Leadership in special education: A bibliometric and thematic review

Effective leadership is critical for advancing inclusive practices and improving outcomes for students with disabilities. However, the scholarly landscape of leadership in special education remains fragmented and lacks a comprehensive structural synthesis. This study mapped the development, intellectual structure, thematic content, methodological characteristics, and leadership focus areas of 77 publications indexed in Web of Science and Scopus by combining bibliometric analysis with full-text thematic content analysis. Bibliometric methods and content analysis were used to assess the development of research on leadership in special education and identify thematic areas. The findings show that interest in leadership within special education has increased in recent years, with social justice leadership and inclusive education as the primary research areas. Within the WoS and Scopus dataset analyzed, international co-authorship links are most visible around the USA. Additionally, it was concluded that qualitative methodologies are predominantly used in research, with various research themes clustered around key concepts such as leadership, social justice, and disability. In recent years, approaches like distributed leadership and collaborative leadership have gained prominence, and limited leadership frameworks have been discussed in special education. Future research could explore the effects of social justice leadership and inclusive education in more detail, focusing on practices in different countries or education systems. The study also suggests placing more emphasis on the diversity of leadership models, with a focus on approaches such as distributed leadership and digital leadership in special education.