Studia paedagogica

Leading Changes in School Culture : Insights from a Three-Year School Improvement Program

2025-02-28T17:08:18+01:00

In decentralized educational systems, schools are expected to meet high standards, with school principals granted wide-ranging autonomy in decision making. This creates significant challenges for school leadership. Previous studies have suggested that partnerships with universities can be an effective way to drive change in the school culture by creating artifacts to initiate discussions about espoused beliefs and values, and even about basic underlying assumptions. This article presents a longitudinal study of five schools participating in a three-year program. The program aimed to create a collaborative culture by enhancing teaching and learning practices through distributed leadership, co-creation, and evidencedriven decision making. The study identified changes in school culture based on interviews with school teams and mentors and on teacher surveys conducted during the program. The findings highlight the challenges that the school leadership encountered when creating practices for effective professional learning, such as learning communities and peer observations. Effective leadership is crucial in evidence-driven decision making, as goaloriented leaders are necessary for sustaining collaborative organizational routines for data use. The program's structured support facilitated the circularity of learning for the school teams.

School Principals Instructional Leadership and Strategies in Working with Teachers

2025-12-16T08:27:13+01:00

Instructional school leadership (ISL) refers to a set of roles and tasks undertaken by school principals (along with other stakeholders involved in school leadership) to enhance the teaching and learning process. This is achieved by guiding, supporting, and providing resources for teachers and students. This article presents research findings on ISL, aiming to deepen the understanding of factors that may either facilitate or hinder ISL practices, with a particular focus on the relationship between principals and teachers. The research objectives were to assess principals' perceptions of the frequency of specific ISL behaviors in Croatian schools and to explore, from their perspective, the key dimensions of ISL. Furthermore, the study examined the frequency of specific ISL strategies used with diverse groups of teachers based on their attitudes toward principals' instructional activities aimed at improving teaching. A total of 204 principals from primary and secondary schools across Croatia participated in the study. Data collection took place in June 2023 via an online survey. The research employed a survey method using two scales: the Scale for Measuring Instructional School Leadership Characteristics and the Strategies of Instructional School Leadership scale. The findings confirm that principals in Croatian primary and secondary schools frequently engage in instructional leadership activities. Notably, the most prominent dimensions of ISL align with those strongly associated with improved teaching and school achievement in related studies. A particularly encouraging finding is that principals often implement strategies aimed at empowering students in their learning. Insights from studies conducted in other national contexts highlight the importance of more frequent use of strategies focused on strengthening teacher capacities, especially those that enhance their sense of effectiveness and foster a supportive work environment. However, the results also reveal that a significant number of principals struggle to identify effective strategies for working with teachers who do not support initiatives aimed at improving teaching and learning. Whether these teachers are resistant or indifferent to such initiatives, the data suggest that the presence of such teachers in schools may be substantial (from the principals' perspective) and should not be overlooked.

Intersecting Discourses : How Finnish Principals Construct Meaning and Value Foundations for Inclusive Leadership

2025-03-05T01:11:05+01:00

Principals have a central role in developing inclusive school cultures through leadership for vision, value discourse, and structural implementation. We investigate how Finnish principals construct the meaning of inclusion and related values in their leadership of comprehensive schools. We also examine how they navigate the tensions between ideological commitment to inclusion and challenges experienced in practical implementation. Drawing from Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, we analyzed six focus group interviews with a total of 21 principals, which revealed three major discourses allowing us to understand the phenomenon of leading inclusion and the underlying value foundation inclusion is constructed upon: constructing the meaning of inclusion with value foundations, constructing the role of teachers in promoting inclusion, and assembling the inclusive school community puzzle pieces. Our findings highlight the multi-layered nature of inclusive leadership, demonstrating how principals actively bridge different discourses by articulating concerns as part of a broader change process while maintaining a clear value-based direction for inclusive development. This study emphasizes inclusive leadership requiring a thorough understanding of inclusion that covers all aspects of diversity, not just special education. Principals should work to support the development of teachers' professional identities to promote collective responsibility and improve their skills and knowledge.

The Role and Impact of AI on School Leaders' Agency in Austria : A Qualitative Study

2025-02-28T17:47:02+01:00

This article examines how Austrian school leaders enact professional agency in the context of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their daily leadership practices. Recent educational discourse has increasingly called for a new type of leadership: "edupreneurial leaders" (Pashiardis & Brauckmann, 2018), capable of transforming schools into adaptive, innovative, and learner-centered organizations. This shift places leaders in multidimensional roles as change agents, knowledge brokers, and process facilitators (Brauckmann & Eder, 2019). These evolving responsibilities raise critical questions about the extent to which AI supports or undermines school leaders' professional agency. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis by Mayring (2022), and based on 10 in-depth interviews with school leaders from various school types, the findings reveal that AI is predominantly used to augment, rather than automate, tasks related to communication, documentation, and instructional support. While AI enables efficiency and cognitive relief, leaders deliberately retain decision-making authority, revealing a reflective and cautious approach. The study contributes to the growing discourse on educational leadership in the digital age by offering a nuanced understanding of how AI reshapes, but does not replace, school leadership agency. It concludes that the future of school leadership depends not only on technological innovation, but also on ethical, strategic, and reflective navigation of AI tools.

Caring Leadership and Teacher Well-Being : Perceptual Differences Between Less and More Experienced Teachers

2026-01-20T11:39:10+01:00

Teacher well-being (TWB) is a key contributor to teachers' professional commitment and job satisfaction and to student achievement. Research has highlighted the influence of leadership, workplace relationships, and financial reward on TWB; the interrelationships between these factors remain underexplored. This study employs network analysis to explore the structural relationships between TWB, caring leadership, co-worker support, and compensation, with a particular focus on differences in perceptions as a function of teaching experience. A latent network analysis was conducted on survey data from 520 Czech primary and secondary school teachers, with the aim of examining the structural relationships between latent constructs. Additionally, an item-level network analysis explored the associations between TWB and caring leadership at a more detailed level. The results suggest that caring leadership is a central construct that facilitates the connection between TWB and workplace relationships. Notably, while most relationships were positive, weaker links were found between payment and other variables, suggesting their peripheral role in shaping TWB. Furthermore, a distinction was observed between less and more experienced teachers, with the former group perceiving stronger associations between caring leadership and wellbeing. The findings emphasize the pivotal role of caring leadership in promoting TWB and highlight how teaching experience shapes perceptions of workplace support.

Making Sense of School Principal Understanding of Innovative Ideas in a Centralized Policy-Making Culture : Insights From Kosovo

2026-01-20T11:39:11+01:00

The Kosovo education system has made efforts to decentralize education competencies at the school level over the last two decades. However, many important functions, such as curriculum design and teacher professional development, remained largely the responsibility of the municipal and national governments. This does not imply that school principals became unable to initiate innovations and development activities related to curriculum implementation and teacher professional practice, but such leadership initiatives were not observed at the desired and necessary level. This research aimed to investigate how school principals in Kosovo understand innovation and to identify factors that influence the implementation of innovative ideas at the school level. Data for this research were collected through interviews with school principals, researchers, and policymaking representatives. The research findings suggest a model of how to transition to successful school reform management in a centralized policy-making culture. This transition should be resourced and managed through leadership practices that reflect the co-construction of school autonomy, introducing a socialization stage in school reform projects, considering the elements of adequate intervention timing as well as balancing between communicative and coordinative discourse in school reform projects. The research concludes that in a centralized policymaking culture, reform projects cannot ignore school principal understandings and processing of innovative ideas as the first condition for substantial and sustainable school improvement.

Estonian and Georgian School Leaders' Perceptions of Their Tasks, Work-Related Challenges, and Resources

2025-06-28T11:46:35+02:00

School leaders face complex responsibilities, increasing workloads, resource constraints, and stakeholder expectations that affect their professional performance. This study aims to understand how school leaders in Estonia and Georgia, two post-Soviet countries with different transitional trajectories and school governance models, perceive their main tasks, challenges, and resources. Data were collected through a survey of 39 Estonian and 49 Georgian school leaders in 2024. The leaders in both countries primarily perform the tasks related to curriculum development, its implementation, and teacher professional growth with distinct approaches. The comparative analysis shows that Estonian leaders emphasize goal setting, collaborative culture, and teacher development in their work; Georgian leaders prioritize student-related activities, monitoring of the learning and teaching processes, and quality assurance. The results reveal that daily operations are one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks for school leaders from both countries. Estonian leaders face challenges related to teacher recruitment, relations, and workload; Georgians deal mostly with resource constraints and curriculum implementation. To cope with their challenges, both groups rely on personal competencies and collegial support, but Estonian leaders have more diverse internal and external support than their Georgian counterparts. Our study offers understanding of how school leaders perceive their complex work, shaped by each country's historical transitions. The findings provide insight for the further development of school leadership policy measures and support systems.

School Leader(ship) in Focus : Understanding Current Challenges and Shaping Future Perspectives

2026-01-20T11:39:08+01:00