School leadership in Indonesia: A systematic literature review

Abstract

This paper reviews systematically literature on school leadership in the context of Indonesian education from 2004 to 2019. Its purpose is to investigate major issues which exist in the school leadership practices in Indonesia and propose some sustainable solutions so that educational policymakers, stakeholders and scholars can improve their awareness and knowledge of school leadership. Eight core international EDLM (educational leadership and management) journals were used as the source of the literature. Additionally, a high-quality journal with the indexation of Scopus and Social Sciences Citation Index, Asia Pacific Journal of Education (APJE), was included. The literature search yielded 16 articles that were reviewed. This study reports several crucial issues that need to have serious attention paid to them, including a lack of capacity to lead and manage schools, insufficiency of published studies, and the inappropriateness of principal selection processes. The suggested solutions for these problems consist of developing principal training centres in all the provinces of Indonesia, conducting more collaboration with overseas scholars, and improving principal selection procedures. Contributions for theory, practices and further study are provided.