This systematic review used “science mapping” as a means of understanding the evolution of research in educational administration (EA). The review sought to document the size, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of EA research, identify high impact scholars and documents, and illuminate the “intellectual structure” of the field. Although science mapping has been applied widely in science, medicine, and social sciences, it is still new in the field of education. The authors identified 22,361 peer-reviewed articles published in 22 Scopus-indexed EA journals between 1960 and 2018. The authors used VOSviewer, Excel, and Tableau software to analyze the data set. The review found that the EA knowledge base has grown dramatically since 1960 with an accelerating rate growth and increasing gender and geographic diversity during the past two decades. Using co-citation analysis, the review identified canonical documents, defined as highly influential documents whose impact has been sustained for a period of several decades. The review also identified four key Schools of Thought that have emerged over time focusing on Leadership for Learning, Leadership and Cultural Change, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, and Leading Teachers. More broadly, our findings highlighted a paradigm shift from “school administration” to “school leadership” over the course of the six decades. Another significant finding identified “leadership for student learning and development” as the “cognitive anchor” of the intellectual structure of the EA knowledge base. The authors conclude that science mapping offers a new and useful means of unpacking the historical development of fields of study.

This review employed science mapping methods to analyze the evolution of the knowledge base in educational leadership and management from 1960 to 2018. Descriptive trend analysis, citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and visualization of similarities were used to document growth and change in the ‘intellectual structure’ of the educational leadership and management knowledge base as it evolved through the decades. The review analyzed a database comprised of 22,492 articles published in 21 Scopus-indexed journals over six decades. The authors found that contributions to the knowledge base have evolved from primarily Anglo-American male scholars up until 2000 to increasing gender and geographic diversity in the past 20 years. The review identified several ‘schools of thought’ that emerged across four generations of EDLM scholarship. These include: Leadership for Learning, Leading Change, Leading Teachers, and School Effectiveness and School Improvement. The review also documented a broader evolution in the field’s intellectual structure from a focus on ‘administration’ during the 1960s and 1970s to the embrace of ‘leadership for learning’ as the dominant theme during recent generations. This paradigm shift has not only reshaped the focus of research but also the identity of educational leadership and management as a field of study.

This review has two purposes. First, we document the body of knowledge that has accumulated in Educational Management, Administration & Leadership over its five decades of publication. Second, we seek to identify the distinctive contributions of Educational Management, Administration & Leadership as a research journal in educational leadership and management. The review employed the bibliometric method in order to analyze the forms of corpus of 1438 articles published in Educational Management, Administration & Leadership between 1972 and the end of 2020. Bibliometric analyses used to document and assess the Educational Management, Administration & Leadership corpus included descriptive statistics, document citation and co-citation analysis, author co-citation analysis and keyword analysis. The review found that articles authored outside the UK have continued to grow as a proportion of the journal’s annual volume, thereby strengthening Educational Management, Administration & Leadership’s status as an ‘international educational leadership journal’. Document and keyword analyses found that ‘leadership’ has supplanted ‘administration’ and ‘management’ as the dominant driver in Educational Management, Administration & Leadership content since 2012. These analyses further affirmed the continuing strength of the journal’s conceptual contributions to the literature as well as its publication of a significant set of papers on shared forms of leadership. The review highlighted two areas for Educational Management, Administration & Leadership’s future development: further enhancing its citation impact and managing the growth of its international contributions.

PurposeConceptual model in this paper combines existing scientific knowledge grounded in theories of planned behavior, diffusion of innovation and a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, while aiming to identify relevant determinants of continuous use of e-learning by employees who used e-learning in the past year at their workplace.Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed and empirically tested the positive impact of professional, personal, IT and environmental factors on the continued use of e-learning among 672 employees across different sectors using the structural equation modeling technique.FindingsResearch results suggest that the most powerful determinant of continuous use of e-learning are personal factors. Environmental influences and technological aspects also exhibit a positive and significant impact on the continuous use of e-learning. Research hypothesis related to the positive influence of professional factors on the continuous use of e-learning has not been empirically confirmed. Also, results demonstrated that continued use of e-learning contributes to better individual business performance.Practical implicationsThe practical contribution is threefold: to companies, education institutions and human resource managers. For companies, identification of key determinants will lead to a better understanding of employees needs regarding continuous job improvements. The findings can be used by educational institutions to design e-learning programs according to results and real value to employees. On the other hand, human resource managers can benefit from this study in terms of getting concrete factors that motivate employees for continuous job improvement.Originality/valueThe research sheds light on the proposed integrated model that tests the post-adoption of the continuous use of e-learning within an organizational context.

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