Geographical diversification of educational leadership research: Gaps in our understanding

Abstract

Historically, educational leadership research has been dominated by Anglo-American perspectives, often neglecting the socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts that shape leadership practices. Recent decades have seen a significant increase in research from diverse geographical and societal contexts as a response to critical voices advocating for greater contextual sensitivity following calls to break free from the Anglo-American influence. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to critically explore what we know about how the educational leadership field has responded to these critics, also identifying significant gaps in our understanding which need to be addressed to further our understanding. We argue, while the increase in the number of publications from different localities constitutes a foundational step, advancing epistemic diversity is more critical than geographical diversification in liberating the educational leadership knowledge base from the Anglo-American hegemony. In so doing, we critically examine what we know about how the field has responded to calls for pluriversal perspectives, also identifying notable gaps in our understanding which hinder our ability to make an informed judgment about the progress made, specifically addressing who produces, applies, circulates, and is cited in knowledge. A research agenda is presented structured around four dimensions of epistemic inquiry, offering a roadmap for advancing inclusive theory, policy, and practice. © 2025 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).