Commentary: Celebrating 60 years of knowledge mobilization: a historical descriptive analysis of the Journal of Educational Administration

Citation

Richardson, J.W. and Khawaja, S. (2023), "Commentary: Celebrating 60 years of knowledge mobilization: a historical descriptive analysis of the Journal of Educational Administration", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 61 No. 1, pp. 78-87. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-01-2023-272

The Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) published its first issue in 1963 with just four papers. Up through the end of 2021, the journal has published over 1,700 articles. JEA was the first international refereed journal in the field of educational leadership, management and administration. As noted on the website, “JEA has sought to publish research on educational administration conducted across diverse political, economic and socio-cultural contexts. Indeed, publications featured in JEA have both anticipated and traced the evolution of educational administration into a global field of research and practice.” Given that JEA is celebrating 60 years of publication in 2022, we wanted to explore the history of JEA through a historical descriptive analysis of the journal.

Methodology

This historical descriptive analysis of JEA was conducted in two phases. In the first phase of data collection and data analysis, all articles published in JEA were downloaded. This included all articles published between 1963 through 2021, which is the current lifespan of the journal. Since we wanted this review to come out in the last issue of the 60th years, we were unable to capture articles published in 2022. Obtaining the full text of the articles was not available in our databases prior to 1991, so the analyses of those articles were limited to only the abstract. Analysis of the articles included type of article, country of study, methodology and theoretical underpinning. These data were coded manually by the research team. Findings from these data represent a historical analysis of JEA.

In phase 2, the publisher, Emerald, provided data extracted from Scholar One from 2011 to 2021. Analysis of these articles was descriptive and provides the most recent picture of publication trends in the journal.

Historical descriptive analysis of JEA

Figure 1 indicates the number of articles that have been published in JEA by decade. The number of articles published generally trends upwards. The journal started in 1964 and had only 75 articles published in that decade. As of the start of 2022, there have been 97 articles published in the 2020s.

Special issues are a way for editors to highlight an area of interest in the field. For JEA, special issues might be led by the editors, members of the editorial board, or other academics in the field. Table 1 details all special issue published in JEA by titles, editors and the editors' institutions. A total of 30 special issues have been published in JEA through 2021.

JEA began publishing special issues in 2005. Since that time, JEA has published special issues once or twice every year, except for 2016 where no special issues were published. In 2021, the journal issued three special issues, being the most published in a single year. Topics ranged from moral leadership, distributed leadership, international perspectives on leadership, systems thinking, technology leadership and leading special education, just to name a few.

To better understand the theoretical underpinnings of articles published in JEA, the research team conducted deductive coding based on Wang's (2018) framework. Wang conducted a co-occurrence network analysis of educational leadership research from 2005 to 2014 and compiled a list of all theories and concepts undergirding that body of research. The theories and concepts most noted by Wang were collective efficacy, contingency theory, critical race theory, critical theory, distributed leadership, instructional leadership, institutional theory, motivation, organizational theory, organizational learning, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational/school culture, social network theory, social justice theory, social cognitive theory, social justice leadership, social capital theory, teacher leadership, transformational leadership and trust.

We used Wang's (2018) framework as the codebook that guided the analysis. Thus, we searched the content of every article for each of the theories/concepts. Doing this captured every instance when that term was used. Hence, it captured the direct and indirect use of those underpinnings. The limitation is that this approach captured passive mentions of these underpinnings including reference citations. Nonetheless, if an author cited work about a theory, it can be assumed that the theory informed the research, to some degree.

Among the top underpinnings in JEA were instructional leadership, organizational/school culture and transformational leadership. Although trust and motivation were among the top occurring codes as well, we believe the coding approach did not capture an accurate picture because of how they might be used in text. That is, these keywords might be present in the article but the authors might not be using them as the theory or concept in their paper (e.g. “teachers trust the school leaders …” or “the team was motivated to conduct this study …”) (Table 2).

Table 3 shows the types of articles published in JEA up to 2021. It is evident that empirical studies are the most common type of articles in JEA. We were not able to deduce the types of articles for many of the 402 articles in which we only had access to the abstracts. We saw that book reviews were more frequent in the first few decades of JEA, whereas the recent trend is to publish more empirical work. Table 4 details the methodology of those articles.

We wanted to understand the countries of study most represented in the articles published in JEA. Hence, we captured all countries represented in the published articles. Table 5 details how the most studies took place in the USA followed by Australia. Additionally, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Nigeria, Cyprus, Malaysia, Finland, Austria, Taiwan and Belgium were countries of study in four or more articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021.

To gain a more holistic geographic representation of studies published in JEA, the research team coded all articles by continent of study. Table 6 details the continents of study for articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021.

Table 7 details the most cited articles in JEA over time. Authors who made the top 25 list multiple times are Kenneth Leithwood (n = 4), Phillip Hallinger (n = 3), and Doris Jantzi (n = 3).

Most recent picture of JEA from 2011 to 2021

We obtained data about manuscript statistics directly from Emerald via the submission system, being Scholar One. These data captured statistics from 2011 to 2021. Analysis of these data represents the most recent trends in JEA submissions.

Table 8 depicts the number of manuscripts submitted by country from 2011 to 2021. The USA had almost five times more articles submitted than the second top submitting county which was Israel. It should be noted that the first authors from the top three countries combined submitted more articles than the remaining 22 countries combined (Table 9).

The researchers also coded the submission data by continent. Since 2011, authors from Asia are the largest contributor to JEA. North America was a close second with 672 articles submitted.

Table 10 details the top 25 countries from which manuscripts have been accepted from 2011 to 2021. In this timeframe, authors from the USA published 251 articles in JEA. Authors from Israel published 60 articles in JEA.

Table 11 shows the number of manuscripts accepted by continent from 2011 to 2021. Most of the articles published were from North America.

Figure 2 details the top 25 most prolific authors in JEA. We juxtaposed the number of articles published by the authors' h-index. Some authors did not have an h-index available online through Google Scholar, thus those are labeled as 0.

Table 12 depicts the most commonly occurring institutions from which authors have submitted to JEA from 2011 to 2021. This table captures all the institutions that have more than 10 submissions to the journal.

Table 13 details the keywords most often used by authors when submitting their articles. It is important to note that these keywords are based on what the authors entered, not what the authors selected from a pre-populated list. We condensed the keywords whenever possible. Not surprisingly, the terms “principals” and “leadership” each were used more than 750 times in these manuscripts.

Conclusion

As of July 2022, JEA has been ranked by SSCI with an impact factor of 2.152 and a five-year impact factor of 2.716. The Scopus CiteScore is 2.9 as of 2021. Earning the SSCI ranking will help JEA and its authors since many universities require this ranking to count articles towards a professor's tenure and promotion.

Give that JEA was the first journal in the field, its historical significance is well known. This historical descriptive analysis provided herein details the first 60 years of influencing the field. May the next 60 be just as impactful.

Figures

Figure 1

Number of articles published by decade

Figure 2

Top 25 published authors by number of papers and h-index

Table 1

Special issue titles, editors and editors' institutions

Special issue titles	Editors	Year
Failures in schools and school failures: Lessons for leadership and management	Pascale Benoliel (Bar-Ilan University) and Izhak Berkovich (Open University of Israel)	2021
Technology as a lever of innovation in school leadership	Jayson W. Richardson (University of Denver)	2021
Systems thinking for excellence and equity	Haim Shaked (Hemdat Hadarom Academic College of Education) and Chen Schechter (Bar Ilan University)	2021
Framing issues of leadership for special education	Mary Lynn Boscardin (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Katharine G. Shepherd (University of Vermont)	2020
School administrators' well-being and mindfulness	Katina Pollock (University of Western Ontario), Fei Wang (University of British Columbia), and Julia Mahfouz (University of Colorado Denver)	2020
The role of districts and other agencies in supporting school leaders' instructional leadership	Rebecca A. Thessin (George Washington University) and Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota)	2019
Understanding third sector participation in public schooling through partnerships, collaborations, alliances and entrepreneurialism	Nina Kolleck (Freie Universitat Berlin) and Miri Yemini (Tel Aviv University)	2019
Understanding and improving urban secondary schools: New perspectives	Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota) and Muhammad Khalifa (University of Minnesota)	2018
Data use for equity: Implications for teaching, leadership and policy	Amanda Datnow (University of California San Diego), Jennifer C. Greene (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign), and Nora Gannon-Slater (Department of Performance and Data Analytics, Breakthrough Charter Schools)	2017
Qualitative studies of principal instructional leadership in East Asia	Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong)	2017
Systematic reviews of research on principal leadership in East Asia	Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong)	2015
Principal–teacher relationships: foregrounding the international importance of principals' social relationships for school learning climates	Heather E. Price (University of Notre Dame, Utrecht University) and Nienke M. Moolenaar (University of California San Diego)	2015
Methods in longitudinal school improvement research: State of the art	Phillip Hallinger (Chulalongkorn University, University of Johannesburg) and Allan Walker (The Education University of Hong Kong)	2014
Systemwide reform examining districts under pressure	Alan J. Daly (University of California San Diego) and Kara S. Finnigan (University of California San Diego	2013
Educational leadership development in international contexts	Stephen Jacobson (University at Buffalo) and Lauri Johnson (Boston College)	2013
Accountability and school leadership	Karen Seashore Louis (University of Minnesota)	2012
An anniversary issue: Reflections on a journal's first fifty years	A. Ross Thomas (University of Wollongong)	2012
Building organisational capacity in school education	Stephen Dinham (University of Melbourne) and Frank Crowther (University of Southern Queensland)	2011
Globalization expanding horizons in women's leadership	Whitney H. Sherman (Virginia Commonwealth University)	2010
Exploring the emotional dimensions of educational leadership implications for professional preparation	Eugenie A. Samier (The British University in Dubai) and Michèle Schmidt (Simon Fraser University)	2010
Sustaining successful school leadership	Olof Johansson (Umeå University) and Leif Moos (Aarhus University)	2009
Building high quality schools for learners and communities	Cynthia L. Uline (San Diego State University)	2009
Principal preparation international perspectives	Charles F. Webber (University of Calgary)	2008
Distributed leadership through the looking glass	Alma Harris (University of London)	2008
Leadership for learning in the context of social justice: An international perspective	Anthony H. Normore (California State University-Dominguez Hills)	2007
The integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching	Paul Begley (Pennsylvania State University)	2007
Beginning the principalship international views	Allan Walker (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)	2006
Dare professors of educational administration build a new social order: Social justice within an American perspective	Alan R. Shoho (University of Texas at San Antonio)	2006
The International Successful School Principalship Project	Stephen L. Jacobson (University at Buffalo, State University of New York), Christopher Day (University of Nottingham), and Kenneth Leithwood (University of Toronto)	2005
Educational institutions and leadership through the lens of organization theory	Bob L. Johnson Jr. (University of Utah) and Janice R. Fauske (University of South Florida)	2005

Table 2

Theoretical underpinnings of JEA articles

Theories/Concepts noted in manuscripts	Count
Trust*	573
Motivation*	507
Organizational/school culture	504
Instructional leadership	354
Transformational leadership	249
Distributed leadership	237
Organizational learning	207
Teacher leadership	142
Collective efficacy	89
Organizational theory	75
Organizational citizenship behavior	57
Social justice leadership	49
Critical theory	48
Social cognitive theory	42
Institutional theory	29
Contingency theory	27
Social network theory	19
Critical race theory	17
Social capital theory	8

Note(s): *Over-represented due to coding approach

Table 3

Types of articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021

Type of article	Number of articles
Empirical research	726
Commentary	214
Book review	184
Conceptual paper	74
Research review/systematic review	63
Editorial	46

Table 4

Most common methodologies reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021

Methodology/Article type	Number of articles
Quantitative quasi-experimental	323
Qualitative	296
Systematic review	100
Mixed methods	76
Conceptual paper	41
Quantitative experimental	9

Table 5

Top 10 countries of study reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021

Country of study	Number of articles
The USA	425
Australia	184
Israel	91
Canada	72
The United Kingdom	57
Hong Kong	30
New Zealand	29
China	17
Turkey	11
Netherlands	11
Singapore	10

Table 6

Continents of study reported in articles published in JEA from 1963 to 2021

Continent	Number of articles
North America	502
Oceana	220
Asia	194
Europe	128
Africa	20
South America	8

Table 7

Top 25 cited authors as of fall 2021

Title	Year	Author/s	Citations
Leadership for learning: Lessons from 40 years of empirical research	2011	Hallinger	315
The effects of transformational leadership on organizational conditions and student engagement with school	2000	Leithwood and Jantzi	306
Collaboration and the need for trust	2001	Tschannen-Moran	266
The configuration of the university image and its relationship with the satisfaction of students	2002	Palacio, Meneses, and Perez	201
Distributed leadership: According to the evidence	2008	Harris	187
Trust in schools: A conceptual and empirical analysis	1998	Tschannen-Moran and Hoy	174
Effective instructional leadership: Teachers' perspectives on how principals promote teaching and learning in schools	2000	Blase and Blase	167
The future of distributed leadership	2008	Gronn	164
Relationships in reform: The role of teachers' social networks	2010	Daly, Moolenaar, Bolivar, and Burke	162
Relation of principal transformational leadership to school staff job satisfaction, staff turnover, and school performance	2004	Griffith	162
Cyberbullying: Causes, effects, and remedies	2009	Hoff and Mitchell	159
The walls speak: The interplay of quality facilities, school climate, and student achievement	2008	Uline and Tschannen-Moran	158
Transformational leadership effects on teachers' commitment and effort toward school reform	2003	Geijsel, Sleegers, Leithwood, and Jantzi	157
Moving into the third, outer domain of teacher satisfaction	2000	Dinham and Scott	145
Culture and educational administration: A case of finding out what you don't know you don't know	1996	Hallinger and Leithwood	143
Principals' leadership and teachers' motivation: Self-determination theory analysis	2011	Eyal and Roth	127
The effects of transformational leadership on teachers' commitment to change in Hong Kong	2002	Yu, Leithwood, and Jantzi	124
School context and individual characteristics: What influences principal practice?	2008	Goldring, Huff, Camburn, and May	119
Toward a framework for preparing leaders for social justice	2006	Capper, Theoharis, and Sebastian	119
A conceptual framework for systematic reviews of research in educational leadership and management	2013	Hallinger	116
Technology leadership for the twenty-first century principal	2003	Flanagan and Jacobsen	114
A three domain model of teacher and school executive career satisfaction	1998	Dinham and Scott	114
Complexity and the beginning principal in the United States: Perspectives on socialization	2006	Crow	106
ICT implementation and school leadership: Case studies of ICT integration in teaching and learning	2003	Yuen, Law, and Wong	105
Schools as learning organisations: The case for system, teacher and student learning	2002	Silins and Mulford	103

Table 8

Top 25 manuscript submissions by country from 2011 to 2021

Country of submission	Number of manuscripts submitted
The USA	596
Israel	122
Indonesia	100
Australia	97
India	83
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	67
Turkey	62
Canada	60
Iran	49
Malaysia	46
Pakistan	44
China	29
South Africa	29
Thailand	29
Nigeria	27
Greece	24
Hong Kong	20
Kenya	17
New Zealand	17
Saudi Arabia	17
The United Arab Emirates	16
Norway	15
Spain	14
Sweden	13
Singapore	12

Table 9

Number of manuscript submitted by continent from 2011 to 2021

Continent of submission	Number of manuscripts submitted
Asia	712
North America	672
Europe	226
Africa	122
Oceana	114
South America	17

Table 10

Number of manuscripts accepted by country from 2011 to 2021

Country	Number of manuscripts accepted
The USA	251
Israel	60
Australia	36
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	22
Canada	20
Thailand	15
Hong Kong	10
Turkey	8
Netherlands	7
New Zealand	7
China	6
Germany	6
Norway	6
Sweden	6
Taiwan	6
Cyprus	4
Chile	3
Finland	3
Singapore	3
Spain	3
Switzerland	3
Belgium	2
Ireland	2
Japan	2
Malaysia	2

Table 11

Manuscripts accepted by continent from 2011 to 2021

Continent	Number of manuscripts accepted
North America	274
Asia	119
Europe	69
Oceana	43
Africa	5
South America	3

Table 12

Top 25 institutions by number of submissions from 2011 to 2021

Institution	Number of manuscript submissions
The Education University of Hong Kong	53
Bar Ilan University	51
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	33
Open University of Israel	29
The University of Oklahoma	26
Mahidol University	24
Vanderbilt University	24
Brawijaya University	23
University of Minnesota	18
University of Melbourne	18
University of New South Wales	17
Tel Aviv University	17
University of Haifa	16
University of Virginia	14
University of Texas at San Antonio	14
Universitas Riau	13
Texas State University	13
University of Nottingham	13
George Washington University	13
Gordon College	13
University of Connecticut	12
University of Denver	12
University of Louisville	12
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign	12
The University of Alabama	12

Table 13

Top 25 author generated keywords from 2011 to 2021

Author generated keywords	Number of submissions
Principals	792
Leadership/educational leadership	770
Educational administration	516
Teachers	194
Educational policy	161
Leadership development	156
Accountability	135
Schools	121
Instructional leadership	116
Decision making	104
School reform	103
School improvement	100
Transformational leadership	93
Educational research	89
Higher education	87
Information and communication technology	73
Distributed leadership	68
School change	65
Job satisfaction	64
Trust	63
Organizational culture	63
Educational planning and administration	61
Social justice	60
Secondary schools	58
Teacher learning	54