PurposeThis article considers the integration of aspects of mindfulness, social and emotional learning (SEL) and leadership wellness practice as a structure for a pedagogy of wellness in rural schools. Research has demonstrated positive outcomes for K–12 students and teachers as a result of training in practices such as mindfulness and SEL, but there has been less attention toward wellness practices incorporated by educational leaders in their own work. Support of professional and community learning for mindfulness may begin with district and school-based leaders in many communities, who facilitate programs in their schools.Design/methodology/approachThis article explores an emergent pedagogy of wellness, which was developed in a small rural district that applied wellness programming, including mindfulness, with parallel learning experiences for leaders, staff members, students and families.FindingsThrough engagement with multiple local stakeholder groups in integrating themes of SEL, mindfulness and leadership wellness, the pedagogy of wellness emerged as a potential framework for improved organizational health, new conceptualizations of students’ success and opportunities for engagement of families in systemic organization of practices of care.Originality/valueConsideration of the preparation of leadership in wellness practices such as mindfulness is discussed, in light of the necessity to address the care and wellness needs of rural communities, toward the sustainability of the pedagogy of wellness.

PurposeThis article presents a model based on a review of international and European policy and current European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education work on school leadership for inclusive education. The model aims to support analysis of the policy context and interactions between the structures and processes at different levels to ensure effective support for inclusive school leadership and development of appropriate competences. Key issues addressing competences for inclusive school leadership, support and professional development opportunities for inclusive school leaders and policy frameworks that support inclusive leadership across the whole education system are explored.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on a current Agency project, Supporting Inclusive School Leadership (SISL), a cross-national project that considers how best to ensure that school leaders meet the needs of all learners in their school communities. The SISL project examines current theories of school leadership together with the core functions of school leaders in participating countries in order to develop a model specifically focused on inclusive school leadership.FindingsAgency projects such as SISL focus on research findings and policy developments that support countries to chart their own course toward a common goal. This process of cross-national working permits member countries with their distinctive national, ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversities to work together on common goals. In this project an ecosystem model of inclusive education was adapted to reflect on the policy context needed to enable school leaders to fulfill the complex responsibilities associated with inclusive school development.Originality/valueAlthough the Agency is strongly associated with the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities, all member countries have the shared vision to support inclusive education systems so that all learners of any age are provided with meaningful, high-quality educational opportunities in their local community. While its projects are firmly rooted in the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, its work is also influenced by the concept of inclusion as promoted in the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4) “to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to explore the well-being of school principals and the job-embedded demands responsible for challenging their adoption of healthy self-care practices.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that included contributions from the fields of neurobiology and psychology, three tiers of self-care needs were established to inform the study: basic physiological needs such as sleep, hydration, and nutrition; active self-care practices such as exercise, relaxation, and stress relief; and higher order needs such as belongingness and love addressed through work-life balance, volunteerism, and relational belonging. A 45-question survey containing Likert scale items and open-ended questions was returned from 473 practicing building administrators (a 24.4% response rate).FindingsFindings from this study, compared to estimates from the literature, indicate that school leaders work longer hours, are more sleep deprived, more dehydrated, have poorer diet practices, exercise less regularly, and spend less time with their friends and family than the general population. Administrators struggled to find ways within their control to improve their self-care behavior and offered suggestions regarding how the structure of the job itself might be changed to facilitate improving the health of school leaders.Originality/valueThis work offers insight into the current well-being of school principals, and by better understanding administrators’ self-care practices, this study can inform the field in developing supports, practices, and expectations, which promote the health and well-being of building-level leaders. Unhealthy self-care practices may influence their effectiveness, happiness, and possibly their longevity within the profession. Data collected through this study informed ideas about policies and procedures that could promote greater opportunities for healthier, more effective leaders within schools.

PurposeResearch has provided accumulative evidence that the willingness of teachers to invest in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a fundamental component for achieving school effectiveness. However, most studies examined OCB of the individual teacher, while neglecting the fact that such behavior might grow in a context. Furthermore, educational scholars have focused almost solely on OCB of teachers, and have almost completely neglected to address the concept through a managerial prism. By taking a contextual perspective, the purpose of this paper is to postulate a positive link between leader OCB and team OCB, and suggest that organizational justice serves as a moderator in this relationship.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through a survey from multiple sources, to avoid one-source bias. The sample included 82 schools: 82 management teams and their 82 principals, as well as 246 teachers, who were not members of management.FindingsResults of the hierarchical regression analysis confirmed the hypotheses. The authors found a positive association between leader OCB and team OCB and revealed that this positive relationship was significant under high levels of organizational justice, but non-significant under low levels.Practical implicationsThe importance of leader OCB in promoting team OCB can inspire the educational system to learn how to develop organizational mechanisms that encourage principals to perform citizenship behaviors and to take this component into consideration in screening processes and succession planning.Originality/valueThe contribution of the study is in identifying leader OCB as a key instrument that may encourage teams to invest in OCBs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study ever to examine the link between leader OCB and team OCB. The finding that there is a positive association between the two constructs may imply that leader OCBs contribute to the school, not only directly, by exhibiting behaviors of helping and support, but also indirectly, through the leader’s impact on his or her team’s behavior.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test the effects of nine district characteristics on student achievement, explored the conditions that mediated the effects of such characteristics and contributed to understandings about the role school-level leaders play in district efforts to improve achievement.Design/methodology/approachData for the study were provided by the responses of 2,324 school and district leaders in 45 school districts to two surveys. Student achievement evidence was provided by multi-grade provincial measures of math and language achievement. The analysis of these data included calculation of descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and regression mediation analysis.FindingsSeven of nine district characteristics contributed significantly to student achievement and three conditions served as especially powerful mediators of such district effects. The same three conditions, as well as others, acted as significant mediators of school-level leader effects on achievement, as well.Practical implicationsDistrict characteristics tested in the study provide a powerful framework for guiding the district improvement work of senior educational leaders. The organizational improvement efforts of both district and school leaders would be substantially enhanced by a better understanding of how to diagnose and improve the status of those conditions acting as significant mediators of the effects of both district and school leadership on student achievement.Originality/valueThis is one of a very few large-scale quantitative studies examining the extent to which characteristics frequently identified by district effectiveness research explain variation in student learning. It is also one of the very few studies identifying classroom, school and family variables that mediate district effects on such learning. The study also adds to a growing body of evidence about variables which mediate school leaders’ effects on such learning.

Purpose Shared understandings of curriculum reform within and between the levels of the educational system are suggested to be crucial for the reform to take root. The purpose of this paper is to explore variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact among state- and district-level stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The participants (n=666) included state- and district-level stakeholders involved in a national curriculum reform in Finland. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify profiles based on participants’ perceptions of the core curriculum’s coherence and the reform’s impact on school development. Findings Two profiles were identified: high coherence and impact, and lower consistency of the intended direction and impact. State-level stakeholders had higher odds of belonging to the high coherence and impact profile than their district-level counterparts. Practical implications The results imply that more attention needs to be paid in developing a shared and coherent understanding particularly of the intended direction of the core curriculum as well as the reform’s effects on school-level development among state- and district-level stakeholders. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature on curriculum reform by shedding light on the variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact of those responsible for a large-scale national curriculum reform process at different levels of the educational system.

Purpose Analyzing data collected from the charter school board members and the superintendent in a charter school district in a southeastern state about the quality and usefulness of training, the purpose of this paper is to provide an important foundation for understanding training and development for charter school boards in the USA. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a qualitative case study approach to examine a charter school district and the preparedness of charter school board members to serve in that district. The authors sampled one charter school district in the southeast region of the USA and interviewed five charter school board members and the superintendent. Findings The first theme is composition and responsibility of charter school board members, which outlines the roles and responsibilities that charter school board members assume when they serve on this charter district board. The second theme is preparedness to serve, which traces the readiness of charter school board members to serve on a board. The final theme is training and documents related to the kind of training charter school board members receive once they are appointed to the board. Originality/value This study provides a conceptual framework about the dimensions and standards associated with preparedness to serve as a charter school board member and broadens the authors’ understanding of the roles and responsibilities of charter school boards, their preparedness to serve and the training and development they receive.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address school–NGO interactions by analyzing the power of foundations – a specific type of third sector organization or NGO in education.Design/methodology/approachData are collected through a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, official documents, reports and websites. Social network analysis and grounded theory are used to analyze the data with the aim to develop a theoretical approach.FindingsThe study identifies three dimensions, i.e. relational, structural and discursive dimensions of power. Based on the analysis of an illustrative multi-stakeholder initiative, the paper highlights the role of foundations in framing educational settings, concepts and structures of the education system as such.Practical implicationsThe three-dimensional power perspective offered in this paper is particularly useful for scholars investigating school–NGO interactions or multi-stakeholder partnerships in education. Furthermore, it is of crucial importance for practitioners, school principals and education administrators dealing with school–NGO interactions given that foundations seem to be increasingly able to draw on new sources of power in these interactions.Originality/valueWhile the number and power of the third sector in education continues to rise worldwide, there is wide consensus that NGO power in education has, to date, hardly been researched. This paper contributes to this dearth of research by uncovering foundations’ different sources of power and by developing a theoretical approach for analyzing the power of third-sector organizations in education.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of how minoritized families and communities contribute to equity-focused school change, not as individual consumers or beneficiaries, but as educational and community leaders working collectively to transform their schools.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative case study examines one poverty-impacted racially diverse high school in the US West and the changes that occurred over a seven-year period.FindingsMinoritized families, community leaders and formal leaders leveraged conventional schooling structures – such as turnaround reforms, the International Baccalaureate program and the PTA – to disrupt the default institutional scripts of schools and drive equity-focused change for all students, particularly African-Americans from the neighborhood.Research limitations/implicationsThough one school, this case contributes insights about how families and communities can collaborate with systems actors to catalyze educational justice in gentrifying communities.Practical implicationsThis study suggests strategies that families and communities used to reclaim school narratives, “infiltrate” conventional structures and reorient them toward equitable collaboration and educational justice.Social implicationsThis study contributes to a body of critical scholarship on “turnaround” reform efforts in urban secondary schools and suggests ways to reshape decision making, leadership, parent engagement and student intervention to build collective agency.Originality/valueThis research raises provocative questions about the extent to which families and communities can use conventional structures and policies to pursue educational justice in the US public education. Learning from such efforts highlights strategies and practices that might begin to help us construct more decolonizing theories of change.