Artificial Intelligence in Educational Leadership: A Global Bibliometric Analysis
Abstract
The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has permeated the education sector, offering transformative potential for enhancing strategic decision-making, management efficiency, and personalized academic services in educational leadership. However, the adoption of AI in this field is still limited due to barriers such as low digital literacy, institutional resistance, and infrastructure gaps. Addressing this issue requires a comprehensive understanding of global research developments, which remains scarce and fragmented. This study contributes by mapping the global research landscape on AI in educational leadership through a bibliometric approach, highlighting emerging trends, thematic clusters, and collaborative networks. The study offers a strategic foundation for future AI integration and policy formulation in education leadership. Using bibliometric analysis with VOSviewer, this study retrieved 477 documents from the Scopus database (2004–2024) and screened them based on inclusion criteria, resulting in 322 eligible publications. The documents were analyzed to examine publication trends, prolific authors, institutions, countries, keyword co-occurrence, and thematic evolution over time. The results show a significant increase in AI-related publications in educational leadership since 2016, with a peak in 2023. The United States dominates publication output, followed by India, China, and the UK, while key institutions include King Abdulaziz University and MIT. The most common document types are conference papers and journal articles. Keyword analysis reveals strong connections between AI and themes such as digital transformation, decision-making, teaching and learning, and emerging topics like ChatGPT and climate change. Novel keywords highlight the field’s evolution and point to future directions in AI integration. In conclusion, this study not only maps global AI research in educational leadership but also offers actionable insights for educational leaders to guide policy formulation, enhance institutional AI readiness, and address barriers such as digital literacy and organizational resistance through targeted strategies and international collaboration.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.59247/jtped.v1i1.16
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