Kayali, BunyamiYavuz, MehmetBozkurt, Aras2026-09-012026-09-0120261570-07631744-5043http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2026.2710172https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12403/8502This study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of the intersection between artificial intelligence (AI) and educational leadership in related literature. Employing a hybrid research design that integrates bibliometric analysis with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)-based topic modeling, we examined 757 unique records retrieved from the Web of Science and Scopus databases for the period 2017-2026. Through computational optimization, the corpus was delineated into six emerging research themes that dictate the field's shifting paradigms: "Digital Leadership & Transformation," "Teaching & Student Learning," "AI Acceptance & Self-Efficacy," "Data Management & Machine Learning," "School Leadership & Principals," and "Technical & Computational Fields." While "Digital Leadership & Transformation" dominates over half of the literature, a sharp proportional decline in "School Leadership & Principals" uncovers a critical structural imbalance between abstract institutional transformation discourse and the actual human agents executing it. Furthermore, a severe underrepresentation of technical, governance, and transparency themes exposes a critical "opaque box" crisis of institutional agency. The study concludes that the field remains theoretically fragmented and calls for an integrated socio-technical framework reconciling leadership governance with the complex realities of AI systems.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess[Keyword Not Available]Review Article10.1080/15700763.2026.27101722-s2.0-105046563100Q2WOS:001835767000001Q2