Review of leadership models in education: Exploring geographical, methodological, and conceptual variations

Abstract

Various leadership models have been increasingly used in educational research over the last few decades. While there have been ample systematic reviews of individual leadership models in the past decade, a review of multiple leadership models to identify comparable trends and variations has been lacking. This study aims to fill this gap by reviewing a comprehensive body of literature on a broad range of leadership models in education, using a hybrid review approach that combines scoping and bibliometric methods. Relying on 1047 peer-reviewed journal articles, the review provides several important insights. First, teacher leadership, instructional leadership, distributed leadership, and transformational leadership have been identified as the four most-studied leadership models in the field. Second, social justice leadership, pedagogical leadership, authentic leadership, system leadership, digital leadership, inclusive leadership, and culturally responsive leadership have emerged or gained greater attention over the last decade. Third, integrated leadership studies have also shown an increasing trend across various forms, including shared instructional leadership, transformational teacher leadership, and digital instructional leadership. Finally, the geographical, methodological, and conceptual variations among the most prominent models are presented in detail, and the potential drivers of these variations and trends, along with their implications for future research, are discussed.