Abstract
For much of the past half-century, scholars from various parts of the world have studied the early stages of school principals’ careers. This article presents the results of a review of research on novice principals (NPs) regarding its current status, intellectual structure and conceptual structure. The review conducted bibliometric and content analysis of relevant articles accessed through Scopus. The findings primarily concerned patterns in the knowledge production related to novice school principals. Our findings indicate that this line of research is still in its infancy, but has been growing rapidly in recent years. Related studies have mostly focused on three broad areas: preparation and development of NPs; NPs’ socialization process and the challenges they face; and NPs’ role in school improvement. Most of the related studies are found to be lacking in terms of a solid theoretical grounding. The implications of the results for the related literature are discussed.
Introduction
Evidence from school-improvement literature, from the 1980s to the present day, reveals that school principals play a crucial role in enhancing and sustaining student achievement by promoting high-quality teaching in schools (Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger and Heck, 1996; Leithwood et al., 2008; Robinson et al., 2008; Shatzer et al., 2014). School principalship has emerged as a concept and field of research, spreading from its Anglophone and Western origins to much of the world over the last three decades (Oplatka, 2004). However, research on novice principals (NPs) has been relatively scarce in terms of both its size and foci (Arar, 2018; Oplatka and Lapidot, 2018). Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of the studies on NPs in both Western (Beam et al., 2016; O’Doherty and Ovando, 2013; Shirrell, 2016; Weindling and Dimmock, 2006) and non-Western contexts (Arar, 2018; Kitavi and Van Der Westhuizen, 1997; Pineda-Báez et al., 2019; Slater et al., 2008). Furthermore, the knowledge base on NPs has been expanded by several cross-cultural studies (Mentz et al., 2010; Wildy et al., 2010).
Scholars have revealed that the transition from teaching to school principalship is a daunting process (Arar, 2018; Crow, 2006; Northfield, 2013; Stevenson, 2006). During this transition, novice school principals are likely to go through a tough process in which they assume much greater responsibility and power in terms of decision-making than when teaching (Spillane and Lee, 2014). When transitioning from teaching to managerial roles, NPs experience an induction stage in which ‘a novice principal undergoes socialization into the school or into the role…such as attaining acceptance, learning the organizational culture, and establishing ways to overcome the insecurity of being inexperienced and to develop a sense of confidence’ (Oplatka, 2012: 131). Research has furthermore shown that early stages of a career as school principal are filled with a variety of new roles and responsibilities. These roles and responsibilities include nurturing a healthy school culture that encourages high-quality teaching and learning (Arar, 2018), establishing a school environment characterized by trust and staff collaboration (Lee, 2015), enhancing and sustaining the instructional and leadership capacity of schools (O’Doherty and Ovando, 2013: 553), and carefully dealing with poor-performing teachers with low morale (Briggs et al., 2006).
Despite the serious dilemmas and confrontations most school principals face in the early stages of their careers (Crow, 2006; Spillane and Lee, 2014), NPs often enter the office without undergoing an effective induction process (Bush and Oduro, 2006). A body of research suggests that this results in stress and anxiety (Bush and Heystek, 2006) and professional isolation among NPs (Kitavi and Van Der Westhuizen, 1997). Heavy workload and excessive expectations constitute another issue facing NPs in school settings, as school principals have the primary responsibility for managing the school’s organizational and professional direction (Oplatka, 2012). Principals have assignments ranging from developing, shaping and articulating a school vision and shared values among teaching staff to directing teachers’ efforts and time to increase student learning and achievement (Stevenson, 2006). As Oplatka (2012) summarizes, starting a new career as an NP requires embracing a different frame of mind simultaneously focused on the structural, political, technological and human sides of the school. Given that school principals influence various school processes, it is crucial to explore what NPs are expected to do, what they do, the challenges they are confronted with and the extent to which they deal with decision paralysis (Walker and Qian, 2006).
For more than half a century, researchers have taken an interest in different aspects of being an NP (Soderbergh, 1966). Somewhat surprisingly, however, reviews of research on the early stages of principals’ careers are still rare. Furthermore, none of the existing reviews of research on NPs have examined the full knowledge base, nor have they applied the most recent bibliometric instruments for mapping knowledge production. Prior reviews either focused only on empirical studies, attempting to synthesize the scholarship on early career stages of NPs (Oplatka, 2012; Weindling and Dimmock, 2006), or specifically focused on NPs’ career challenges (Garcia-Garduno et al., 2011). It is important to note Walker and Qian’s argument that ‘investigating issues related to the beginning principalship first and foremost requires an understanding of the multiple and many-sided contexts within which they work’ (2006: 298). As such, there is a need for a broader systematic review to identify how scholars from various contexts have contributed to the global knowledge base on NPs.
Our study constitutes a comprehensive review of the field of research on NPs, from its birth to the present day, by combining the most recent bibliometric methods with a traditional descriptive content analysis approach. In this way, the study aims to illustrate the development of this field of research over time and to reveal its current intellectual and conceptual structure by focusing on a relatively large number of articles rather than synthesizing the results of a few studies related to a particular aspect of NPs. To this end, the authors compiled a data set comprising 118 articles, authored by various scholars worldwide, published between 1966 and 2019. The review specifically addresses the following research questions: What is the current status of the knowledge base concerning NPs in terms of volume, publication channels, geographical distribution and citation impact? What is the intellectual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs? What is the conceptual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs?
Conceptual framework
The conceptual framework of the current study is informed by recent reviews of educational leadership and management (EDLM) literature. Mirroring the increasing global interest in EDLM research, there has been a significant increase in both the volume and diversity of systematic reviews of EDLM literature during the last decade (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2019). Bellibaş and Gümüş (2019) grouped existing reviews of EDLM research into three distinct categories in terms of their aims and approaches to the review process. The first group focuses more on general patterns of knowledge production (volume, geographic distribution, publication channels, citation impact, etc.) and analyses the bibliographic data from a large number of studies using topographical and/or bibliometric analysis approaches (e.g., Hallinger and Bryant, 2013; Hallinger and Kovačević, 2019; Mertkan et al., 2017; Wang and Bowers, 2016). The second group of reviews goes behind the bibliographic data and investigates the overall content of the reviewed studies with the aim of revealing at least one of the following aspects: topical foci, methodological approaches, conceptual frameworks or theoretical foundations (e.g., Aypay et al., 2010; Hammad and Hallinger, 2017; Ogawa et al., 2000). The last group of reviews of EDLM research takes a slightly different perspective by synthesizing the results of reviewed studies in more detail rather than identifying overall trends (e.g., Boyce and Bowers, 2018; Murphy, 2019; Oplatka and Arar, 2017; Tian et al., 2016).
Despite the above-mentioned broad categorization of existing review studies within the field of EDLM, some do not easily fit into any of the three categories. These studies often combine different approaches (for instance, combining content analysis and bibliometric analysis, or thematic synthesis and content analysis) with the aim of providing a more accurate depiction of the reviewed literature (e.g., Gümüş et al., 2018; Hallinger and Chen, 2015; Nguyen et al., 2020; Tian and Huber, 2019). In addition, some of the studies categorized in one of the three groups also benefit from different approaches to strengthen their reviews, even though these approaches are not explicitly mentioned. It is thereby evident that mixed-methods approaches are common in the reviews of EDLM literature. We also use a mixed-methods review approach here, combining bibliometric and descriptive content analysis in order to provide comprehensive information related to different aspects of the existing research on NPs.
As seen in Figure 1, our framework includes three main dimensions: the current status of the knowledge base, its intellectual structure and its conceptual structure. Examining the current status of the knowledge base involves mapping the distribution of relevant documents by year, journal and country, as well as their citation impact. Examining the intellectual structure of the field, meanwhile, involves identifying the influence of particular (groups of) authors and sources on the current knowledge base concerning NPs with specific attention to their disciplinary compositions and interrelations. Finally, the conceptual structure consists of both the topical foci of the reviewed studies and their theoretical underpinnings. When exploring the topical foci, we identified the main overarching topics as well as common sub-topics and the most frequently used concepts. In terms of the theoretical underpinnings, we relied on the authors’ own statements regarding the theories they drew upon in their studies. Although synthesizing the results of the reviewed studies is not the primary aim of this review, we also summarized the common findings in different topical categories emerging from the descriptive content analysis.
Conceptual framework for the review of research on NPs.
Method
In this study, various bibliometric methods, as well as descriptive content analysis, were utilized to review research on NPs. Bibliometric methods are able to reveal the broad trends that comprise the intellectual structure of a given knowledge base (Zupic and Čater, 2015), while content analysis can provide more details about the topical focus and theoretical foundations of the reviewed documents (Hallinger, 2013). By combining these two approaches, this review draws a comprehensive picture of the existing knowledge base on NPs.
Identification of sources
Bibliometric studies depend on the analysis of documents obtained from digital databases such as Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, PubMed, etc., which provide reliable bibliographic data. Therefore, the choice of which database to search for sources was the first step when constructing our research strategy. Scopus and WoS are known as the most frequently used databases for bibliometric analysis (Archambault et al., 2009). This study used the Scopus database because it covers more relevant and peer-reviewed journals within the field of education than WoS (Hallinger, 2020). The initial searches conducted by the authors also demonstrated that Scopus has a wider range of documents related to NPs. Therefore, we chose this repository to search for related documents.
This research was guided by the ‘Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses’ developed by Moher et al. (2009), which enable authors to report the procedures in identifying sources for a review (see Figure 2). After deciding on a specific database (Scopus), which was necessary for the application of the bibliometric analysis, the following inclusion/exclusion process was used to select relevant sources: An open-ended search, without any time limit, was conducted. Only articles and reviews were included. Therefore, other types of document (e.g., book chapters, conference proceedings, book reviews, etc.) were excluded. Only documents primarily focused on NPs were included. All relevant documents were included in the bibliometric analysis regardless of the language of the full texts. Only full texts written in English were included in the content analysis.
PRISMA flow diagram specifying steps in the identification and screening of sources in systematic reviews of research (Moher et al., 2009).
Based on these criteria, a keyword search was conducted in Scopus using the following keyword string, which is the most commonly preferred strategy for identifying relevant sources within a database. TITLE-ABS-KEY(‘first time principal*’ OR ‘first-year principal*’ OR ‘novice principal*’ OR ‘inexperienced principal*’ OR ‘beginning principal*’ OR ‘new principal*’ OR ‘new headteacher*’ OR ‘novice headteacher*’)
This article’s two authors each carefully read the abstracts of the 408 documents, listing those deemed outside the scope of the review. There was more than 95% agreement between the two resulting lists. Documents on which the authors of this article disagreed were reassessed by an online panel with the active participation of an independent researcher experienced in conducting systematic reviews alongside the two authors in order to reach a final decision. After this step, the data set was reduced to 118 eligible documents (111 articles and 7 reviews). The data set also included two non-English-language articles. We retained these articles in our bibliometric analysis since they had relevant bibliographic data in English. However, we did not include them in our content analysis, where full texts were used. In addition, the full text of one English-language article could not be found, thereby reducing the number of documents eligible for content analysis to 115.
Data extraction and analysis
Using descriptive statistics, graphs and tables, we first examined the volume, publication channels and geographical distribution of relevant publications, as well as the most cited publications based on Scopus’s online descriptive analysis function. Next, we downloaded bibliographic data for all 118 eligible documents from Scopus and stored them in an Excel file. This file comprised ‘meta-data’ for each publication, such as author name, author affiliation, title, journal, date, citations, etc. We then imported this file to the bibliometric software VOSviewer, which is a common tool for performing bibliometric analysis and visualization mapping, and performed the bibliometric analysis to draw author co-citation (ACA) and source co-citation (SCA) maps of scholarship on NPs.
Simple citation analysis has long been conducted as a way of identifying distinguished authors, documents or journals within a knowledge base (Small, 1973). However, co-citation analysis goes further than this, with the intention of specifying the resemblance of two items by calculating how frequently those two authors, sources or documents have been cited together in the reference lists of reviewed documents (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Co-citation analysis thereby draws on a broader body of literature than that directly included in the review and consequently enables the presentation of a more holistic perspective in terms of the intellectual structure of the given knowledge base (Gallivan and Tao, 2014; White and McCain, 1998).
Despite its advantages in terms of identifying the most influential units (authors, sources or documents) and the clusters they form, bibliometric analysis does not provide much insight into the content of the studies of interest. Thus, we also employed content analysis in the second part of this study to reveal a more detailed picture of the conceptual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs and to see how this structure has changed over time. More specifically, the purpose of the content analysis is to answer the following two questions: (1) What are the most studied topics in the literature on NPs?; and (2) Which theoretical approaches underpin the knowledge base concerning NPs? In order to answer these questions, two researchers reviewed the content of each document and generated separate code lists in terms of the topical foci, concepts used and theoretical foundations. These separate lists were then compared and the differences in the codes were discussed. When the two researchers disagreed upon a code, experts within the relevant fields were consulted to determine the best category for each article prior to data analysis.
Findings
This section is divided into two main parts. The first part includes the results of descriptive and bibliometric analysis and aims to answer the study’s first two research questions. The second part presents the results of content analysis in order to answer the study’s third research question.
The results of descriptive and bibliometric analysis
The current status of the knowledge base concerning NPs
Table 1 presents the publication years of 118 articles and reviews on NPs dating back to 1966. It is clear from this analysis that the number of studies on NPs has increased steadily during this period. While only four articles were published 1966–1976, this number increased to 58, comprising virtually half the total number of relevant publications, for the period 2010–2018. This shows that interest in research on NPs is rapidly increasing among scholars.
The number of documents on NPs (1966–2018).
Next, we investigated the distribution of journals in which reviewed studies were published (see Table 2). Although the studies included in this review were published by 50 different journals, Table 2 suggests that research interest in NPs has been limited to a small number of speciality journals. In fact, over half of the studies in our dataset were published in just six journals: Journal of Educational Administration (JEA) (23); NASSP Bulletin (20); Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (EMAL) (6); Management in Education (MiE) (5); School Leadership and Management (SLAM) (5); and International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (IJMCE) (5). All but one (Daresh, 1986) of the studies published between 1966 and 1990 were published by NASSP Bulletin, which is a practice-oriented US journal published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) (e.g, Bennett, 1988; McIntyre, 1985; Sause, 1974; Weindling, 1990). Peer-reviewed scholarly journals only started to publish articles on NPs at the beginning of the 1990s. This confirms that NPs represent a relatively new topic of research in the field of EDLM, with roots in practice-oriented discussions primarily based on the sharing of experiences from the field.
Distribution of documents on NPs by the most popular journals.
We also investigated the geographical distribution of articles on NPs (see Figure 3). Although contributions to the literature on NPs have come from scholars in various countries, there is a remarkable geographical imbalance in the knowledge base, with US-based scholars authoring half of all articles included in our data set. The second most common country of origin is Australia with 11 articles, representing 8.5% of all articles in the present review. As we drilled down further, we found that two-thirds of all articles in the present review originated in an Anglophone context (USA (59), Australia (11), United Kingdom (8), Canada (7) and New Zealand (4)). The fact that the international knowledge base on NPs has largely been produced by a small group of countries is problematic, as NPs’ career trajectories may be affected by a wide range of contextual factors, which can make it difficult to transfer the existing knowledge base to other contexts.
Geographical distribution of articles comprising the knowledge base in NPs’ career journey (n = 118).
Table 3 shows the most cited articles among the studies included in this review and their authors. Although the documents were ordered based on their total citations on Scopus, we also included their citations per year. There are several interpretations in terms of the citation impacts of documents in our review. First, we note that the citation impact of the eligible articles is moderate, with 78 being the highest total number of citations and six being the highest average number of citations per year. The most commonly cited articles in our review were published between 2000 and 2010. Specifically, a special issue on NPs published by JEA in 2006 has had a significant impact on the literature within the field, with six articles (Bush and Oduro, 2006; Cheung and Walker, 2006; Crow, 2006; Sackney and Walker, 2006; Stevenson, 2006; Walker and Qian, 2006) from this special issue placing in our list of the 20 most cited documents. In terms of average citation impact, two studies (Crow, 2006; Spillane and Lee, 2014) stand out, receiving an average of six citations per year. While Crow’s study is conceptual, focusing on the socialization process of NPs, Spillane and Lee present an empirical theory-building, mixed-method and longitudinal study investigating the problems encountered by NPs during the transition from a teaching to a managerial role.
Most cited documents based on Scopus.
* As of June 2019.
The intellectual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs
Next, we employed author co-citation analysis (ACA) to explore the intellectual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs. The intellectual structure of a knowledge base denotes its research traditions as well as disciplinary composition and pattern of interrelationships (Zupic and Čater, 2015). ACA provides researchers with a co-citation map that visualizes commonalities among authors cited in reviewed documents. As such, ACA goes behind the reviewed documents and shows the influence of authors from various disciplines or with different research interests on the reviewed knowledge base. Our map of co-citation analysis (see Figure 4) included 87 authors who managed to reach a threshold of at least 10 citations among the total of 3711 authors in the author co-citation network based on cited references in the reference lists of all documents (n = 118) included in the current review.
Author co-citation map of scholarship on NPs (n = 3711 authors in the author co-citation network; threshold 10 citations per author; display 87 authors).
The co-citation map in Figure 4 depicts nodes, each representing a different scholar, whose size refers to how frequently that author is cited in documents in our data set. Furthermore, the proximity of nodes is used to identify the co-cited scholars who share a common perspective in terms of research or intellectual tradition, which is an important variable to interpret the co-citation map. Co-citation maps, therefore, group frequently co-cited authors in same-coloured clusters and provide a holistic picture of a given knowledge base in terms of its intellectual structure (White and McCain, 1998). Our ACA map yielded three clusters of researchers who have influenced the development of research on NPs.
The blue cluster, which is the smallest and least densely populated one, includes H Wildy, S Clarke, T Bush, M Crawford, M Cowie and CF Webber. These researchers tend to focus on the preparation and development of school principals (Bush and Oduro, 2006; Webber et al., 2008; Wildy and Clarke, 2008a, 2008b). Most scholars in the red cluster, including D Weindling, J Daresh, M Crow, A Walker, I Oplatka and FW Parkay, have published articles on NPs’ socialization process and the challenges they face in different contexts (Bush, 2011; Oplatka, 2012; Qian and Walker, 2011; Weindling, 1999). In addition, this cluster includes scholars such as WK Hoy, M Tschannen-Moran and L Sackney, reflecting the influence of research studying teacher attitudes (trust, self-efficacy, professional learning, etc.) on the literature on NPs. The green cluster covers a wide range of globally renowned EDLM scholars and has a broader focus. Most of the scholars in this cluster, such as K Leithwood, P Hallinger, J Spillane and J Murphy, have tended to understand and explain principal leadership from the perspective of school improvement (e.g. Hallinger and Heck, 1998; Hargreaves, 2009; Leithwood, 2016; Leithwood and Jantzi, 1999).
In addition to ACA, we employed source co-citation analysis (SCA) to further explore the influence of different disciplines on research traditions present in the literature on NPs. Our results (see Figure 5) first show that cited articles by scholars studying NPs are mostly published in core EDLM journals (e.g. JEA, Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), EMAL, SLAM). The results also reveal three main clusters among the most cited sources in research on NPs. The biggest and most densely populated cluster, coloured red, includes the US-based education journals centred on EAQ, while the green cluster includes a geographically more diverse group of journals centred on three European-based EDLM journals: JEA, EMAL and SLAM. The blue cluster mostly includes practice-oriented sources such as NASSP Bulletin, Educational Leadership, Education Week, Principal, etc., showing once again the importance of the practice-oriented knowledge base for the development of literature on NPs. The close proximity of two journals, Journal of Research on Leadership Education and IJMCE, and their location on the map, also implies the significance of leadership development research for literature on NPs. Finally, a book, Becoming a Principal: The Challenges of Beginning Leadership (Parkay and Hall, 1992) finds a place in our source co-citation map, implying the high research interest in exploring the challenges faced by NPs.
Source co-citation map on NPs (n = 2103 sources in the source co-citation network; threshold 10 citations per source; display 33 sources).
The results of content analysis
The conceptual structure of the knowledge base concerning NPs
In order to answer our third research question, we conducted content analysis based on full texts of 115 English-language publications. First, our analysis identifies the most studied topics/concepts in the literature on NPs (see Table 4). The majority of the reviewed documents can be categorized under three broad topics: preparation and development of NPs; NPs’ socialization process and the challenges they face; and NPs’ role in school improvement.
Topic driven from NPs research and the date of publications.
**Total number is greater than the numbers of documents since some articles focus on more than one topic.
The most studied topic since research interest in NPs began has been the preparation and development of NPs. In this line of research, the earliest studies generally provided guidelines for the development and success of NPs, mostly based on practical experiences (Digeronimo, 1985; Groves, 1990; Sause, 1974). Some of the most recent studies, however, assess training and preparation programmes for principals and/or make recommendations for their improvement based on research on NPs (Luu, 2010; Mentz et al., 2010; Nelson et al., 2008). Overall, these studies have resulted in several important recommendations. First, formal training should be a requirement before appointment as school principal regardless of the context. Second, the professional identity of principalship should be developed during the preparation process. Third, training of principals should be a continuous process that is contextualized according to particular needs. Fourth, principal preparation programmes should include knowledge related to both the day-to-day managerial/technical practices of school principals and the instructional leadership aspect of principalship.
The rest of the studies categorized in this first research topic have a general interest in the development of NPs during their first years of service, mostly focusing on the induction process (Bush and Oduro, 2006; Digwamaje and Assan, 2012; Eller, 2010) and mentoring/coaching programmes (Hopkins-Thompson, 2000; James-Ward, 2013; O’Mahoney, 2003; Scott, 2010; Simon et al., 2019). Studies of induction processes mostly evaluate related programmes in a specific context and suggest improvements. While the results vary based on the context, there are also common suggestions, such as being more practice-oriented, paying specific attention to human relations, providing opportunities for informal networking, etc. Studies specifically focused on mentoring/coaching programmes likewise reach a number of common conclusions. In general, they argue that mentoring/coaching programmes can play a significant role in the development of NPs, while a good match between mentor and mentee, mentors/coaches’ competencies (knowledge, experience, ability to collaborate, etc.,), and the willingness to learn of mentees are critical factors in determining the programme’s success.
According to the content analysis, NPs’ socialization process and the challenges they face is the second most studied category. Our analysis shows that interest in this topic has grown dramatically in the last decade. While some of the related studies focus on socialization processes or making sense of the position of principal in a broader perspective (Bengtson et al., 2013; Spillane and Anderson, 2014; Steyn, 2013), there are also studies specifically interested in concepts such as isolation and/or loneliness (Bauer and Silver, 2018; Tahir et al., 2017) and commitment (Shirrell, 2016; Swen, 2019). Most of the studies in this area of research, however, focus on the challenges and/or coping strategies of NPs (Arar, 2018; Fields, 2005; Karakose et al., 2014; Pineda-Báez et al., 2019; Slater et al., 2008). The results of these studies indicate common experiences/challenges of NPs during the socialization process. The main challenges mentioned in these studies include difficulties related to the management of time and financial resources, the demands of different stakeholders (e.g., teachers, parents, policymakers), a heavy burden of paperwork, etc. Isolation and loneliness, as well as the need to adapt to or change the existing culture at the school, are also frequently mentioned as important challenges faced by NPs.
The third and most recent line of research on NPs is related to NPs’ role in school improvement. In this broad category, most studies are interested in the role of NPs in relation to instructional leadership (Brown & Chai, 2012; Kerrins and Cushing, 2000; Leiva et al., 2016) or teacher development/evaluation (Rigby, 2015; Sackney and Walker, 2006). Other related studies focus on NPs’ understanding of or practices related to school improvement, accountability, and autonomy (Heffernan, 2018; Meyer et al., 2019; Shirrell, 2016; Weiner and Woulfin, 2017). There are also a few studies examining NPs’ influence on student achievement (Bastian and Henry, 2015; Corcoran et al., 2012). This research generally identifies NPs’ weaknesses in terms of leading learning at their schools and often calls for better preparation and development programmes for NPs in order to improve their skills related to school improvement.
Despite our broad categorization, several studies cannot be placed within any of the three categories. Greater diversity in terms of the topical focus of the literature on NPs is particularly apparent in the last decade. Specific aspects of NPs’ work, such as their navigation of micropolitical structures (Caruso, 2013), financial management skills (Myende et al., 2018), authenticity (Angelle, 2017) and emotional labour (Ispa-Landa and Thomas, 2019), have recently caught the attention of researchers.
As the second step of our content analysis, we investigated the theories underpinning the reviewed documents with the aim of identifying possible common theoretical perspectives in the literature on NPs. Our findings show that only a small proportion of the reviewed studies (21 studies out of 115 studies eligible for content analysis) applied a theoretical perspective. Fourteen different theories were used to frame these studies; however, not every theory attracted equal attention. The most frequently used theories are organizational socialization (6), sense-making (4), and career stage (2), while other theories (see Table 5) were used only once in a total of 11 articles. Only two articles were framed by more than one theory, in both cases combining organizational socialization and sense-making (Spillane and Anderson, 2014; Spillane and Lee, 2014).
Theories underpinning NPs research.
When examining the use of theory by topical foci, the second most frequently studied topic, socialization and challenges, is found to have the highest number of studies based on theory. Twelve studies in this category use four different theories: organizational socialization, sense-making, career stage and organizational culture. Five studies in the least-studied topic, school improvement, are also framed by theories: goal setting, Foucauldian theory, schema theory, sense-making theory and complexity theory. However, only 4 of 55 studies in the most studied topic, preparation and development, are underpinned by a theory: sociological theory of social behaviour, cognitive theory, adult learning theory and community of practice. Finally, two studies that are not placed within any of the three categories are framed by theories: accountability theory and gender theory. It is evident from the findings that all 21 articles framed by a theory or theories were published 2004–2019. This implies that recent research on NPs is more likely to use theory.
Discussion
Limitations
This study has several limitations, as is the case for most review studies. First, although the Scopus index provided the authors with a significant number of relevant publications, the review does not include every academic text relevant to the topic of NPs. It should also be noted that the documents included in our data set are overwhelmingly dominated by English-language publications, with just 2 of 118 publications in other languages. Using an international database increases the risk of excluding studies from non-Western countries (Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019). Therefore, the results should be interpreted with caution since relevant research from non-Western countries may not be fully represented.
Another limitation of the study comes from the fact that the number of publications in our data set was relatively low for bibliometric analysis. In addition, in line with our research strategy, we did not include books, theses or conference proceedings. It is therefore not possible to suggest that the results of this review fully represent the literature on NPs, while we are confident of their overall representation of peer-reviewed publications in international journals, especially those published in English, given the broad coverage of Scopus.
Interpreting our findings
The results of this review indicate that scholarly interest in NPs has been scarce, although the number of studies has risen dramatically in the last two decades. It is also apparent that the geographical distribution of the publications included in this review is limited and that a considerable number of publications originate in Anglophone countries. This indicates that the existing literature on NPs, at least that widely available to an international audience, largely fails to cover the cultural and systemic differences that influence various processes involving NPs, such as training and professional development. This review also highlights that some of the core journals in the field of EDLM have shown little interest in NPs.
Our co-citation analyses of authors and sources suggest that the existing research on NPs is primarily influenced by practice-oriented EDLM literature and by general EDLM research. There is also evidence that the research on teacher attitudes exerts some influence on the knowledge base concerning NPs. Surprisingly, however, we found that studies of NPs make little reference to research from other potentially relevant disciplines, such as psychology and organizational management. In addition, co-citation analysis of sources shows a clear division between US-based journals and journals from other countries. Specifically, strong interrelations among US-based journals imply that related studies do not benefit enough from the research conducted in other contexts.
Based on our analysis of the content of the identified studies, we conclude that current research on NPs mostly addresses three topics: preparation and development of NPs; NPs’ socialization processes and the challenges they face; and NPs’ role in school improvement. In some cases, studies combine more than one of these topics. For example, several studies (Hayes, 2019; James-Ward, 2013; Ng and Szeto, 2016; Sciarappa and Mason, 2014) focusing primarily on principal preparation or mentoring/coaching processes, also emphasize the NPs’ roles in school improvement. In addition, a number of recent studies cannot be categorized according to any of these three topics. Although the results indicate a narrow topical coverage in the literature on NPs, they also suggest a tendency towards more diversity, which can be expected to continue in future research on NPs.
Our analysis of theoretical foundations shows that the use of theory remains very limited in the literature on NPs. While three distinct theoretical frameworks - organizational socialization, sense-making, and career stage - can be identified in relation to the studies examining NPs’ socialization processes and the challenges they face, it is not possible to single out common underpinning theories for other two topical foci. As mentioned earlier, the field of research is still very young and mostly derived from practice-based EDLM literature. These roots might be the reason for the sparing use of theory, especially for the studies related to preparation and development. The findings support the notion that research on NPs is a field that is still at an early stage of development (Hallinger, 2013).
Conclusions
As discussed above, research on NPs has been scarce in general, and especially in non-Western countries. However, the low number of eligible publications from non-Western countries in our data set does not necessarily mean there is a lack of interest in this topic in those countries. As discussed in earlier regional reviews (e.g. Castillo and Hallinger, 2018; Gümüş et al., 2020; Oplatka and Arar, 2017), there are many factors that might prevent more international publications from non-Western countries: not only studies related to NPs, but EDLM research in general. In addition to the language barrier, such factors include low levels of funding and institutional research support, a lack of value/time afforded empirical research, and theoretical and methodological weaknesses. However, we claim that the current body of international literature on NPs falls short due to the lack of research evidence from a more diverse array of contexts. Therefore, we encourage EDLM scholars from non-Western countries who already publish work in international journals to focus more on issues related to NPs in non-Western contexts. Our review shows that recent years have seen the publication of several comparative studies on NPs (e.g. Mentz et al., 2010; Wildy et al., 2010) and we recommend further comparative studies as a potentially fertile way of broadening and enriching the knowledge base. Furthermore, we suggest that prominent journals in the field of EDLM, such as EAQ, EMAL and SLAM, organize special issues on NPs, as JEA did in 2006, with particular attention to non-Western contexts.
The review shows that, although interest in research on various aspects relating to NPs has been evident in recent years, this research has focused on a very narrow range of topics. For example, recent studies have paid special attention to the instructional leadership roles of NPs within a school-improvement perspective. However, other frequently studied leadership models in EDLM research, such as distributed and transformational leadership, have received little attention. Therefore, our knowledge about NPs’ skills, challenges and needs in terms of performing different leadership roles is limited. Similarly, social justice as a dimension of school leadership is currently a hot topic in international EDLM research (Bogotch and Shields, 2014), but has little presence in the research on NPs. In addition, there are only a few studies that have explored how NPs affect organizational and educational outcomes. Therefore, we suggest the need for future research focusing on NPs’ skills and competencies in relation to various styles, roles and dimensions of leadership and the effects of NPs’ practices on teachers and/or students’ motivation, efficacy, commitment, etc.
Finally, we assert that the body of literature would benefit significantly from systematic reviews of non-English-language publications on NPs, which this study has not covered. Specifically, we suggest that language or region-specific reviews (such as reviews of publications in Arabic-speaking countries, East Asia, Latin America, etc.) be conducted and published in English in order to further expand the international knowledge base on NPs. We also believe that the results of this study offer a strong foundation for further analysis of each of the three main research topics identified as characterizing existing research on NPs by applying additional methodological instruments, such as thematic analysis and meta-ethnography. Such reviews are better equipped to detail the findings of existing research on NPs with regard to more specific, narrower topics.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
