A Scoping Review of the Knowledge Base, Landscape, and Trends in Leadership Literature in Early Intervention, Early Childhood, and Early Childhood Special Education

Abstract

Effective leadership is regarded as pivotal to the vitality of organizations. In early childhood programs, strong leadership is particularly critical because program leaders are the gatekeepers of quality. However, the fields of early intervention, early childhood, and early childhood special education (EI/EC/ECSE) continue to struggle with the challenges of being overlooked regarding leadership research, potentials, qualities, and abilities. This scoping review aimed to identify and synthesize the available evidence by understanding the nature and extent of leadership literature in EI/EC/ECSE between 2000 and 2018. Collectively, 1,416 articles were reviewed. A total of 106 articles that met the inclusion criteria were summarized using a number of variables. The review confirmed the long existing paucity of leadership research in EC and more specifically in EI and ECSE with specific findings in terms of research scopes and approaches. Presentation and discussion of findings along with implications for future research are provided.

Leadership Development Strategies in Interprofessional Healthcare Collaboration: A Rapid Review

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“I’m New Here”: Leveraging Responsibilities, Relationships, and Resources for New Faculty Leaders

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Girls’ and young women’s leader identity development: a scoping review

“…A scoping review can be conducted when researchers aim to identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept as well as identify knowledge gaps (Arksey and O’Malley, 2003; Munn et al , 2018). Identified as a type of literature review (Grant and Booth, 2009), scoping reviews have been used broadly in health and medical practice research but have also been used in leadership research related to health care (Malila et al , 2018), school leadership (Tintoré et al , 2022) and early childhood education (Movahedazarhouligh, 2021). To conduct a scoping review, a research or review question is developed, inclusion and exclusion criteria for the literature is created, relevant studies are identified through a defined database search protocol, literature is included or excluded from the review by team members based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, selected literature is charted to extract relevant information from the literature and selected data/literature are analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis, and findings are presented (Arksey and O’Malley, 2003; Levac et al , 2010; Colquhoun et al , 2014).…”