Evaluation of Educational Leadership Programs: A Literature Review of Methodologies and Outcomes

Abstract

Educational leadership programs play a strategic role in enhancing school effectiveness, fostering teachers’ professional development, and improving the quality of teaching and learning. Over the past two decades, research in this field has expanded exponentially, encompassing diverse leadership theories, program designs, and evaluation models. This study aims to evaluate educational leadership programs through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), with a particular focus on research methodologies and reported outcomes. The analysis included 20 internationally reputable scholarly articles published between 2008 and 2025. The findings reveal a predominance of qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, followed by survey-based quantitative studies and bibliometric analyses. Overall, educational leadership programs demonstrate significant positive impacts on school performance, instructional quality, teachers’ professional development, the establishment of professional learning communities, and the strengthening of instructional leadership. However, several methodological limitations were identified, including a lack of longitudinal evaluations, limited measurement of impacts on student learning outcomes, and insufficient use of standardized evaluation indicators. This review offers both conceptual and practical contributions to the development of more robust and comprehensive evaluation frameworks for educational leadership programs in future research.