A Bibliometric Review of the Knowledge Base on Mentoring for the Professional Development of School Administrators

Ramazan Yirci, Turgut Karakose, Ibrahim Kocabas, Tijen Tülübaş and Stamatios Papadakis ()
Additional contact information
Ramazan Yirci: Faculty of Education, Sutcuimam University, Kahramanmaras 46050, Türkiye
Turgut Karakose: Faculty of Education, Kutahya Dumlupinar University, Kutahya 43100, Türkiye
Ibrahim Kocabas: Faculty of Education, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University, Istanbul 34664, Türkiye
Tijen Tülübaş: Faculty of Education, Kutahya Dumlupinar University, Kutahya 43100, Türkiye
Stamatios Papadakis: Department of Education, University of Crete, 74100 Rethymno, Greece

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-25

Abstract: Mentoring for the professional development of school administrators has become widely acknowledged as an essential means of providing psychosocial and career support, particularly for novice administrators. Due to its strong potential to support the sustainability of schools by enabling successful administration, much research has been conducted on mentoring for the professional development of schools and an extensive knowledge base has been accumulated. The current study aims to evaluate this knowledge base holistically, to reveal the intellectual structure and evolution of this research field. With this purpose, the study conducted a combined bibliometric and science mapping analysis of 121 articles selected from the Scopus database using SciMAT software. The period-based science mapping analysis results showed that research initially focused on professional development and networking functions and later focused on developing school administrators’ leadership skills through mentoring. During the last five years, the most prominent themes were enhancing the quality of mentoring and supporting school administrators’ capacity to enable social justice. The results suggest several implications for the sustainability of mentoring programs to improve school administrators’ professional capabilities and leadership skills, which would eventually help sustain a high level of school innovation and success.

Keywords: mentorship; school leader; principal; bibliometric analysis; science mapping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3027/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3027/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3027-:d:1060834

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().