This
article offers a small-scale systematic review spanning three years of
empirical research (from 2016 to 2019) on educational leadership. The purpose
of the review is to explore the main methodological approaches used to research
leadership in the field of education. To identify suitable empirical research
studies a bounded search was carried out into specific bibliographic databases
such as, “EducationalResourcesInformationCentre” (ERIC), and “TheBritishEducationalLeadership, ManagementandAdministrationSociety” (BELMAS). In total, 23
empirical studies on educational leadership were sampled from 11 peer-reviewed
journals. The review employed a quantitative approach to analyse the sample
studies especially focusing on three sets of variables: 1) research designs, 2)
sample size, and 3) techniques of data analysis employed in the selected
studies. The findings suggest that from 2016 onward mixed methods and case
study research designs have become increasingly important in the field of
educational leadership. Interviews, observations, focus groups and document
analysis have been the most common data collection methods in the qualitative
studies, while surveys and close-ended questionnaires have been dominant
methods to collect quantitative data in this area. The average numbers of
participants involved in the qualitative studies were 30, and 400 as a good
sample size for quantitative studies. The most popular techniques used to
analyse qualitative information were content analysis, thematic analysis and
grounded theory. Wherein descriptive statistics analysis and factor analysis
were the main techniques to analyse quantitative data.
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