An Empirical Reflection on Educational Administration Quarterly 's Distinctive Contributions to the Field,1965–2020

Data Collection

The EAQ corpus was identified through a search of the Scopus data repository. Scopus was used rather than the Web of Science due to its superior coverage of EDLM journals (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019; Martín-Martín et al., 2021). For example, among a dozen international journals frequently referred to as “core educational administration journals” (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019), only EAQ, School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI), Educational Leadership, and Educational Management, Administration & Leadership (EMAL; since 2011) were included in the Web of Science (WOS) at the time of this review. Use of the WOS for reviews of research in EDLM would have resulted in the omission of citation data on key journals such as the Journal of Educational Administration, NASSP Bulletin, School Leadership & Management, International Journal of Educational Management, Leadership & Policy in Schools, and the International Journal of Leadership in Education, among others (Hallinger & Kovacevic, 2019, 2022a).

Using the Scopus search engine, the authors identified 1,457 documents published in EAQ between 1965 and December 31, 2020. After deleting editorials, introductions, errata, and letters, 1,357 articles remained in the Scopus document list. Bibliographic data related to these articles were exported to an Excel file that contained 1,357 rows with 24 columns of “meta-data” (e.g., author name, article title, author affiliation, abstract, keywords, citations, co-citations, funding information etc.). The data were then cleaned to eliminate ambiguities in the expression of author and journal names that appeared in alternate forms in the dataset (e.g., Heck, R. and Heck, R.H.).

Data Analysis

The first research question was addressed through descriptive analyses conducted in MS Excel. These analyses visualized the geographical distribution of authors contributing articles published in EAQ, an issue first addressed in Campbell's (1979) review. Moreover, the results of this analysis were directly relevant to the currently changing publication environment (see Hallinger, 2020).

A journal's distinctive contributions can be measured through a variety of methods. This review analyzed EAQ's distinctive contributions to the field through document citation analysis and author co-citation analysis conducted in VOSviewer software version 1.6.17 (van Eck & Waltman, 2018). First, document citation analysis was used to identify the frequency with which each article published in EAQ had been cited in other Scopus-indexed documents. This yielded the metric, “Scopus citation counts.” Notably, Scopus citation counts tend to be smaller than those obtained from Google Scholar, and larger than those extracted from the WOS citation due to differences in the size of the respective document repositories.

Citation frequency is a widely accepted method of highlighting a journal's scholarly impact and contributions to knowledge (Cobo et al., 2015; Donthu et al., 2020; Hallinger & Kovacevic, 2022a). Citation analysis assumes that cited articles have influenced the ideas expressed by scholars in other publications (Garfield, 1994; Garfield & Merton, 1979; Zupic & Čater, 2015). Citation analysis does, however, have two disadvantages worthy of note. First, citation analysis disadvantages recently published articles that have yet had an opportunity to accumulate citations (Shu, 2021). Thus, citation analysis is not necessarily a useful predictor of future trends. Second, citation analysis tends to emphasize dominant contributions as opposed to outliers (Shu, 2021; Zupic & Čater, 2015). Thus, it can disadvantage the contributions of non-dominant scholarly communities (Hallinger, 2020). Nonetheless, citation analysis remains a widely-used method of highlighting the long-term contributions of scholarship (Cobo et al., 2015; White & McCain, 1998; Meho, 2007).

Co-citation analysis complements citation analysis by examining the underlying literature in a field, or corpus of documents. Rather than examining the citation frequency of articles or authors published in EAQ, co-citation analysis was used to track the frequency with which authors were cited in the reference lists of the review documents. Gmür (2003) asserted that within the scope of co-citation analysis, “A citation is taken to be a valid and reliable indicator of scientific communication (Garfield, 1979; Small, 1978) and a basis for the identification of “invisible colleges,” that is, research networks that refer to each other in their documents without being linked by formal organizational ties” (p. 27). In this review, the task of identifying self-organized, scholarly networks was accomplished through co-citation analysis.

Using VOSviewer software (Van Eck & Waltman, 2018), co-citation analysis was conducted in several steps. First, VOSviewer computed the frequency with which different scholars had been cited in the “reference lists of articles in the EAQ corpus.” This analysis was used to identify authors whose scholarship has most significantly influenced ideas expressed in the EAQ corpus (McCain, 1986; Small, 1973). In contrast to citation analysis which was used to examine the impact of EAQ articles on the broader literature, co-citation analysis revealed the literature on which EAQ's authors have drawn when conducting their research.

A second key feature of co-citation analysis lies in its ability to “visualize similarities” between units of knowledge production (e.g., authors or journals). Small (1973) defined “co-citation” as the frequency with which two authors (or documents or journals) are “cited together” in the reference lists of the review corpus. For example, assume that an EAQ article authored by Megan Tschannen-Moran cited an article authored by Karen Louis and another by Ken Leithwood. In this case, Louis and Leithwood would each accrue one cited reference as well as a “co-citation link” (i.e., to each other). Small (1973), founder of the Web of Science and a pioneer in citation analysis, proposed that authors who are frequently “co-cited” by other scholars tend to share an intellectual affinity or affiliation. Gmür (2003) emphasized that co-citation analysis reveals how scholars have actually used knowledge.

Finally, VOSviewer software was used to create an author co-citation map that visualized the relationships among authors cited in the EAQ corpus. This map revealed the “intellectual structure” of the EAQ corpus (McCain, 1986; van Eck & Waltman, 2014). Intellectual structure refers to the dominant “schools of thought” (White & McCain, 1998) or “invisible colleges” (Gmür, 2003) that comprise a body of knowledge. Journal co-citation analysis (JCA) was then employed to identify EQ's place in the constellation of related journals frequently cited in the EAQ corpus (Cobo et al., 2015; Ding et al., 2000; Zupic & Čater, 2015).

Mapping the Geographical Landscape of EAQ

Analysis of the national origin of the first author of EAQ articles revealed the geographical sources of the journal's content. Figure 1 displays all nations and territories whose authors have contributed at least four articles to EAQ. This chart shows a highly skewed distribution with American authors accounting for 89% of the EAQ corpus, and Anglo-American authors for 96% of the articles.

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Figure 1.

Top contributors to Educational Administration Quarterly by nation or territory, 1965–2020 (n = 1,357).

Comparison with other leading EDLM journals places this in perspective (not tabled). Comparable figures for Educational Management, Administration & Leadership (EMAL) found that 34% of its articles were authored in its home nation (United Kingdom) and 58% in Anglo-American societies. Fourteen percent of all articles published in the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) were authored in its home country (i.e., Australia from 1962 to 2010), and 53% in Anglo-American societies. Based on these data, EAQ is more accurately described as a “national journal” and its counterparts as “international journals.” Although EAQ articles have been authored by scholars located in 39 different countries, scholars located in just six nations (USA, 1,213 articles; Canada, 51 articles; Israel, 29 articles; Australia, 22 articles; UK, 17 articles; Hong Kong, 10 articles). In contrast, JEA and EMAL had featured first authors from 71 and 75 different countries, respectively, through the end of 2020 (Hallinger, 2020; Hallinger & Kovačević, 2021).

Analysis of EAQ's Impact on the Field

Document citation analysis revealed that high citation counts have been achieved by the highly-cited EAQ articles (see Table 1). For example, the top-cited article authored by Robinson and colleagues (2008) gained 847 Scopus citations, and the 10 top-cited articles in EAQ accrued 3,910 Scopus citations through 2020. In contrast, as of December 31, 2020, comparable statistics were 283 for the top-cited article (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000) and 1,898 citations for the top 10 in JEA, and 149 (Hallinger & Heck, 2010) and 1,102 for EMAL. These figures suggest that publication in EAQ has historically generated greater visibility and scholarly impact than publications in other leading EDLM research journals (see also Haas et al., 2007; Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019).

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Table 1.

Top-cited articles published in Educational Administration Quarterly, 1965-2020.

Rank	Document	Focus	Type 1	Scopus Citations	CPY2
1	Robinson, V. et al. (2008). The impact of leadership on student outcomes:	Leadership for Learning	Rev	847	70.6
2	Hallinger, P. & Heck, R. (1996). Reassessing the principal's role in school effectiveness.	Leadership for Learning	Rev	650	27.1
3	Marks, H. & Printy, S. (2003). Principal leadership and school performance.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	519	30.5
4	Theoharis, G. (2007). Social justice educational leaders and resistance.	Social Justice	Con	379	29.2
5	Bossert, S. et al. (1982). The instructional management role of the principal.	Leadership for Learning	Rev	369	9.7
6	Leithwood, K. (1994). Leadership for school restructuring.	Leadership for Learning	Con	319	12.3
7	Witziers, B. et al. (2003). Educational leadership and student achievement.	Leadership for Learning	Rev	299	17.6
8	Bryk, A. et al. (1999). Professional community in Chicago elementary schools.	School Culture	Emp	265	12.6
9	Ehrich, L. et al. (2004). Formal mentoring programs in education and other professions.	Professional Learning	Rev	263	16.4
10	Wahlstrom, K. & Louis, K.S. (2008). How teachers experience principal leadership.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	256	21.3
11	Hargreaves, A. & Goodson, I. (2006). Educational change over time?	Change	Emp	239	17.1
12	Supovitz, J. et al. (2010). How principals and peers influence teaching and learning.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	238	23.8
13	López, G. (2003). The (racially neutral) politics of education.	Social Justice	Con	238	14.0
14	Ogawa, R. & Bossert, S. (1995). Leadership as an organizational quality.	Leadership	Con	237	9.5
15	Brown, K. (2004). Leadership for social justice and equity.	Social Justice	Con	231	14.4
16	Leithwood, K. et al. (2010). Testing a conception of how leadership influences student learning.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	228	22.8
17	Leithwood, K. & Jantzi, D. (2008). Linking leadership to student learning.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	217	18.1
18	Shields, C. (2004). Dialogic leadership for social justice.	Social Justice	Con	217	13.6
19	Thoonen, E. et al. (2011). How to improve teaching practice.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	213	23.7
20	Heck, R. et al. (1990). Instructional leadership and school achievement.	Leadership for Learning	Emp	208	6.9

¹ Types of papers: Con=conceptual; Emp=empirical; Rev=review. ² CPY=citations per year.

Further inspection of Table 1 finds that the top-cited articles published in EAQ encompass a balance of conceptual expositions (six articles), empirical studies (nine), and reviews of research (five). This reflects a healthy distribution of types of papers for the purposes of knowledge accumulation (Bridges, 1982; Campbell, 1979; Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019; Murphy et al., 2007). Nonetheless, the smaller proportion of research reviews was somewhat surprising. Review articles tend to be, “cited more frequently because they serve as surrogates for earlier literature” (Garfield, 1994, p. 4). Indeed, a recent review of the full literature on educational leadership and management found that 10 of the 20 top-cited papers consisted of research reviews (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). Thus, there may be room in future issues of EAQ for additional reviews of research, particularly as the field continues to mature.

These data support a conclusion that the EAQ publication corpus features strong theoretical exposition and critique (e.g., Griffiths, 1979; Hoy & Ferguson, 1985; Leithwood, 1994; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Theoharis, 2007), as well as a balance of strong quantitative (Heck et al., 1990; Leithwood et al., 2010; Marks & Printy, 2003; Thoonen et al., 2011) and qualitative studies (Bryk et al., 1999; Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006). The journal has also featured highly cited research reviews that have consolidated findings and charted the way forward in different eras (Bossert et al., 1982; Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Robinson et al., 2008; Witziers et al., 2003). These findings suggest that the journal has continued to mature since Murphy et al.'s (2007) review of the EAQ corpus.

This analysis of EAQ's top-cited articles also finds a consistent focus on “leadership,” as opposed to “management,” “administration,” or “school organization.” This interest in “leadership” emerged during the 1980s and 1990s (Bossert et al., 1982; Heck et al., 1990, Leithwood, 1994), and has persisted over time (Leithwood et al., 2010; Supovitz et al., 2010; Thoonen et al., 2011; Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008). Moreover, most of the highly cited articles were concerned with various forms of “leadership for learning” (LFL) (e.g., Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Leithwood, 1994; Marks & Printy, 2003; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Robinson et al., 2008; Witziers et al., 2003). Social justice leadership began to emerge as a corollary trend in the early 2000s (Brown, 2004; López, 2003; Shields, 2004; Theoharis, 2007).

It is also notable that the most recent articles in Table 1 were published around 2010 (i.e., Leithwood et al., 2010; Supovitz et al. 2010; Thoonen et al., 2011). This reflects the limitation of citation analysis noted earlier, whereby it takes a number of years for an article to accumulate a significant number of citations. In order to reduce this limitation, the author scanned the document citation list seeking papers published since 2011 that have accumulated a significant number of “citations per year.”

This analysis (not tabled) yielded a similar topical pattern, whereby recent articles with the highest citations per year tended to focus on leadership for learning (e.g., Day et al., 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020; Neumerski, 2013; Thoonen et al., 2011). The exceptions to this trend were four articles with a social justice focus (i.e., Furman, 2012; Khalifa et al., 2019; Orfield & Frankenberg, 2014; Santamaria, 2014).

Intellectual Structure of the EAQ Corpus

Next author co-citation analysis was conducted in order to further clarify the distinctive contributions of the EAQ corpus. In the first stage, an author co-citation table identified the authors cited most frequently in the reference lists of EAQ articles (see Table 2). The complementary value of this analysis is immediately apparent as it highlights key authors whose work has formed the foundation of research published in EAQ. Notably, this table not only includes authors whose EAQ articles have attained high citation impact (e.g., K. Leithwood, P. Hallinger, W. Hoy, K. Louis, R. Heck), but also scholars who have never published in EAQ (e.g., M. McLaughlin, M. Miles, M. Fullan, L. Darling-Hammond). The data in this table would also be used to assist in the interpretation of the author co-citation map that follows in Figure 2.

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Table 2.

Authors Most Frequently Cited in the Reference Lists of Articles Published in Educational Administration Quarterly, 1965–2020.

Rank	Author	School of Thought inFigure 2	Citationsa
1	*Leithwood, K.	Leadership for Learning	797
2	*Hallinger, P.	Leadership for Learning	567
3	Murphy, J.	Social Justice	503
4	*Hoy, W.	Leadership for Learning	491
5	*Louis, K.	Teacher Change & Development	451
6	Spillane, J.	Teacher Change & Development	334
7	Bryk, A.	Teacher Change & Development	300
8	*Heck, R.	Teacher Change & Development	272
9	*Rowan, B.	School Culture & Org,	269
10	*Jantzi,D.	Leadership for Learning	221
11	**Mclaughlin, M.	Teacher Change & Development	218
12	**Miles, M.	Teacher Change & Development	217
13	**Fullan, M.	Teacher Change & Development	216
14	**Darling-Hammond, L.	Teacher Change & Development	209
15	*Willower, D.J.	School Culture & Organization	201
16	Blase, J.	School Culture & Organization	193
17	Weick, K.	School Culture & Organization	190
18	Firestone, W.	Teacher Change & Development	182
19	Tschannen-moran, M.	Leadership for Learning	178
20	Elmore, R.	Teacher Change & Development	172

a

Cited in the reference lists of EAQ articles.

*Author was also listed in Table 1.

**Author has never published in EAQ.

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Figure 2.

Author co-citation map of the corpus of articles published in Educational Administration Quarterly, 1965–2020 (threshold 60, display 137 authors).

Next, an author co-citation map was generated in VOSviewer software using a threshold of at least 60 author citations in the reference lists of EAQ articles (see Figure 2). On the map, the size of author nodes reflects the relative frequency of citation by EAQ authors. Thus, the smallest nodes indicate citation frequencies in the 60s and 70s, and the largest nodes range from 200 to 800 citations (see also Table 2).

“Links” connecting author nodes reflect “co-citations” of the two scholars in EAQ articles. Dense links indicate more frequent co-citation of the author pair. Scholars located in close “proximity” on the map tend to have been co-cited frequently, thereby suggesting an affiliation in their intellectual perspectives. In contrast, authors located at a greater distance tend to be co-cited less frequently, and to publish on different lines of inquiry. Colors on the map highlight clusters of scholars whose scholarship reflects a common “school of thought” or intellectual tradition (Gmür, 2003; McCain, 1986; White & McCain, 1998).

Inspection of the map in Figure 3 reveals four distinct, coherent schools of thought. The two largest schools, running diagonally through the center of the map, concern Teacher Development and School Change (TDSC; green cluster) and School Culture and Organization (SCO; red cluster). Two schools of thought, located above and below the diagonal, feature scholars who have focused on LFL (lower-left, blue cluster) and Social Justice (upper-right, yellow cluster). These four schools of thought represent the key thematic orientations of the journal, based on the self-organized contributions of scholars (McCain, 1986; White & McCain, 1998). These are what Gmür (2003) referenced as the “invisible colleges” of scholars.

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Figure 3.

Journal co-citation map of the corpus of articles published in Educational Administration Quarterly, 1965–2020 (threshold 30 citations, display 140 sources).

The TDSC school of thought is anchored by Karen S. Louis, Anthony Bryk, James Spillane, Linda Darling-Hammond, Helen Marks, Milbrey McLaughlin, William Firestone, and Ellen Goldring (see also Table 2). Scholars located within this school have studied schools from the perspectives of school restructuring (Elmore et al., 1996; Murphy, 1991), education reform (Firestone, 1996, 2015; Fullan & Miles, 1992; Louis & Miles, 1991), change (Elmore, 2016; Fullan, 2015; Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2015; McLaughlin, 1990), and school improvement (Bryk, 2018; Bryk et al., 1999; Lee & Louis, 2019; Murphy, 2005). A signature feature of this school's research lies in its state-of-the-art findings on teacher evaluation (Darling-Hammond, 2015; Goldring et al., 2015) and professional development as factors that contribute to school improvement (Spillane and Shirrell, 2017). This school is also notable for its contributions to understanding how teacher leadership can act as a catalyst for school improvement (Marks & Louis, 1999; Marks & Printy, 2003; Murphy, 2005; Pounder et al., 1995; Spillane, 2012).

The SCO school is anchored by Brian Rowan, Donald Willower, Karl Weick, Larry Cuban, Steven Bossert, Edwin Bridges, Cecil Miskel, and Joseph Blasé. This school's DNA traces back to the early days of the Theory Movement in Educational Administration when scholars began to apply management and organization theory to the analysis of educational organizations (e.g., Griffiths, 1979; Martin & Willower, 1981; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Weick, 1976; Willower, 1965). This led to streams of theory-informed research on how organizational structure and culture influence the administration of schools and classrooms (Cuban, 1988; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Sergiovanni, 1994). This influence is evident in the particularly dense links between scholars in this school and those occupying the TDSC and LFL schools.

The “physical location” of scholars in this school is also instructive. Note, for example, how early scholars associated with the Theory Movement tend to be clustered together in the lower region of this school (e.g., Roald Campbell, Edwin Bridges, Jack Culbertson, Cecil Miskel, Andrew Halpin, James March, Donald Willower, Daniel Griffiths). Terry Deal, perhaps the scholar most closely associated with the concept of “school culture” is located dead center within this cluster (Deal & Peterson, 2010). Research conducted within this school has been instrumental in highlighting the interaction between structure and culture in educational organizations (Cuban, 1988; Lortie, 1977; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). This is, perhaps, best exemplified in Karl Weick's (1976) analysis of “educational organizations as loosely coupled systems,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly. Weick's paper is the most frequently cited document in the reference lists of EAQ articles. His perspective on the interaction between school culture and structure has had an enduring influence on efforts to theorize and research school reform and change (Cuban, 1988, 1990; Firestone, 2015; Rosenholtz, 1989; Rowan & Miller, 2007; Sergiovanni, 1994).

The LFL school is centered around Ken Leithwood, Philip Hallinger, Ronald Heck, Wayne Hoy, Doris Jantzi, and Alma Harris. This school emerged in the 1980s when the field's center of gravity shifted away from “school administration” and toward “school leadership” (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). Note that scholars in this school are densely connected to, and occasionally overlap with, scholars in the TDSC and SCO schools. This reflects the frequent cross-fertilization of ideas between these schools, as well as an evolving reorientation of the field toward the leadership of teaching and learning (Bossert et al., 1982; Day et al., 2016; Hallinger et al., 1996; Heck et al., 1990; Heck & Hallinger, 2014; Leithwood et al., 2010, 2020) and school development (Day et al., 2016; Harris, 2002; Hoy & Tarter, 2011; Leithwood, 1994; Supovitz et al., 2010; Thoonen et al., 2011). This paradigm shift is reflected in a long-term program of research that has featured in the pages of EAQ for five decades (e.g., Bossert et al., 1982; Bridges, 1982; Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Hoy et al., 2002; Leithwood et al., 2010, 2020; Robinson et al., 2008).

The roots of this school trace back to the 1982 issue of EAQ in which two seminal reviews of research laid the groundwork for this paradigm shift in the field. Edwin Bridges (1982) published a scathing critique of the quality of research in educational administration in which he asserted the need for theory-informed, programmatic research centered on how school administrators influence teaching and student learning outcomes. In the same issue, Steven Bossert and colleagues (1982) authored a conceptual review of research on school leadership that proposed a mediated-moderation model of school leadership and student learning that remains highly relevant four decades hence.

Following these reviews, a group of international scholars launched a sustained program of empirical studies (e.g., Day et al., 2016; Heck et al., 1990; Heck & Hallinger, 2014; Leithwood et al., 2010, 2020; Marks & Printy, 2003; Supovitz et al., 2010; Thoonen et al., 2011) and systematic reviews of research (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Leithwood & Sun, 2012; Robinson et al., 2008; Witziers et al., 2003). Forty years hence, this school, perhaps more than any of the others, has affirmed the centrality of “educational leadership” within the field of educational management, administration, and leadership (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). Moreover, EAQ has been perhaps the most influential source disseminating research that reoriented the direction of the field.

The Social Justice School (yellow cluster), the smallest of the four clusters, is led by Joseph Murphy, James Scheurich, Michelle Young, Colleen Capper, Catherine Marshall, Martha McCarthy, and Gary Anderson. Scholars operating within this school have focused on how social inequities are enacted in and perpetrated by systems of schooling (Anderson, 1990; Capper, 2015; DeMatthews et al., 2016; Shakeshaft, 1989; Shields, 2004; Theoharis, 2007). Social inequities studied by scholars located within this school include gender (Epp, Sackney & Kustaski, 1994; Shakeshaft, 1989), racial justice (Capper, 2015; DeMatthews et al., 2017; Lopez, 2003), and gender orientation (de Leon & Brunner, 2013). Although the DNA of this school can be traced back many decades (see Murphy et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2017), equity-oriented scholarship in educational administration only evolved into a coherent school of thought during the early 2000s (Anderson & Grinberg, 1998; Capper, 2015; Lopez, 2003; Shields, 2004; Theoharis, 2007).

Notably, this school is located at some distance from the others and evidences sparse links (i.e., co-citations) to scholars in the other three schools. This suggests that this school is somewhat disconnected from the “mainstream schools” of research published in EAQ. This is based on the smaller number of co-citations of scholars in this school with scholars from the other schools.

Somewhat surprisingly, although Joseph Murphy is associated with this school by cluster color, his physical location is in the center of the map at some distance from the Social Justice school. This reflects the fact that his large publication corpus includes papers on social justice issues as well as school improvement, LFL, and school culture. Indeed, the centrality of Murphy's location on the map and numerous links to all four schools highlights his role as one of the key “boundary-spanning authors” in the EAQ corpus.

Because social justice only began to emerge as a discrete line of inquiry in EAQ during the 2000s, and citations only accumulate over time, the author decided to rerun the author co-citation analysis based only on documents published from 2010 through 2020 (see Hallinger's response to Commentaries in this issue). The resulting map bore a striking similarity to the map in Figure 2 in terms of thematic structure and relationships of the schools of thought to one another.

Two differences were, however, worth noting. First, the relative size of the Social Justice school within the more recent EAQ corpus grew significantly when compared with the other three schools of thought. This was not surprising given the increasingly frequent publication of articles on social justice in EAQ since the early 2000s (Wang et al., 2017). Upon further inspection, it was also found that many of the scholars who were added to the Social Justice school in the recent map were qualitative research methodologists (e.g., M. Patton, R. Yin, M. Miles, M. Huberman, J. Crewel, A. Strauss, R. Glaser). This reflects the emerging publication of qualitative studies by Social Justice scholars during the past decade (e.g., de Leon & Brunner, 2013; DeMatthews et al., 2016, 2017; Rodela & Rodriguez-Mojica, 2020; Santamaría, 2014).

EAQ's Constellation of Related Journals

Next, journal co-citation analysis was used to identify the constellation of sources frequently co-cited in the reference lists of EAQ articles (Cobo et al., 2015; Ding et al., 2000). The JCA map in Figure 3 reveals four overlapping journal clusters that represent fields of conceptual influence on EAQ. The four journal clusters were termed General Education (GenEd), Educational Leadership and Curriculum (ELC), Education Policy and Finance (EFP), and Management Science and Organizational Psychology (MSOP).

While the clusters comprising the map are distinguishable, there is also some cross-cluster intermingling among the three education journal clusters. This pattern is based on two factors. First, many of these journals publish articles on a wide range of topics leading to cross-over patterns of co-citation. Second, it is not unusual for journal co-citation patterns to be influenced by the geographic location of authors (see Ding et al., 2000; Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). This appears to be the case for this map where, for example, “international” educational leadership journals are primarily located in the ELC cluster (e.g., Journal of Educational Administration, School Leadership & Management, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Educational Management, Administration & Leadership) and American educational leadership journals are primarily located in or close to the GenEd cluster (e.g., Journal of School Leadership, NASSP Bulletin, Educational Leadership). This reflects the tendency for American EDLM scholars, who predominate in EAQ, to cite other American journals more than international journals (Haas et al., 2007; Hallinger, 2020; Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019).

The large size of the EAQ node indicates that EAQ authors frequently cite articles previously published in the journal, a trend first noted by Campbell (1979). This, in combination with its central location on the map, highlights the powerful influence EAQ articles have had on the subsequent direction of scholarship published in the journal. We emphasize that this is not the case in every instance when co-citation is performed on a single journal. For example, when a similar JCA was conducted on the corpus of the Journal of Educational Administration, EAQ was the top-cited journal and also anchored the central position on the map (not tabled).

It was also notable that VOSviewer assigned EAQ to the Gen Ed cluster, and that its links to journals in the GenEd and MSAP cluster appear as strong as those to journals in the ELC cluster. This result suggests that authors publishing on educational leadership and management topics in EAQ tend to adopt an eclectic set of theoretical perspectives. Indeed, they are just as likely to draw on sources in general education, management science, and applied psychology as they are to cite articles published in other educational leadership and management journals. This finding highlights a significant shift since the early years of the journal when the journal citation pattern of EAQ authors was far less diverse.

Limitations of the Review

First, the author wishes to reiterate that findings extracted from the analysis of a single journal cannot be generalized to the field as a whole. This limitation also applies regardless of the journal's ranking or prestige. Thus, this review of the EAQ corpus cannot be treated as a review of research on the field of “EDLM” writ large (see Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019).

In addition, by treating the EAQ corpus as a single entity, the review has largely ignored the “time” element in the journal's evolution. That is, this review did not examine the evolution of the journal decade by decade. Although the adoption of a longitudinal perspective can be illuminating, it went beyond the scope of this review (see Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019, 2021; Wang et al., 2017). Nonetheless, readers may be interested to examine the author's response to the Commentaries in which a map of the most recent corpus of EAQ articles was disaggregated and analyzed.

Finally, this review relied heavily upon citation analysis. As noted earlier, citation analysis tends to privilege documents published a decade or more in the past. The author sought to reduce this limitation by comparing the main results of the review with findings based on the most recent decade.

Interpretation of the Findings

The over-arching question driving this review asked, “After 55 years of publication, what are EAQ's distinctive contributions to the field of EDLM?” The review found that, throughout its publication history, authorship in EAQ has been dominated by American (86%) or Anglo-American (96%) scholars. Overall, the data affirmed that despite the globalization of EDLM research and practice since 2000 (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019, 2021), surprisingly little has changed in the geographical distribution of EAQ scholarship since Campbell's review of the journal in 1979. EAQ remains a distinctively “American journal” rooted in the national education context of the United States. Thus, despite its increasingly broad international readership, this review concludes that a distinctive feature of EAQ lies in its emphasis on research and practice in the USA to a far greater extent than other leading EDLM journals such as EMAL, SESI, and JEA.

Why is this finding significant? First, as historically the field's most prestigious journal (Campbell, 1979; Wang et al., 2017), articles published in EAQ have tended to generate a higher impact than articles published in other EDLM journals (Haas et al., 2007; Hallinger, 2020). Second, the finding suggests an ethnocentric bent of the journal in which educational issues are largely seen through the eyes of American editors, reviewers, and authors. Third, scholars increasingly accept the proposition that policies and practices in educational leadership and management are shaped by the national contexts in which schools are located (Belchetz & Leithwood, 2007; Clarke & O’Donoghue, 2017; Hallinger, 2018).

This suggests that EAQ faces a potential challenge in an increasingly globalized publication environment. Indeed, the author asserts that the greatest challenge facing the EDLM field lies in its ability to contribute to a globally relevant and validated knowledge base. If this challenge is accepted as legitimate, then EAQ's editorial team will need to consider whether the journal wishes to adopt a more “international” perspective on the field, or maintain its current orientation (e.g., see Hallinger & Kovačević, 2022b). Internationalizing the journal implies the need to develop a vision and strategy aimed at rebalancing the distribution of articles published in the journal.

Haas and colleagues (2007) asserted that, “Journal editors and sponsoring organizations also are interested in the assessments of their own journal's influence, for these assessments can provide formative data about the results of current journal policy and practice” (p. 495). Like Campbell (1979) and Haas et al. (2007), we also employed citation analysis in order to gain insights into EAQ's impact on the broader field. Moreover, the use of the Scopus index in this review enabled the author to compare EAQ's citation profile to other key educational administration journals (e.g., JEA, EMAL, SESI).

The analyses included in this review verified Haas et al.'s (2007) conclusions that historically the citation impact of EAQ has been the strongest among EDLM journals. Nonetheless, it should be noted that during the 2 years that passed since these data were analyzed in 2021, EMAL overtook EAQ in terms of citation impact. The author hypothesizes that this was due to EMAL's strategic adoption of a more broadly international perspective and subsequent publication of a more geographically diverse corpus (see Hallinger & Kovačević, 2022b).

Document citation analysis conducted in this review found that EAQ has played a significant role in supporting programmatic research over the past six decades. This suggests a maturation of the field since Campbell (1979) highlighted the fragmented and disconnected nature of the early EAQ corpus (see also Bridges, 1982; Griffiths, 1979). Thus, the bibliometric lens used in this review revealed that the “hints of progress” in knowledge accumulation identified by Leithwood (2005) and Murphy et al. (2007) in the 2000s were subsequently realized. The findings from author co-citation analysis validated this important contribution of the journal along several lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry.

Fifteen years ago, Murphy and colleagues (2007) noted that, “we are a bit troubled by the near absence of theoretical and integrative review work in the journal” (p. 627). The document citation analysis conducted in this review found that 10 of the 20 top-cited EAQ articles were research reviews and conceptual articles that aimed at theoretical exposition and integrative review (e.g., Bossert et al., 1982; Leithwood, 1994; López, 2003; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Theoharis, 2007). This finding reinforces the contention that such papers represent an important complement to empirical research.

Author co-citation analysis identified four schools of thought that comprise the EAQ corpus of knowledge. Two of the schools overlap with those identified in Hallinger and Kovačević's (2019) review of the broader literature in educational administration: (a) Leadership for Learning, (b) Teacher Development and School Change. Differences in the maps generated for the two reviews highlight the relatively stronger influence of research on school effectiveness and school improvement in the broader EDLM literature, and a stronger emphasis on “Social Justice” in the EAQ corpus, especially in the past 20 years. These findings concerning the intellectual structure of the EAQ corpus reflect another “distinctive” feature of EAQ's contribution to discourse in educational administration.

Journal co-citation analysis highlighted the centrality of EAQ's place in its constellation of related journals. In contrast with patterns reported by prior reviews (e.g., Campbell, 1979; Haas et al., 2007; Murphy et al., 2007), this review found that EAQ's authors reference articles published in journals classified as management science, applied and organizational psychology, and general education more frequently than educational administration journals. This suggests that the knowledge base encompassed in the EAQ corpus has become more conceptually differentiated and methodologically diverse over time.

Implications of the Findings

These findings yield several implications. First, the findings reveal why authors must resist the temptation to generalize findings from the analysis of a single journal to the field. For example, based on their analysis of the EAQ corpus, Wang et al. (2017) concluded as follows. “Tracking the historical development of the field, our findings reveal the unfolding landscape of 19 topics in the educational leadership field” (emphasis added; p. 310). However, as evidenced in the current review, EAQ's predominantly American corpus is not representative of the broader field (see Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019).

A second implication follows from the author's choice of Scopus rather than the Web of Science as the data source for the review. Prior citation analyses of the EAQ corpus had relied on the Web of Science (e.g., Campbell, 1979; Haas et al., 2007), which was the only viable source of citation data at the time when those reviews were conducted. However, as demonstrated in other studies (e.g., Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019; Martín-Martín et al., 2021), Scopus offers better journal coverage for reviews of EDLM research. Therefore, in order to avoid producing a distorted picture of the field, the author strongly discourages the use of the Web of Science as the sole source of data when conducting reviews of research in educational administration. The results will not offer a valid depiction of the field.

This review also found that despite its wide international readership, EAQ's authorship and, by extension, its content remains rooted in the American educational context. This poses a question for the Editorial Board. Should the journal remain an “American journal,” or adopt a more explicitly international mission? During EAQ's early years, the journal regularly published “International Reports” which conveyed information about educational administration trends outside the USA. However, these were eventually dropped in favor of more “academic” scholarship (Campbell, 1979). However, 40 years hence, there is sufficient “international” EDLM scholarship to warrant publication in EAQ. Nonetheless, this is unlikely to happen without a reorientation of the journal's mission and aims.

By way of example, the author observed that at the time of writing this article all 40 of EAQ's Associate Editors were located in the USA. While this is consistent with the journal's association with UCEA, it presents a practical barrier to sourcing and publishing more international manuscripts. The journal's heavy reliance on Associate Editors and reviewers from the USA implicitly perpetuates a US-centric view of the field, as well as a distorted view of which topics might be of interest to EAQ's “global readership”.

While the author does not presume to judge the relative value of a national or international mission for EAQ, the ground is already shifting under the journal's feet. Whereas the EDLM field was largely “birthed” in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s, over the past 25 years it has grown into a global enterprise with scholars widely distributed throughout the world (Hallinger, 2020). For example, scholars located in Hong Kong, Turkey, the Netherlands, Malaysia, China, Israel, and South Africa have become among the most frequent contributors to other internationally-oriented EDLM journals. Yet, with the exception of Israel, they are seldom published in EAQ (see Figure 1). Thus, a decision on the journal's future direction warrants explicit consideration by the Editorial Board.

Finally, while this review has identified challenges for the journal's future development, the findings offer a positive, empirically driven assessment of EAQ's distinctive contributions to the EDLM knowledge base. The citation statistics presented in the review document the journal's impressive impact, especially when compared with past reviews. However, equally impressive is the extent to which the journal has served as an engine driving the field's commitment to long-term programmatic research. This role was evident not only in the document citation analysis, but also in the co-citation analyses that visualized coherent streams of theory-driven research. In 1979, Roald Campbell questioned whether the field would be capable of generating the critical mass of high-quality research needed to warrant the continuation of the journal in the long term. We believe that Campbell (and the other pioneering editors of EAQ) would be surprised at the extent to which, “this thing we loosed on the profession” (Campbell, 1979, p. 1) has, in fact, achieved many of their aspirations.