A Systematic Review of Studies On Leadership Models in Educational Research From 1980 To 2014

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A systematic review of studies on leadership models in educational research

from 1980 to 2014
Article in Educational Management Administration and Leadership · January 2018

DOI: 10.1177/1741143216659296
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Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
A systematic review of studies 1–24
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DOI: 10.1177/1741143216659296
in educational research emal.sagepub.com
from 1980 to 2014
Sedat Gumus, Mehmet Sukru Bellibas, Murat Esen

and Emine Gumus
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to reveal the extent to which different leadership models in education
are studied, including the change in the trends of research on each model over time, the most
prominent scholars working on each model, and the countries in which the articles are based. The
analysis of the related literature was conducted by first employing a bibliometric analysis of the
research and review papers indexed in the Web of Science database between 1980 and 2014.
Then, a more in-depth analysis of selected papers was done using the content analysis method. The
results showed that there has been increasing interest in leadership models in educational research
over time. Distributed leadership, instructional leadership, teacher leadership, and transforma-
tional leadership are the most studied leadership models in educational research. It was also found
that related research increasingly focuses on the effects of leaders on organizational behaviors/
conditions and on student achievement. Accordingly, usage of quantitative methodology has sig-
nificantly increased during the last decade. Possible reasons for these changes, implications, and
recommendations for future research are also discussed.
Keywords
Bibliometrics, distributed leadership, instructional leadership, leadership models, leadership
research, teacher leadership, transformational leadership
Introduction
The issue of leadership has been a matter of concern for hundreds of years and can be traced back
to the philosophers of Ancient Greece, but the discussion of leadership and the need for effective
leaders has hit the top in today’s world, where the achievement of individuals, organizations, and
sectors depends substantially on the success of leaders (Bolden, 2004). Despite its importance, it is
difficult to define leadership (Leithwood and Riehl, 2005). In fact, no single definition of
Corresponding author:
Sedat Gumus, Necmettin Erbakan Universitesi, Egitim Bilimleri Bolümü, Konya 42090, Turkey.
Email: gumussed@gmail.com
Downloaded from ema.sagepub.com by guest on September 23, 2016

2 Educational Management Administration & Leadership
leadership/leader exists in the literature (Bush, 2008; Yukl, 2002). Kruse (2013) has defined
leadership as ‘‘a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the
achievement of a goal’’ (p.2). In accordance with this definition, Leithwood and Riehl (2003: 4)
have stated that ‘‘at the core of most definitions of leadership are two functions: providing direction
and exercising influence.’’ In an educational context, therefore, school leadership can refer to ‘‘the
work of mobilizing and influencing others to articulate and achieve the school’s shared intentions
and goals’’ (Leithwood and Riehl, 2005: 14).
In the educational sector, leadership began to garner attention during the beginning of the 20th
century, when the scientific management theory was introduced with the aim of improving the
quality and quantity of outcomes in the business sector. Following the scientific management
theory, some other theories from the business sector, such as the functions of management theory
by Fayol and the bureaucratic management theory by Weber, also influenced the way leadership
was perceived in education (Lunenburg, 2003). However, there was also some level of awareness
among scholars regarding the fact that the special characteristics of education and schools should
be taken into account when considering leadership in the educational sector (Bush, 2003). This
helped educational researchers to develop specific leadership models that are applicable to
schools and other educational institutions, particularly within the last few decades. Therefore,
many different leadership models, both from other sectors or specifically developed for the
educational sector, have been discussed, implemented, and researched in educational settings
for a long time.
Although leadership models have become a very popular subject in educational research,
especially over the last three decades, the popularity of the specific leadership models over time
and trends in the related literature are not very clear. Most of the systematic review studies on
educational leadership included all types of educational leadership studies without paying spe-
cial attention to the leadership models (see Hallinger, 2014, for more information on review
studies in educational leadership). On the other hand, there have been only a few systematic
review studies that were primarily interested in research on leadership models. These studies
have generally focused on only one or, rarely, a few specific leadership models (e.g. Instruc-
tional, Distributed, Transformational) in detail (Bennett et al., 2003; Hallinger, 2003, 2005;
Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005; Neumerski, 2013; Tian et al., 2016), rather than trying to explore
the research trends in many different leadership models. Therefore, these review studies were
able to analyze only a limited number of papers due to their scope and the nature of their work.
To this end, we believe that a more comprehensive review of existing research on lead-
ership models in education can be made, drawing upon titles, keywords, and abstracts of
papers published in prominent education journals. Therefore, the main purpose of this study
is to conduct a comprehensive review of leadership models in education to reveal the extent
to which different leadership models are studied, the changes in the trends of research on
each model over time, the most prominent scholars and journals working on these models,
and the countries in which articles are based through a bibliometric analysis of research and
review papers indexed in the Web of Science database. In addition, we also analyzed the
content of selected papers in order to obtain more in-depth information about the methods,
purposes, and focus groups of the related studies. Analyzing a significant amount of litera-
ture in top journals would help researchers acquire a better picture of the change in the
trends of research on leadership models. This would also provide an opportunity to interpret
how leadership research has been influenced by the issues that educational systems have
been faced with over time.

Gumus et al.: A systematic review of studies on leadership models 3
Leadership models in educational research

When it comes to education administration as an area of research, there was not much focus on
school leadership before the 1900s. Back then, there was no explicit separation between school
leadership roles and the teaching function (Murphy, 1995). During this time period, efforts to train
people as leaders focused mostly on issues surrounding curriculum, instruction, and the description
of eminent school leaders (Button, 1966; Callahan and Button, 1964). The understanding of
leadership was largely shaped through ideas and pure reason rather than employing the data
(Jacobson and Cypres, 2012). Therefore, no specific leadership model was observed in education
during this period. After the 1900s, however, more concrete leadership theories and models
started to emerge. Before going into the details of the most prominent leadership models used
in education, we would like to briefly describe the development of earlier leadership theories,
such as trait, behavioral, and situational, which provided a basis for discussions on leadership in
different sectors.
Discussions about achieving more effective and efficient organizations have been overwhelm-
ing over the last century. While discussions about management types have mostly been concerned
with what makes an organization more effective, leadership discussions have focused on under-
standing or identifying the leadership practices that can help to achieve an organization’s desired
goals. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ‘‘great man’’ theory was the popular phenom-
enon shaping the understanding of leadership. This theory assumed that leaders require specific
qualities inherent in one’s personality, meaning that leaders are born with leadership qualities and
acquiring such qualities afterward is not possible. The great man theory later evolved into the ‘‘trait
theory,’’ which focused only on identifying leadership and non-leadership characteristics instead
of making an argument regarding whether these characteristics are acquired or innate (Kirkpatrick
and Locke, 1991).
Criticism of the trait theory led to the development of the ‘‘behavioral theory’’ of leadership.
The behavioral theory was developed as a result of substantial research on understanding the type
of leadership behaviors that resulted in effective organizations (Derue et al., 2011). The behavioral
theory categorizes effective leadership behaviors into four groups, including task-oriented beha-
vior, relational-oriented behavior, change-oriented behavior, and passive leadership. Task-oriented
behaviors involve defining tasks, coordinating members, determining standards for task perfor-
mance, and making sure that members meet these standards. Relational-oriented behaviors
include a substantial focus on the quality of the relationships among group members. Change-
oriented behaviors are concerned with driving change within the group through developing
vision and motivating creative thinking and risk taking. For instance, many transformational
leadership behaviors can be considered change-oriented. Finally, passive leaders refer to those
who do not engage during times when no problem exists in the organization. Transactional
leadership and laissez-faire leadership behaviors are more likely to represent passive leadership
(Derue et al., 2011).
Leadership research from post-World War II through the 1980s was characterized by the
behavioral science era (Murphy, 1995), and ‘‘the behavioral science approach was an attempt to
reconcile the basic incongruency between the rational-economic model and the social model’’
(Lunenburg, 2003: 5). The specific leadership theory that emerged during this period was con-
tingency/situational leadership. The situational leadership theory opposes trait and behavioral
leadership theories that assert the existence of ‘‘best’’ characteristics and behaviors of leaders to
influence subordinates. Followers of situational leadership theory center their ideas on the

argument that there is no ‘‘best leadership practice’’ suitable to all contexts and situations; hence,
effective leadership practices are highly dependent on the situation in which leaders work. Simi-
larly, there is no ‘‘best method’’ for influencing subordinates due to their varying characteristics.
‘‘Rather, the task-relevant maturity levels of individuals or groups in a given situation tends to
determine which leadership styles are likely to achieve the highest results’’ (Hersey et al., 1982:
217). For instance, followers who are not willing to perform specific tasks should be provided with
clear directions and close supervision, while those who perform the tasks but have little confidence
should be supported with two-way communication (Hersey et al., 1982).
While the discussions on leadership have a long history, most educational leadership models
that have been discussed today, such as instructional leadership, distributed leadership, and teacher
leadership, emerged during the post-behavioral-science era (after the 1980s). The post-behavioral-
science era has been characterized by ‘‘the interrelated concepts of school improvement, demo-
cratic community, and social injustice, as well as subjectivist and interpretivist approaches to the
study and practice of educational administration variously labeled neo-Marxist/critical theory and
postmodernism’’ (Lunenburg, 2003: 5). As a result of the emphasis placed on the subjectivist and
interpretivist perspectives, there has been a significant increase in the number of qualitative
studies. The cornerstone of the development of school leadership models was research on
effective schools. Effective school research was mostly qualitative and focused on schools that
successfully created environments and conditions in which students could grow, irrespective of
their socio-economic backgrounds (Clark et al., 1984). Findings of that body of research can be
summarized thus: ‘‘School leaders matter, they are educationally significant, school leaders do
make a difference’’ (Huber, 2004: 669). One of the main themes that emerged as a consequence
of effective school research was the existence of strong leaders in the most successful schools
(Austin, 1979; Bridges, 1982; Dougherty, 1981; Murnane, 1981; Purkey and Smith, 1983; Ralph
and Fennessey, 1983). These studies played a key role in the development of new leadership
models in education and the integration of leadership models from other organizations into
schools.
After a brief background of the development of essential leadership theories, we now turn to the
specific leadership models that have frequently been used in educational research. General infor-
mation, such as the development and the content, about several prominent leadership models is
provided in the following sections.
Managerial leadership
During the early 1900s, school leadership knowledge came under the heavy influence of Taylor’s
scientific management theory, which was the dominating ideology of the time, exported from
business research (Murphy, 1995). These years correspond to the ‘‘scientific management era,’’
during which school was seen more as a ‘‘rational-technical system’’ (Lunenburg, 2003) and hence
the description of leadership practices failed to exceed the boundaries of the organizational and
legal issues of schooling (Murphy, 1995). Following Taylor’s scientific management theory,
Weber’s ‘‘ideal bureaucracy’’ and Fayol’s ‘‘universal list of management principles’’ contributed
to the development of ‘‘classical management theory,’’ which shaped the understanding of char-
acteristics of leadership in this era (Leonard and Leonard, 1999: 237). The influence of this era on
today’s educational system is the indispensable existence of hierarchical and bureaucratic systems
within schools (Candoli et al., 1997). Research on leadership during this time focused on the
observable practices of leaders (Culbertson, 1988) and practices of effective school leaders were

substantially related to the scientific management theory of organizations (Bush, 2003; Candoli
et al., 1997). Such research constituted a base for the development of the ‘‘managerial leadership’’
model in education (Bush, 2007: 395).
Managerial leadership requires the leader to focus on ‘‘functions, tasks and behaviors.’’ When
those are effectively carried out in an organization, people’s work can be facilitated. The
behaviors of people are rational and authority is allocated among workers through formal
positions within the bureaucratic hierarchy (Leithwood et al., 1999). The focus of this leadership
model is on managing existing practices in schools rather than developing a vision beyond
available practices. The model may be more visible in countries in which the educational system
is centralized, since it considerably emphasizes the implementation of practices mandated by
higher external management authorities within the bureaucratic hierarchy (Bush, 2007). Scien-
tific management-based school leadership, however, fell short in addressing the social aspect of
the school. A more humanitarian perspective, identified during the ‘‘human relations era,’’
dominated school administration research after the 1930s (Murphy, 1995) as a consequence of
‘‘the introduction of social sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political
science into the study of educational administration’’ (Jacobson and Cypres, 2012: 219). The
major focus was on the relationship between school leaders and other staff and the human
relations skills of leaders (Candoli et al., 1997).
Instructional leadership
A body of research during the 1960s and 1970s focused on the characteristics of effective school
principals (e.g. Austin, 1979; Bridges, 1967; Chase and Guba, 1955; Edmonds, 1979; Goldman
and Heald, 1968). The common theme that emerged from these studies was that an effective leader
was a type of leader who paid considerable attention to the teaching and learning aspects of
schools. Effective leaders were described as those who provided direction and strived to improve
instructional practices (Chase and Guba, 1955); supervised teaching (Goldman and Heald, 1968);
assessed the quality of instruction, gave feedback to staff, aligned instructional programs with
school goals (Bridges, 1967); provided the motivational and material support required for the
betterment of teaching; and established academic goals for students, worked on the development
of instructional strategies, and monitored student progress (Edmonds, 1979). Such early efforts to
provide an understanding of effective leadership established a basis for the emergence and devel-
opment of instructional leadership theory, one of the most commonly studied types of leadership in
the educational administration.
The idea of instructional leadership was ambiguous until the 1980s, when concrete models were
introduced. The most cited instructional leadership model in the literature has been the one
developed by Hallinger and Murphy (1985). This model defined instructional leadership through
three components: Defining the school mission requires principals to frame and communicate
schools’ goals; managing the instructional program suggests that principals coordinate the curri-
culum, supervise and assess the instruction, and monitor student progress; and finally promoting a
positive school learning climate includes principals’ efforts to protect instructional time, provide
incentives for teachers and learning, promote professional development, develop and enforce
academic standards, and maintain high visibility. From this definition, it can be argued that the
earlier understanding of instructional leadership was mostly principal-centered. However, a more
democratic understanding of instructional leadership has started to appear in recent literature
(Gumus and Akcaoglu, 2013; Lee et al., 2012; Marks and Printy, 2003; Neumerski, 2013). In

addition, the usage of ‘‘learning-centered leadership’’ or ‘‘leadership for learning’’ terms has
become widespread during the last decade. While providing a definition of instructional leader-
ship, Bush (2003) used ‘‘learning-centered leadership’’ as a synonym for ‘‘instructional leader-
ship’’ and ‘‘learning-centered leaders’’ interchangeably with ‘‘instructional leaders.’’ He further
stated that ‘‘the term ‘instructional leadership’ derives from North America and it has been super-
seded in England and elsewhere by the notion of ‘learning-centered leadership’’’ (p.17).
Curriculum leadership
One of the key dimensions of instructional leadership is its focus on developing and coordinating
an effective school curriculum. Besides the instructional leadership model, there exists a separate
model representing the curriculum development responsibility of school leadership: curriculum
leadership. The curriculum leadership model has been an important research topic in countries that
have decentralized educational systems and, thereby, curriculum development is carried out at the
school or district level (Law et al., 2007; Lo, 2012). A curriculum leader is someone who is
responsible for monitoring, implementing, and improving curriculum (Lo, 2012). According to
Pajak and McAfee (1992: 22) ‘‘school principals can provide curriculum leadership through
decisions about staffing, supervision, scheduling, and the allocation of resources that facilitate the
enactment of curriculum at the department level’’.
Although it has a unique definition, the curriculum leadership model was sometimes used
interchangeably with instructional leadership (Lee and Dimmock, 1999; Ylimaki, 2012). For
instance, according to Lee and Dimmock (1999: 457) curriculum leadership involved multifaceted
dimensions such as ‘‘goal setting and planning; monitoring, reviewing and developing the educa-
tional programme of the school; monitoring, reviewing and developing the staff of the school;
culture building; and allocating resources.’’ The traditional view of curriculum leadership prior-
itized school principals as the unique personnel responsible for developing and improving schools’
curriculum. A new understanding of curriculum leadership has adopted a distributed leadership
perspective and argues that teachers and other school personnel should be involved in the decision-
making processes of curriculum design (Ho, 2010; Law et al., 2007; MacPherson et al., 1998).
Distributed leadership
Instructional leadership considers the principal to be a strong figure who is the unique person to
coordinate and control multifaceted tasks relevant to curriculum and instruction (Goddard, 2003;
Heck et al., 1990). Critics of this theory place their claim on the premise that school leaders cannot
deal with such comprehensive tasks given that they are responsible for numerous time-consuming
managerial tasks (Huber, 2004), and that leaders are more likely to possess less expertise than a
subject matter teacher in a given subject area (Cuban, 1988). Therefore, a theory based on the
distribution of leadership authority seemed inevitable. According to one distributed leadership
perspective, ‘‘leadership practice is viewed as a product of the interactions of school leaders,
followers, and their situation’’ (Spillane, 2005: 144). In such a context, ‘‘leadership is about
learning together and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively’’
(Lambert, 1998: 5).
The nature of distributed leadership as a theory criticizes the hierarchical design of leadership
and suggests the involvement of all personnel in the decision-making mechanism and collaboration
among the entire staff as ways to effectively coordinate work and solutions to organizational

problems. Distributed leadership has been well studied in educational settings during the last
decade. Distributed leadership in the literature is often used interchangeably with other terms,
such as ‘‘shared leadership,’’ ‘‘collaborative leadership,’’ ‘‘delegated leadership,’’ and ‘‘dispersed
leadership’’ (Spillane, 2005).
Teacher leadership
The idea of distributing leadership functions, actions, and authorities to school personnel has led to
a substantial body of research focusing on the question of how teachers might demonstrate lead-
ership in schools. The development of the teacher leadership concept was primarily based on the
research of North American scholars in the 1990s. Later, during the 2000s, it became a prominent
topic in the UK as well (Harris, 2004). The teacher leadership concept ‘‘suggests that teachers
rightly and importantly hold a central position in the ways schools operate and in the core functions
of teaching and learning’’ (York-Barr and Duke, 2004: 255). It is based on the idea that all
members of an organization can lead, and leadership is considered to be an agency that is dis-
tributed (Harris, 2004). Teacher leadership is carried out when teachers take part in the decision-
making mechanism of schools, contribute to the professional development of others, share their
expertise with their peers, and generate new ideas for the development of schools (Leithwood and
Jantzi, 2000).
Transformational and charismatic leadership

Transformational leadership is another model that has been overwhelmingly used in educational
research over the last three decades (Hallinger, 2003). Transformational leadership, which
appeared in the leadership literature in the 1990s, was a reaction to the type of leadership that
emphasizes hierarchy and top-down relationships (Leithwood and Poplin, 1992). It is often
described in the literature as an opposite to transactional leadership (Avolio et al., 1999; Howell
and Avolio, 1993), which suggests that principals are the primary responsible personnel for the
coordination and flow of work (Huber, 2004). Bass (1998) identified four main components of
transformational leadership: ‘‘idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimula-
tion, and individual consideration.’’ Such components provide a framework in which leadership is
described as a product of multiple sources instead of one single authority (Hallinger, 2003).
‘‘Transformational leaders motivate followers by raising their consciousness about the impor-
tance of organizational goals and by inspiring them to transcend their own self-interest for the sake
of the organization’’ (Marks and Printy, 2003: 375). Given the emphasis of transformational
leadership on the profound influence of leadership on followers, organizations, and societies,
Shamir and Howell (1999) argued that transformational leadership highlights charisma and, there-
fore, should be a genre of charismatic leadership. Indeed, the conceptualization of transformational
leadership by Bass (1998) was based on the extended version of charismatic leadership (Lowe
et al., 1996). However, ‘‘apart from its central role in transformational leadership theory, charis-
matic leadership has been the basis of its own distinct literature’’ (Judge and Piccolo, 2004: 755).
The characteristics of a charismatic leader include
communicating an ideological vision that is discrepant from the status quo, intellectually stimulating
followers to think in new and different directions, communicating high expectations and confidence in

followers, referring to followers’ worth and efficacy as individuals and as a collective, and engaging in
exemplary and symbolic behavior and role modeling. (Howell and Shamir, 2005: 99)
Moral and ethical leadership

The inclination of transformational or charismatic leaders is not always positive. History has
witnessed charismatic leaders whose actions and purposes are not acceptable or appropriate
(Bush and Glover, 2014). Therefore, it was inevitable that ethical leadership fostering moral
values would become an important component of educational leadership research. Trevino et al.
(2000) identified two pillars of ethical leadership: moral person and moral manager. Their
understanding was that
to be perceived as an ethical leader, it is not enough to just be an ethical person. An executive ethical
leader must also find ways to focus the organization’s attention on ethics and values and to infuse the
organization with principles that will guide the actions of all employees. (Trevino et al., 2000: 128).
A moral person has several traits, such as honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness; s/he has several
behaviors, including doing the right thing, showing concern for people, and being open; and his/her
decisions have several qualities, such as holding to values, objectiveness, concern for society, and
following ethical decision rules. A moral manager is someone who becomes a role model through
visible action, rewards people and maintains discipline, and communicates about ethics and values
(Brown and Treviño, 2006; Trevino et al., 2000).
To sum up, the post-behavioral-science era has been characterized by the development of a
number of significant leadership models in educational research, such as managerial leadership,
instructional leadership, distributed leadership, transformational leadership, teacher leadership,
and ethical leadership, as defined and summarized above. Besides these prominent models, several
other models, including technology leadership (Anderson and Dexter, 2005; Davies, 2010), stra-
tegic leadership (Davies, 2003; Davies and Davies, 2006; Williams and Johnson, 2013), servant
leadership (Cerit, 2009; Tate, 2003), visionary leadership (Aksu, 2009; Guskey, 2003), and authen-
tic leadership (Begley, 2001, 2006; Branson, 2007) have also been used in educational research.
Method
In this study, the research on leadership models in the field of education was investigated through
the bibliometric and content analysis methods. First, we used bibliometrics to draw the broader
picture of educational research on leadership models by exploring the numbers and trends related
to the journals, countries, leadership models, and authors. Then, we analyzed the content of
selected papers in order to obtain more in-depth information about the methods, purposes, and
focus groups of the related studies. Before providing the description of how the analysis was
conducted, some information regarding the bibliometric analysis and rationale for selecting a
specific database and time interval for the analysis will be explained.
Bibliometric analysis
‘‘Bibliometrics is the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media
of communication’’ (Pritchard, 1969: 348). In other words, it is the use of statistical methods in the

process of literature reviews to explore the trends of research on a subject (Young and Belanger,
1983). This method enables researchers to investigate the abstracts, keywords, and references of
the studies in a particular field; to reveal and compare authors, countries, journals, and institutions
in the field; and to bring out scientific collaboration and prominent researchers and journals.
Although there has been an increase in the amount of bibliometrics in various academic fields,
the method is relatively new to educational research. There is very little educational research using
bibliometrics (e.g. Diem and Wolter, 2013; Phelan et al., 2000; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2010).
Rationale for the time and database restrictions

As identified earlier, our primary aim was to draw a general picture of how the related research has
evolved over time by focusing on large numbers of existing studies rather than analyzing relatively
low numbers of studies in detail. Given our scope, selecting a database on which we could search
keywords, identify related papers, and obtain the information we needed for our analyses seemed
to be necessary. Therefore, we decided to use the Web of Science database, since it indexes a large
set of educational studies from highly respected journals all over the world. In addition, this
database included detailed identifiers for each paper and was compatible with Vantage Point
software, which is commonly used for conducting bibliometric analyses. We also only focused
on studies published between 1980 and 2014. The reason for this specific time restriction was
because the majority of educational leadership models that are still being studied were developed
after 1980. In addition, the amount of research on leadership models in education before 1980 is
very limited.
Data analysis procedures

We started our analysis with a total of 157,190 papers, including ‘‘articles’’ and ‘‘reviews’’
published in 334 journals in the field of ‘‘Education and Educational Research’’ indexed by the
Web of Science database between 1980 and 2014. First, 1,191,735 Combined KeywordsþPhrases
were obtained by investigating the titles, abstracts, and keywords of those studies as revealed
through the Vantage Point software. Then, the word ‘‘lead’’ was searched and 7455 keywords and
phrases were listed. After listing all phrases and keywords that included the word ‘‘lead,’’ two
researchers sorted out the ones thought to be related to leadership models. The list of keywords and
phrases created by the two researchers was re-checked by the other two researchers involved in this
study and the missing ones were added to the list. Working with the final list of the related phrases
and keywords, two researchers separately developed lists of leadership models that are prevalent in
the literature by categorizing keywords and phrases. One researcher developed a list that included
18 leadership models, while another developed one with 22 leadership models. The two lists were
compared and discussed based on the existing literature. In the case of several controversial issues,
researchers benefitted from the opinions of prominent researchers in the field. As a result, by
combining some models (e.g. Ethical and Moral Leadership; Distributed, Shared, and Collabora-
tive Leadership; Instructional and Learning-Centered Leadership) and removing models that had a
focus outside of the K-12 level (e.g. Academic Leadership, Campus/University Leadership),
researchers developed a consensus on keeping 14 leadership models in the study.
A total of 505 keywords and phrases were categorized under the final list of 14 leadership
models. Then, a total of 709 articles that included at least one of these keywords and phrases were
included in the study. Our preliminary analysis showed that two journals stood out in terms of

publishing the most articles related to leadership models in education. Of the 709 articles, 107 of
them were published in Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), which has been indexed in
the Web of Science database since 1980. Educational Management, Administration and Leader-
ship (EMAL) also published a significant number of articles (60) in its very short indexed period
between 2009 and 2014, while the rest of the journals published 30 or fewer related articles. Based
on these preliminary results, we decided to integrate the earlier volumes of EMAL, which were not
indexed in the Web of Science database at the time of their publication, into our analyses to get a
more complete picture. To do this, we visited the journal’s website and searched all the volumes
published between 1980 and 2009. Two researchers carefully investigated all the papers published
in these volumes to determine which were related to the above-mentioned 14 leadership models.
What we did manually in this stage was very similar to what the Vantage Point software did
automatically with a command for the papers indexed in the Web of Science database. This means
that we simply read all the titles, abstracts, and keywords of hundreds of papers to search for
keywords or phrases related to a leadership model. As a result, we found a total of 34 papers that
included such keywords or phrases. We also identified the author(s), base country, and the related
leadership model(s) for each paper in order to integrate them into our bibliometric analysis. Adding
these 34 papers brought our total for the bibliometric analysis to 743. Thus, all the information
presented in Tables 1 through 5 is based on these 743 papers.
Table 1. The number of papers on leadership models

in education research (1980–2014).
Years f %
1980–1984 16 2.2
1985–1989 23 3.1
1990–1994 47 6.3
1995–1999 44 5.9
2000–2004 77 10.4
2005–2009 192 25.8
2010–2014 344 46.3
Total 743 100
In the second part of our study, we used the content analysis method to obtain an in-depth
understanding of the related research trends. Since the volume of papers we used for the biblio-
metric analysis was very large, we decided to choose two top journals, EAQ and EMAL, for the
content analysis. These journals not only published the highest numbers of related papers, but also
represented different parts of the world. While most of the EAQ papers in our bibliometric analysis
were based in North America, EMAL published many papers from other parts of the world, such as
Europe, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, in addition to a few papers from North
America. In this stage, we aimed to answer three broad questions: (1) Which methods were used in
selected studies? (2) What were the purposes of these studies? and (3) Which group(s) were
focused on as leaders in these studies? Although we initially planned to answer these questions
by investigating the abstracts of the papers, most of the time we had to go to the full papers and read
them in detail to be able to obtain the information we needed. After investigating all of the selected
papers, we found that more than 90% of the papers included in our bibliometric analysis from these
two journals (183 of 201) were directly related to at least one leadership model. This confirmed the

high relevancy of the papers used in the bibliometric analysis to the main focus of our study.
Although the rest of the selected papers also included related keywords or phrases (that was why
they were included in the bibliometric analysis), they did not focus on any leadership model as a
main or sub-theme; rather, they only used related literature or made related suggestions based on
their findings. Therefore, we have chosen to present only the content analysis of the 183 papers that
directly related to leadership models in the second part of our findings section.
Findings
This section is divided into two sub-sections. The first section provides the results of the biblio-
metric analysis, drawing a broader picture of educational research on leadership models. The
second section provides the results of the content analysis, including more in-depth information
about the methods, purposes, and focus groups of selected papers.
The results of bibliometric analysis

We present the results of our bibliometric analysis in this section. First, we would like to introduce
the general trends in research on leadership models over time. Table 1 shows the number of papers
on leadership models in education research between 1980 and 2014.
When we examined the number of papers by year, we saw that interest in researching leadership
models grew slowly until the 1990s. This interest seemed to remain stable until the year 2000.
After 2000, the number of papers on leadership models started to increase again. Specifically, there
was a dramatic increase after 2005. However, this figure should be analyzed with caution, as the
number of education journals indexed in the Web of Science database also increased substantially
after 2005. The number of education journals indexed in the Web of Science database was around
100 for more than two decades. The number passed 200 in 2010 with the new journals added to the
database after 2005. The increase in the number of papers on leadership models could be a result of
this change in the database. It was therefore important to look at each journal individually to better
understand the trends of studies on leadership models in educational research. By doing this, we
could also identify the specific journals that published the most papers about leadership models in
education. Table 2 reveals the number of papers on leadership models published in education
journals by five-year span.
Because more than a hundred journals in the Web of Science database published at least one
paper on leadership models between 1980 and 2014, we only included a total of 16 education
journals, which published at least 10 related papers (see Table 2). Among these journals, EAQ,
which had been indexed in the Web of Science database since the beginning of this review (1980)
has published the most papers (107) on the subject of leadership models. EMAL followed EAQ
with 94 papers. Although EMAL was indexed in the Web of Science database beginning in 2009,
we manually searched its earlier volumes back to 1980 and integrated related articles into our
analyses as explained in the method section. Other education journals that published significant
numbers of papers on leadership models were School Effectiveness and School Improvement (30),
Elementary School Journal (24), Teaching and Teacher Education (23), and Educational Lead-
ership (21).
In addition, Table 2 shows that a few journals added to the Web of Science database after 2005,
such as Education as Change, Asia Pacific Education Review, Asia-Pacific Education Researcher,
and Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, have published important numbers of papers on

Table 2. Education journals that published the most papers on leadership models (1980–2014).
Journal name Total 80–84 85–89 90–94 94–99 00–04 05–09 10–14
Educational Administration Quarterly 107 – 1 13 7 13 27 46

Educational Management Administration & 94 – – 1 2 9 29 53
Leadership
School Effectiveness and School Improvement 30 – – 3 3 5 7 12
Elementary School Journal 24 – 1 4 7 2 2 8
Teaching and Teacher Education 23 – – 1 1 1 8 12
Educational Leadership 21 9 2 2 – 2 6 –
Teachers College Record 16 – 1 – 1 5 6 3
Education as Change 15 – – – – – 1 14
Asia Pacific Education Review 13 – – – – – 4 9
Phi Delta Kappan 13 – 1 3 1 3 3 2
Urban Education 13 1 – – 5 – 4 3
Education and Urban Society 11 – 2 1 – 3 3 2
Journal of Teacher Education 11 – 5 1 – 2 – 3
Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 10 – – – – – 3 7
Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice 10 – – – – – – 10
Table 3. Number of papers by country.
Countries Total 80–84 85–89 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14
USA 296 4 7 18 19 46 86 116

UK 67 – – – – 13 23 31
Australia 46 – 1 1 4 4 10 26
Canada 32 – 1 – 3 3 12 13
South Africa 31 – – – 1 2 5 23
Turkey 30 – – – – – 2 28
China 27 – – – – – 9 18
Netherlands 17 – – – 1 1 4 11
Belgium 15 – – – – 1 5 9
Taiwan 13 – – – – – 4 9
leadership models. However, the numbers of papers published in these journals were not enough to
fully explain the trends shown in Table 1. This means that there has been growing interest in
research on leadership models after accounting for the increased number of journals indexed in the
Web of Science database. When the most popular journals such as EAQ, EMAL, and School
Effectiveness and School Improvement were examined in detail, the dramatic increase in the
research on leadership models in education during the last decade was more clearly seen.
After introducing the number of articles published on leadership models by year and journal, we
reveal the countries in which the articles were based. Table 3 shows the first 10 countries that were
the sources for the articles on leadership models in education between 1980 and 2014. According
to Table 3, a substantial number of the articles (296 of 743) on leadership models originated from
the USA, as expected. The UK followed the USA with 67 articles, while the number of articles that
originated from Australia and Canada were 46 and 32 respectively. South Africa and Turkey have

Table 4. Number of papers on different leadership models.
Models Total 80–84 85–89 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14
Distributed/Collaborative Leadership 205 2 2 4 3 15 61 118

Instructional Leadership 181 11 9 18 8 15 35 85
Teacher Leadership 151 1 5 9 13 13 47 63
Transformational Leadership 147 - 4 13 7 16 32 75
Curriculum Leadership 49 - 2 2 1 8 16 20
Technology Leadership 46 - - 2 1 5 13 25
Transactional Leadership 40 - - 5 - - 8 27
Ethical/Moral Leadership 38 1 - 1 5 8 8 15
Charismatic Leadership 27 - 1 4 - 5 6 11
Administrative/Managerial Leadership 21 1 1 2 7 2 3 5
Strategic Leadership 20 - - - - 2 6 12
Authentic Leadership 18 - - - 1 - 8 9
Visionary Leadership 18 - - - 4 1 6 7
Servant Leadership 16 - - - 1 1 7 7
Note. Some papers focus on more than one leadership model, so they were included in two or more categories.
also been important sources for the subject with 31 and 30 articles. When we looked at the
source countries by year, we saw that the USA was almost the sole source of related studies
until 1995. Then, several studies started to come from other countries, including Canada,
Australia, the UK, and South Africa. After 2005, several countries, including Turkey, China,
the Netherlands, Belgium, and Taiwan, became important sources for the studies on leader-
ship models in education.
So far we have focused on the research on leadership models in general. We have also con-
ducted some analyses on the specific leadership models used in education research in order to show
the most studied models, as well as the trends over time. Table 4 displays the number of articles
related to each of the 14 leadership models specified earlier. According to the table, the most
studied leadership models in education were as follows: Distributed/Collaborative Leadership,
Instructional Leadership, Teacher Leadership, and Transformational leadership.
Analyzing Table 4 in detail shows that the Instructional Leadership model dominated the field from
1980 to 1995. Almost half of all of the studies on leadership models focused on instructional leadership
until 1995. Then interest in Instructional Leadership decreased gradually until 2010, when the pro-
portion of instructional leadership studies to all studies on leadership models started to increase again.
Another interesting finding is about the trend in studies focused on the Distributed/Collaborative
Leadership model. While there were only a few studies related to this leadership model until 2000,
the number of studies increased gradually until 2005. According to the figures in Table 4, Distributed/
Collaborative Leadership studies dominated the field after 2005. Teacher Leadership studies, on the
other hand, have shown a more stable trend, with a rapid increase after 2005. Although teacher
leadership became the second-most studied leadership model in education after the Distributed/Col-
laborative Leadership model between 2005 and 2009, it held the fourth position between 2010 and
2014. Studies on Transformational Leadership have been very stable after 1985. While interest peaked
during the early 1990s, it continues to be one of the most popular leadership models in education. In
addition, the number of studies on Charismatic Leadership has mostly gone up and down in line with
the studies on Transformational Leadership. Lastly, Technology Leadership, Strategic Leadership,
Servant Leadership, and Authentic Leadership models began to emerge mostly after 1995.

Table 5. The most published scholars by leadership model.
Number of Distributed Instructional Teacher Transformational

Author Papers Leadership Leadership Leadership Leadership
Hallinger, Philip 15 3 15 - -
Leithwood, Kenneth 12 2 2 1 8
Devos, Geert 11 7 2 4 5
Spillane, James P 10 6 6 3 -
Goldring, Ellen B 9 - 8 - 1
Sleegers, Peter 9 1 2 - 6
Harris, Alma 7 7 - 4 -
Heck, Ronald H 7 4 7 - -
Hulpia, Hester 7 7 - 4 1
Jantzi, Doris 6 1 - 1 3
Lee, Moosung 6 2 5 1 -
May, Henry 6 2 6 - -
Murphy, Joseph 6 - 6 - -
In the last part of our bibliometric analysis, we reveal the scholars who published the most
articles on leadership models in education. Table 5 shows the top authors with the number of
articles they published. In Table 5, we only display the publications about the most popular four
leadership models. We identified 13 authors1 who published at least six articles on leadership
models. Philip Hallinger published 15 articles, most of which were about Instructional Leadership.
Kenneth Leithwood followed Hallinger with 12 articles on different leadership models, but mainly
focused on Transformational Leadership. Geert Devos published 11 articles on different leadership
models, mostly on Distributed and Transformational leadership models. James Spillane published
10 articles that mostly focused on Distributed and Instructional Leadership. Both Ellen Goldring
and Peter Sleegers published nine articles on leadership models in education. While Ellen Goldring
mostly published on Instructional Leadership, most of Peter Sleegers’ works were about Trans-
formational Leadership. Detailed information about authors’ publications by subject can be seen in
Table 5. It should be noted that while most of the top publishing authors were from North America,
several European scholars also published significant numbers of related articles, especially in the
last decade.
The results of content analysis

The content analysis of selected papers also revealed significant information about the research on
leadership models in education. Our findings are based on 183 papers published in two prominent
journals, EAQ and EMAL, between 1990 and 2014, as explained in the method section. Table 6
presents our categorization of these papers using three different lenses: method, purpose, and
focused group. First, we grouped all of these papers into five categories in terms of their metho-
dology, namely quantitative, qualitative, mixed method, theoretical and literature review, and
systematic reviews. We differentiated systematic reviews from the theoretical and literature review
category since those studies focused on certain numbers of papers from specific time periods and
systematically analyzed them in order to answer their research question(s), while studies in the
theoretical and literature review category used existing literature and theoretical discussions

Table 6. Results of content analysis.
Theme Total 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14
Method
Quantitative 52 1 3 4 9 35
Qualitative 81 6 3 8 31 33
Mixed method 8 1 - - 1 6
Theoretical and literature review 35 3 3 7 11 11
Systematic review 7 1 - 1 1 4
Purpose
Conceptualization 27 2 2 6 10 7
Perceptions and practices 77 5 2 4 27 39
Effects of leadership on organizational behaviors/conditions 42 2 3 7 9 21
Effects of leadership on student achievement 15 1 - 1 4 9
Leadership development 12 2 2 1 1 6
Other 10 - - 1 2 7
Focused group
Principals 93 6 5 9 20 53
Teachers 34 4 1 2 10 17
Others (assistant principals, department heads, students, 22 - - 1 8 13
faculty members, etc.)
District leaders 9 - - 1 5 3
No focused group 45 3 4 8 14 16
without a systematic analysis. Our results showed that the qualitative approach was the most used
method in research on leadership models. However, the number of quantitative studies dramati-
cally increased after 2010 and the quantitative approach became the most popular method in
related research. The proportion of theoretical studies to all papers gradually decreased over time,
while the number of papers that used mixed method and systematic reviews significantly increased
after 2010.
After identifying the trends in terms of methodology, we turned to the analysis of the purposes
of the selected papers. We categorized the papers under five broad themes in terms of their
purposes and created a sixth category (other) for those that did not fall into any theme. The first
category included the conceptualization of certain leadership models or related theoretical discus-
sions. The proportion of conceptualization papers to all papers gradually increased until 2005,
when it started to decrease. The second category, perceptions and practices, was defined broadly
and included papers that focused on the understanding or the implementation of the leadership
models in practice. For example, studies focused on how leaders understand and perform their
leadership roles related to certain leadership models, how contextual factors affect leadership
practices, and how followers assess and think about the practices of their leaders. As seen in Table
6, this category included a significant number of existing related studies. The other two categories
were effects of leadership on organizational behaviors/conditions and effects of leadership on
student achievement. Studies in both categories have significantly increased during the last decade.
While the former category included studies that focused on how leadership affects the behaviors,
practices, motivation, etc. of different stakeholders (e.g. teachers, students, parents) as well as the
organizational culture, effectiveness, capacity, etc., studies in the latter category specifically

investigated the relationship between leadership and student achievement. The fifth category,
leadership development, included relatively few studies that specifically focused on the prepara-
tion and development of leaders. Most of the studies in this category were theoretical or quali-
tative in nature and discussed models, practices, or specific programs within the framework of
certain leadership models, such as instructional or distributed leadership. The last category,
other, included a few papers we could not group into another category. Specifically, these papers
focused on different topics with a specific emphasis on leadership models such as scale devel-
opment, usage of certain scales, women’s leadership, etc.
Lastly, we investigated the focus groups of the selected papers. Focus groups were not neces-
sarily the ones who participated in the studies, but the ones who were perceived as leaders. For
example, teachers were surveyed or interviewed in many studies to obtain information about the
leadership of their principles. In these studies, the principals were the focus group, since they were
the ones whose leadership was focused on. In some studies, more than one group, such as princi-
pals, assistant principals, teachers, etc., were defined as leaders, so we identified more than one
focus group for those studies.2 However, there were also some studies that assessed or defined
leadership in schools without referencing any specific group or that mentioned more than three
groups as leaders. Similarly, most of the theoretical studies discussed leadership in general without
focusing on any particular group. Therefore, we grouped those kinds of papers under the category
of no focused group. When we looked at the trends in terms of the focus groups, we saw that most
studies were primarily interested in the leadership of school principals. Even some papers that were
about distributed or teacher leadership models focused on principals’ roles and how principals
shared the leadership, etc. However, the number of studies that focused on the leadership of other
groups, such as teachers and district leaders, have significantly increased in the last decade.
Discussion and conclusion

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, we aimed to reveal the changes in the trends of
research on different leadership models over time, the journals that published the most related
papers, the most prominent scholars working on these models, and the countries in which the
related research was based by employing a bibliometric analysis of the research and review papers
indexed in the Web of Science database between 1980 and 2014. Second, we explored detailed
information about the methods, purposes, and focus groups of the existing studies on leadership
models by using the content analysis method. For that part, we only analyzed related papers from
two prominent journals, EAQ and EMAL, in order to obtain more in-depth knowledge.
First of all, our results clearly showed a growing interest in studying leadership models in
educational settings over the last three decades. Furthermore, this interest substantially increased
after the year 2000. This significant increase might be explained by several factors, such as the
prominent trend of globalization, the internationally increasing accountability demands, the avail-
ability of more advanced statistical methods and big data sets, etc. For example, one effect of
globalization on education is the increased competition among schools and nations with respect to
student test scores. Many nations set clear goals to improve student learning outcomes, which in
turn resulted in the accountability movement (Hursh, 2005). As a result, the need for effective
leaders who can produce increased student learning outcomes has become even more substantial.
At the same time, a significant amount of research has started to provide persuasive evidence with
regard to the effects of leadership on educational outcomes with the availability of more advanced
statistical methods and relevant data sets (e.g. Leithwood and Jantzi, 2000; Leithwood and Riehl,

2003, 2005; Leithwood et al., 2003, 2004, 2010). Therefore, these developments might have
encouraged more researchers to focus on leadership models and their effects.
In terms of the specific leadership models, our analyses showed that distributed leadership is the
most studied leadership model in educational research, although it is a relatively new model.
Instructional leadership, which is one of the oldest educational leadership models, has also
received significant attention from researchers. The third most studied model was found to be
teacher leadership, followed closely by transformational leadership. When we looked at different
time periods, we observed that studies related to the instructional leadership model dominated the
field until 1995. Then, research interest in instructional leadership paused for around a decade,
while the number of studies focused on other leadership models was growing gradually. However,
the number of studies related to instructional leadership started to grow again after 2005, and
increased even more during the last five years. It can be argued that research interest in instruc-
tional leadership in the last decade might have been influenced more by the current accountability
demands and internationally increasing emphasis on student achievement, since it specifically
focuses on leaders’ roles in instructional processes. From a similar perspective, the availability
of more advanced statistical methods for measuring the specific effects of leadership on student
achievement could also partly explain the dramatic increase in instructional leadership studies
during the last five years. Whatever the reasons are, it is clear that the concept of instructional
leadership has remained one of the most popular leadership models in the field of education over
more than three decades. Similarly, Hallinger (2005) emphasized the persistence of interest in
instructional leadership in his review of research on instructional leadership.
The results concerning specific leadership models also showed that the number of studies about
distributed leadership has been enormous during the last decade, while there were only a few
related studies in educational settings until 2000. This result is well aligned with the content of two
previous review studies that specifically focused on distributed leadership research (Bennett et al.,
2003; Tian et al., 2016). Our results also pointed out that the teacher leadership model has gained
considerable attention during the last decade. Increased interest in these two leadership models
illustrates an important change in understanding the leadership phenomenon. It seems that lead-
ership is no longer attributed to a single person, which represents ‘‘the heroic leadership genre’’
(Spillane, 2005: 143); rather, it is viewed as a more ‘‘collective performance’’ (Gronn, 2002: 437).
This trend might also have been influenced by the increasing accountability demands and decen-
tralization movements in education, since these changes put significant pressures on local educa-
tional administrators. As a result, most people have come to the realization that achieving success
for all students is hardly possible with the traditional understanding of leadership. A new definition
of leadership based on the decentralization of power has gained prominence. The distributed
perspective on leadership aims to advocate for involving all stakeholders in the schooling pro-
cesses and holding them accountable for student learning outcomes (Leithwood, 2001).
Finally, besides well-grounded leadership models such as Instructional Leadership, Teacher
Leadership, and Distributed Leadership, we found that some leadership models such as Strategic
Leadership, Authentic Leadership, Visionary Leadership, and Servant Leadership have been emer-
ging concepts in educational research during the last two decades. Citing Leithwood and Riehl
(2003) and Bush and Glover (2003), Harris (2004) stated that despite the long-held discussions on
leadership and a plethora of recent evidences of how leaders might influence student achievement,
there is still not enough knowledge concerning what constitutes effective leadership practices. The
development of new leadership models, therefore, can be explained as researchers’ endeavors to
clarify the definition and practices of effective leadership from different perspectives. Given the

current emphasis on the importance of leaders for organizations and schools in particular, we can
anticipate more new leadership models to emerge in the coming years.
The results of this study also indicated that a high proportion of published papers on different
leadership models were from the USA. It is already well known that most of the leadership research
was initiated in the USA, so this result is not surprising. However, this could also be partly caused
by the fact that many of the journals in the Web of Science database have origins in the USA. It was
also found that related publications started to come from several other countries, such as the UK,
Australia, and Canada, after 1995. After 2005, when many journals outside the USA were added to
the database, related studies have come from countries around the world, such as South Africa,
Turkey, and China. In accordance with these results, it was also found that North American
scholars, such as Philip Hallinger, Kenneth Leithwood, and James Spillane, contributed the most
studies to the research on leadership models in education. In addition, several European scholars,
such as Geert Devos, Peter Sleegers, Alma Harris, and Hester Hulpia, have published significant
numbers of related papers in recent years.
The second part of our review, the content analysis, also revealed some important information
about the research trends in leadership models. First of all, it was found that the qualitative research
method dominated the field until 2010. However, the proportion of quantitative studies to all
related studies increased dramatically during the last five years. Increasing methodological diver-
sity in leadership research has also been identified by earlier review studies (Hallinger and Chen,
2015; Heck and Hallinger, 2005; Tian et al., 2016). This might partly be caused by the salient
development of statistical methods during the last decade. In addition, significant shifts in terms of
the purposes of related research during the last five years might be another reason. The results
showed that studies focusing on the effects of leadership on organizational behaviors/conditions or
on student achievement have dramatically increased in the last five years. A recent book (Karadag,
2015) which includes meta-analysis review studies on the relationship between leadership and
different organizational outcomes also shows a very similar trend. This trend might also impact the
number of studies using quantitative methodology, since studies that have such purposes generally
require statistical analyses. It is also noteworthy that increasing global accountability demands in
the last decade might have boosted the number of studies focusing on the measurable effects of
leadership models by using quantitative research methods.
Our content analysis also identified the groups that were perceived as leaders in selected
papers. In line with the results of earlier review studies (Hallinger, 2011; Neumerski, 2013), our
findings have also shown that school principals have been the most popular focus group in
educational research on leadership models, followed by teachers. This trend has not changed
very much over the years, while some other groups, such as assistant principals, department
heads, district leaders, and university professors or administrators, began getting some attention
during the last decade. In addition, studies that perceived leadership as a shared concept and
defined or assessed it without focusing on any certain groups (or by focusing on more than three
different groups) have increased during the last decade. Although these trends are well aligned
with the findings of our bibliometric analysis in terms of the increased research interest in
distributed forms of leadership during the last 10 years, it can be argued that most of the studies
related to leadership models still perceive certain people as leaders and focus on their leadership
practices.
This study makes an important contribution to the research on leadership models in education
by reviewing a large number of studies indexed in the Web of Science database. The results of the
study have provided significant insights about the development of related research and draw a big

picture based on numerical evidence. However, the study also has some limitations, as all review
studies do. First, while the authors spent significant time and effort to minimize mistakes such as
missing information or incorrect categorization during the research process, from cleaning and
categorizing the keywords for bibliometric analysis to the content analysis of the documents, there
could still be some small mistakes given the nature of bibliometrics and the high volume of papers
used in the analyses. In addition, our analyses do not include papers published in some of the well-
known educational administration journals, such as the Journal of Educational Administration,
International Journal of Educational Management, School Leadership and Management, and
International Journal of Leadership in Education, since these journals were not indexed in the
database we used in this study. Although not being able to include all the related journals or papers
is a common problem of almost all review studies, excluding these important sources might be
thought of as another limitation of our study. Therefore, we suggest that future review studies
should focus on specific journals that were not included in this study. In addition, it might be
argued that some over generalizations were made during the content analysis of documents,
especially in terms of their purpose. Future research may narrow its scope based on our findings
and select only one category, such as the effect of leadership on organizational behaviors or
contextual factors affecting leadership practices, and carry out more in-depth analysis on the lower
number of related studies.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit
sectors.
Notes
1. The total articles on different leadership models might be either greater or smaller than the total number of
articles for each author, since some articles were categorized in two or more categories if they focused on
more than one leadership model and some authors studied leadership models that are not shown in this
table.
2. Because of this, the total number of focus groups exceeds the total number of papers, as seen in Table 6.
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Author biographies
Sedat Gumus is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at Necmettin
Erbakan University, Turkey. His research interests include comparative and international education,

leadership in education, educational policy, and higher education. His works have been published in
various international journals, including Australian Journal of Education, Compare: A Journal of
Comparative and International Education, Higher Education Policy, and International Review of
Education.
Mehmet Sukru Bellibas is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of

Educational Sciences at Adiyaman University, Turkey. He received his PhD in K-12 Educational
Administration from College of Education, Michigan State University, USA in 2014. His research
interests include effective school leadership, school improvement, and equity and equality issues in
education.
_
Murat Esen is an assistant professor in the Economic and Administrative Sciences at Izmir Katip
Çelebi University, Turkey. His research interests include scientometrics and bibliometrics
research, higher education, and leadership. He is currently involved in several research studies
in various areas within his research interests.
Emine Gumus is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at Necmettin

Erbakan University, Turkey. Her current research focuses on leadership, professional development
of school principals and teachers, and organizational climate. Dr Gumus has published articles
about executive leadership in school improvement networks, leadership approaches, and profes-
sional development of school principals.

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A systematic review of studies on leadership models in educational research

Article in Educational Management Administration and Leadership · January 2018

Sedat Gümüş Mehmet Şükrü Bellibaş

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Murat Esen Emine Gümüş

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Review of research on international student mobility View project

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on leadership models Reprints and permission:

from 1980 to 2014

Sedat Gumus, Mehmet Sukru Bellibas, Murat Esen

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Leadership models in educational research

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Transformational and charismatic leadership

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Moral and ethical leadership

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Rationale for the time and database restrictions

Data analysis procedures

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Table 1. The number of papers on leadership models

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The results of bibliometric analysis

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Educational Administration Quarterly 107 – 1 13 7 13 27 46

Table 3. Number of papers by country.

Countries Total 80–84 85–89 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14

USA 296 4 7 18 19 46 86 116

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Table 4. Number of papers on different leadership models.

Models Total 80–84 85–89 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14

Distributed/Collaborative Leadership 205 2 2 4 3 15 61 118

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Table 5. The most published scholars by leadership model.

Number of Distributed Instructional Teacher Transformational

The results of content analysis

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Table 6. Results of content analysis.

Theme Total 90–94 95–99 00–04 05–09 10–14

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Discussion and conclusion

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Mehmet Sukru Bellibas is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of

Emine Gumus is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at Necmettin

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