Examining the Educational Leadership Knowledge Base: A 5-Year Citation Analysis

The professionals who research and publish in the field of educational administration impact the theory and best practice cycle that develops into the discipline's body of knowledge. This body of knowledge, in turn, is imparted to aspiring educational leaders. The authors examined whose research educational administration researchers are citing, and thus, by assumption, whose research and ideas are being incorporated into graduate-level coursework. The citations in a leading online research journal in the field were examined to seek what discernible patterns and trends existed in citations. In an examination of measures of impact, the authors studied data from an electronic tracking system that indicate the number of times a Portable Document Format is retrieved from the journal's website and analytical data that indicate the frequency of electronic article/module retrieval. [This paper was reprinted from the"Global Learn North America and Europe Conference Proceedings, November 6-8, 2012 with permission of AACE.]