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Current school leadership research has primarily utilized quantitative methods to explore the relationship between leadership and teacher learning. However, there is a notable gap in understanding how principals facilitate professional learning, especially in centralized educational settings. This study aims to address this gap by examining the role of school leadership in enhancing teacher professional learning within a highly centralized education system.

This qualitative case study delves into the lived experiences of 15 teachers and eight school leaders in eight primary schools in Mashhad, Iran. Through semistructured interviews, researchers employed open and axial coding to systematically explore and categorize qualitative data. The study focuses on understanding the role of principal leadership in facilitating teacher professional learning by connecting themes and sub-themes across transcripts.

Effective principals worked on the cultivation of a culture that champions perpetual personal growth and development, the nurturing of a collaborative learning community, and the provision of essential resources and support. Findings showed the pivotal role of principals in promoting teachers' self-development, facilitating idea exchange and acknowledging their efforts. Principals appeared as key to encouraging information sharing, fostering collective learning, promoting professional development, overseeing teaching practices and ensuring the availability of resources to cultivate a supportive climate in a centralized education context.

We concluded that in centralized education, leadership practices for promoting teacher learning share similarities and differences with decentralized settings. The findings offer guidance for principals in centralized systems, supporting them in facilitating teacher professional learning in their schools.

School leaders can significantly influence the conditions that affect teacher retention. Yet, leaders in rural and high-poverty schools often face limited opportunities to develop their abilities to enhance these conditions. In this case study, we examine how participating in a professional community supported school leaders' efforts to increase teacher retention and student learning outcomes.

We used case study methodology to study 14 leaders from rural, high-poverty or underperforming schools with greater-than-average levels of teacher turnover. The leaders were participating in a three-year research-practice partnership intended to assist them in using improvement science to address problems of practice related to teacher retention and student learning outcomes in their schools. We collected and analyzed data from interviews, exit surveys, artifacts and participant observations over a one-year period.

Participating in this professional community helped the leaders create the conditions for increased teacher retention and student learning outcomes by providing them with opportunities to collaborate with their peers, receive leadership coaching, exchange ideas and learn in a safe space.

These findings confirm and extend extant school leadership development research. A particularly interesting finding was the role of the professional community in reducing the leaders' feelings of isolation while providing them a safe space to learn. The findings also illustrate how universities and school districts can partner to provide professional learning opportunities that enhance school leaders' professional knowledge, leadership practices and well-being.

The purpose of this study was to explore school principals’ job crafting profiles during the prolonged COVID-19 crisis in 2021, and investigate profile differences regarding principals’ own perceived servant leadership, stress and work meaningfulness.

Using latent profile analysis (LPA), two job crafting profiles were identified: (1) active crafters (55%) and (2) average crafters (45%). By auxiliary measurement-error-weighted-method (BCH), we examined whether and how job crafting profiles differed in terms of servant leadership, stress and work meaningfulness.

Active crafters reported higher than the overall mean level of approach-oriented job crafting (increasing job resources and demands), whereas average crafters reported an overall mean level of approach-oriented job crafting. Avoidance-oriented job crafting by decreasing hindering job demands did not differentiate the two profiles. Active crafters reported significantly higher servant leadership behavior, stress and work meaningfulness than average crafters.

Study findings provide new knowledge and reflect the implications that the unprecedented pandemic had for education. This study contributes to the existing literature within the scholarship of job crafting through empirical research during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. For practitioners, these study findings reflect contextual constraints, organizational processes and culture, and leadership in workplaces.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of school principals’ effective communication and teachers’ trust in principals on schools’ organisational mindfulness from the perspective of public school teachers in Kuwait.

The study used a cross-sectional research design. A quantitative survey questionnaire was electronically sent to public school teachers in Kuwait. The final sample size consisted of 641 teachers.

The teachers exhibited a moderate level of school principal effective communication and organisational mindfulness, in addition to higher levels of school principal trust. Multiple regression analysis results revealed that schools’ organisational mindfulness was significantly related to the teacher’s trust in school principals’ and their effective communication.

This study used quantitative data from a survey of public school teachers in Kuwait in a given period.

The findings indicate that the school principal’s communication and teachers’ trust in the principal are critical for creating a mindful and high-quality school culture. Thus, policymakers should empower principals to prioritise mindfulness in creating a positive and supportive school environment.

The study contributes to the understanding of the influence of leadership aspects on organisational mindfulness in schools. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the impact of school principals’ practices on the quality of school organisations in Kuwait’s centralised educational system. This will pave the way for further research in the field.

This study facilitated restorative coordinators in co-constructing and proposing solutions to common problems in RJ implementation.

This study used grounded theory to examine barriers to equitable restorative justice (RJ) implementation in the US. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with restorative coordinators, we used a combination of inductive and deductive coding consistent with the grounded theory approach.

Coordinators distinguished between RJ as a top-down, isolated “program” versus RJ as a collaborative “practice” among all stakeholders. Only the latter was equitable, in their view, and required a consistent principal commitment to building and maintaining an inclusive school culture. Participants recommended that teacher and principal preparation provide opportunities to cultivate critical consciousness and participate in RJ practices.

Existing research on discipline reform tends to focus on outcomes, such as suspension rates. Instead, participants focused on the reform process, viewing equitable RJ as an ongoing “practice” to improve school culture. Our findings also open new discussions about leadership preparation content and pedagogy: participants called for preparation programs to cultivate critical consciousness and facility with RJ. Lastly, the study’s recruitment and focus group design raise important considerations for future RJ research.

The importance of socially just leadership has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years as integral for tackling issues of disadvantage and inequality across education and schooling systems. However, there are still remaining questions about what these leadership practices look like in the everyday work of school leaders. This chapter draws on a research project to embed Indigenous perspectives in schools as an example of socially just leadership. The links between Indigenous communities and schools are a key focus area for improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students. This project sought to bring Indigenous community members into classrooms in six schools in New South Wales, Australia. Community members were recruited to work with teachers as co-constructors of learning activities that explicitly value and work with Indigenous perspectives. This chapter outlines the positive outcomes from this project as well as challenges faced by schools, teachers, principals, and community members as part of this culturally responsive work. The practices of community members, teachers, and principals are theorized using the notion of culturally responsive leadership. The chapter argues for an approach to leadership that is grounded in culturally responsive understandings to improve the educational outcomes and opportunities for Indigenous students and the cultural understanding and awareness of non-Indigenous students, to better promote reconciliation. This chapter provides a concrete example of powerful leadership practices that are working towards equity and social justice for their schools and communities. While the cases are specifically from the Australian context, they are relevant for a variety of schooling contexts and leadership practices.

In this manuscript, we aimed to (1) illustrate the differences in school–university partnership under the school reform and renewal models and (2) describe the practice of and learning about school–university partnership by reflecting on the three large, federally funded projects, all conducted under the school renewal model.

We used archival data from the three large, federally funded projects, synthesized our research related to school–university partnerships and developed themes for actions and learnings related to the topic of school–university partnerships.

The school–university partnerships under the school renewal model are different from that under the school reform model. School–university partnership under the school renewal model is associated with positive results for schools and the university. There are clear themes for the actions and learning in the school–university partnership under the school renewal model.

It is original to study school–university partnerships in the context of the school renewal model.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of three predictors (emotional intelligence, perceived supervisor support and work–life balance) on employee engagement.

The employee engagement and its predictor variables considered have been assessed by a survey using a structured questionnaire. Data were collected for 628 government school teachers of Punjab state of India. SEM using SmartPLS software was used to estimate the relationship between employee engagement and its predictors (emotional intelligence, perceived supervisor support and work–life balance).

The results reveal that the three predictors (emotional intelligence, perceived supervisor support and work–life balance) have a significant positive impact on employee engagement of the government school teachers.

School authorities need to draft teacher-friendly policies so that teachers can stay deeply engrossed in their work and can handle work and family demands. Engaged teachers brim with positive energy, thereby energetically and vigorously preoccupying themselves in their work, leaving no time and space for negative thoughts.

The influence of emotional intelligence, perceived supervisor support and work–life balance on employee engagement of government school teachers is unprecedented. The study also tested the model in a holistic manner. Since the study is based on an Indian sample, it also adds to growing literature on employee engagement in nonwestern countries. The results are of great value to government authorities, school managements, HR managers and policymakers who are seeking to develop practices that enhance employee engagement at workplaces.

Since teaching practice is the most important within-school determinant of student learning outcomes, a deepened understanding of how and why school leadership contributes to effective teaching is needed. This article aimed to systematically review the knowledge that has been accumulated about the indirect relations between school leadership and instructional practices.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guided the selection of relevant articles from the databases Scopus and Google Scholar. Twenty-six published works met the eligibility criteria and were included in the narrative synthesis and content analysis.

The most frequently measured mediators of the effects of school leadership on teaching practice were teacher collaboration, professional learning and teacher self-efficacy. Most studies simultaneously modeled multiple mediated pathways from school leadership to teaching practice. However, only a few analyzed studies used time lags when examining relationships between constructs.

This is the first study to systematically review knowledge on pathways through which school leadership is related to classroom instruction. Thus, this review provides a comprehensive understanding of processes through which school leadership achieves its effects on instructional practices.

Prior research reveals that teachers have lower job satisfaction when they have more Black students, but this work does not consider how different aspects of work conditions – and the increasing diversity of students beyond a Black/White binary – may matter. This study aims to examine the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of work conditions and the racial/ethnic compositions of the classes they teach.

This study leverages data from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study. Analyses consist of both descriptive statistics and multilevel regression modeling.

Findings show that teachers’ satisfaction with working conditions varies in relation to the racial/ethnic composition of their students. Increase in the percent of Black, Latinx and Asian American students in a teacher’s classroom, was associated with a decrease in satisfaction with community involvement and student behavior. For increase in Latinx and Asian American students, this study finds significant decrease in satisfaction with measures of pedagogical and job support. For measures of school leadership and responsiveness to professional development needs, this study sees no significant relationship, which suggests that perceptions of some working conditions are more strongly tied to classroom demographics than others.

This work adds nuance to previous research on teacher job satisfaction by exploring satisfaction with various working conditions and how it varies in relation to classroom racial composition. This study concludes with a discussion of potential explanations for observed differences in teacher satisfaction, as well as potential ways to address these differences.