This study systemically reviews the research field of educational leadership, management, and administration from 2007 to 2016 drawing on a dataset of 2347 articles published in 15 core journals in this time span. A two-level analysis was conducted: the bibliometric analysis entailed general mappings of the key research themes, the prevalence of research topics, and their evolvement over time; the content analysis examined each key research theme more deeply by synthesising the related studies’ key findings, contributions, and limitations and future research directions. The bibliometric analysis yielded five thematic strands. According to the content analysis, three major evolvements of the research field were identified in this study. The first evolvement entails a departure from position-based heroic leadership to practice-based distributed leadership. Although at the beginning of the past decade, research on school principals’ roles and functions, especially their impact on students’ academic achievements was prevalent, emerging evidence repeatedly shows that such impact is strongly mediated by teachers’ instructional practice, organisational commitment, and academic optimism The second evolvement highlights that teachers’ agency in leadership processes greatly contributes to the effectiveness of leadership work. During the past decade, many leadership approaches have been theoretically developed and empirically tested. Empirical findings suggested that teachers should be empowered to become active leaders, not just the passive recipients of principals’ top down leadership. It has become more evident that to increase students’ learning, teachers and teachers’ leadership should be developed first. The third evolvement underlines the changing socio-economic and political landscape within which schools operate. In recent years, New Public Management and neoliberalism have tightened their grips on schools, imposing high-stakes accountability and rigid competition on schools in many countries. A number of studies have exposed school leaders’ and teachers’ dilemmas in practice, as they are constantly trying to strike a balance between competition and equity, academic achievement and students’ holistic development, and standardisation and diversity. This study delineates the existing knowledge-base but also contributes to the further development of the research field. It reveals that various leadership theories have their own strengths and limitations. Thus, no singular theory or approach can resolve comprehensively all the challenges in practice.

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