searched for documents published between 2000 and 2019 using the keywords "educational administration", "educational management", and "educational leadership". The resulting publication list was then narrowed down to include English language articles only. The final data set included 1438 articles.

Executing the Search
To conduct bibliographic mapping to investigate the research questions, data were analyzed by VOSviewer 1.6.12, a bibliometric mapping tool developed by van Eck and Waltman (2010).
A different data type, counting method, and unit of analysis were applied for each research question, and are presented in Table 2. As can be seen in Table 2, co-occurrence analysis was conducted in order to examine the first three research questions. Citation analysis was deployed for ascertaining sources of highly cited articles, thereby addressing the fourth research question.

Screening Records for Relevance
After the first round of the analyses, certain criteria were introduced in order so that the results could be better interpreted and understood, this is because the initial results of the selected terms were numerous and interpretation of them was very complex. In order to yield more concise results, VOSviewer was run using different limits for each analysis. The criteria for each of these analyses are presented in Table 3. " was the mo administratio N=116), and "s cepts that occ N=11), "decisio d four clusters d a leading con with education ulated in the se gside the terms onal managem nstructional lea nt". The final c ts were "pedag Internation number of sel ed concepts w ielded 109 com ct", "article", a ctly relate to a mained, the rela onship among ost studied con on" (N=165), social justice" curred least o on making" (N s. Each cluster ncept of this c nal leadership econd cluster. s "politics", "e ment" being at adership" wer cluster include gogy", "resista nal Education Stu 5 lected terms, a were set up bas mmon concept and "study" we single topic; th ationships of w the mostly stu ncept and app "school prin (N=92) were often in the d N=11), and "int r encompassed cluster was "ed indicating that "Educational education" and t the center of re the top th ed 21 concepts, ance", and "div udies as seen in Tab sed on keywor ts. These conc ere eliminated herefore, they t which are prese udied concepts eared a total o ncipals" (N=14 found to be th dataset were " ternational edu d concepts rela ducational lead t these two con administration d "curriculum f the cluster. " ree concepts , of which "soc versity". V le 3, are expla rds that appea epts were clos from subseque tended to disto ented in Figure   in the field of 526 times 41), "educatio he other most-s "discourse" (N ucation" (N=11 ated to one an dership". "Scho ncepts are wide n" was the lead ". Third cluste "Distributed le that were fou cial justice" wa Vol. 14,No. 12; ained in the re ared in ten or sely examined ent analyses, d ort the visualiz e 1. in the publica onal managem studied concep N=11), "leade 1).
nother. First cl ool principals" ely studied toge ding concept w er encompasse eadership", "sc und in studie as in the center  pplied in consi the articles ha udies had been Viewer were set other, as can be ns from the giv s represented b al citations. V me rticles accordin hip" was publi vernance", "job deration of the ad been cited. n cited, the m t at 0 and 7, re e seen presente ven journals, wi by different col Vol. 14,No. 12; ng to time. Stu shed more rec b-satisfaction" e available sou In order to fo minimum numb espectively. Re ed in Figure 3;    Vol. 14, No. 12; among those journals with the highest average yearly influence.
In another study Richardson and McLeod (2009) Hallinger (2020) indicated that the International Journal of Educational Management and the Journal of Educational Administration were the most welcoming to papers submitted by authors from emerging-EdLAM countries and regions. It was also found that the JEA and EAQ demonstrated the strongest scholarly impact in the field (Hallinger, 2020).

Conclusion
From a broad perspective, leadership is a prominent concept in the management field. As expected, leadership is a concept that has been extensively studied in the field of education. This finding is important because it shows that researchers in the field of education have been closely following developments and applications of the management field. This can be considered to be a promising development in the field of education because educators, teachers, and educational managers are starting to be accepted as leaders, and educational practices are now being formed according to a leadership framework. Given the fact that "leadership preparation program" and "school leadership" were the mostly studied and associated concepts, it could be said that school administrators are preparing to become effective leaders.
Following leadership, "educational management" and "school principals" were among those most commonly studied concepts in EdLAM. This indicates the importance of the management of the entire school system, as well as the effects and contributions of school principals to that system. This highlights that school administrators and their approaches, attitudes, behaviors, and understandings are all considered within the EMAL field when designing modern school environments, where discussions about student-centered approaches and teachers' roles as facilitators and guides take place.
We might even consider the concept of "school reform" as a shortcoming in the development of the field of education in the current age, an age in which change, and transformation is very fast.
Results of the analyses show that, when compared with other concepts, "school reform" appeared low in number in this current study. Given that, in the current century, change and transformation have been taking place with considerable speed, this could hinder development of the education field. However, "innovation" appeared more often in more recent EdLAM studies, signaling that contemporary research in the EdLAM field has been paying close attention to change and transformation in the field of education and other related fields.
"Globalization" is a concept that has been studied within the educational field in terms of expanding and reproducing good examples in education. It was surprising that "globalization" was among those concepts that were studied less often when compared with other concepts. Considering importance and effects of PISA and TIMSS, which allow for the assessment of education and training globally, it can be expected that "globalization" will, prospectively, be studied with greater regularity within the EdLAM field. Moreover, UNESCO and OECD educational missions, as well as a global common understanding about the importance of education, suggests that EdLAM researchers are paying greater attention to "globalization" than they have done in the past.
One intriguing finding was that "student achievement" was barely studied in recent EdLAM articles. Given the fact that the success and wellbeing of students is widely accepted as one of the main outcomes of education, it is recommended that "student achievement" from the point of educational managers.

Limitations
This study applied the bibliographic mapping technique to examine Web of Science indexed EdLAM articles, and so it has certain limitations. First, it did not include any unpublished research (including, but not limited to dissertations and conference presentation on the topic of EdLAM). The inclusion of such sources may have yielded ies.ccsenet.org International Education Studies Vol. 14, No. 12; different findings and conclusions. Second, the findings of this study were limited to the Web of Science database. It should be considered that the use of a different database could have resulted in similar or different findings. Third, a search of the Web of Science database was conducted using the terms "educational administration", "educational management", and "educational leadership". Changing these search terms may have yielded different results.