Conference Agenda

In this symposium we draw on a 2023 global collection where seven international longitudinal studies investigate the relations between young people’s career engagement and subjective wellbeing in their own national systems. While there is danger in international studies, perhaps particularly of career engagement, of over-simplifying policy contexts from around the globe and not attending to national and contextual factors that are inherent in individual education systems (Watts & Sultana, 2004) we temper this by drawing on international literature and evidence-based studies.

We trace the urgent and critical task of ensuring career activities and wellbeing are aligned in both ways and exhort research and practice to extend ways of measuring, understanding and implementing these around the world. The group’s core aims were to:

• improve understanding of the determinants of young people’s career engagement and wellbeing during education-to-work transitions;
• examine the impact of wellbeing and careers interventions on young people’s experience of education, career management and employment outcomes;
• extend our understanding of young people’s education-to-work transitions from an interdisciplinary perspective; and
• develop a conceptual model and recommendations for careers and wellbeing-oriented prevention and intervention programmes to assist young people as they transition into the world of work.

Across the globe, young people find it increasingly difficult to attain and maintain jobs. Moreover, young people often lack human and social capital and career competencies, and are, therefore, vulnerable to labour market instabilities, such as economic downturns. Lack of employment opportunities allowing young people to build skills and experience progress is a major social problem faced by many industrialised nations over the last few decades, especially in the COVID-19 context. Within such uncertain and ambiguous work context, nurturing young people’s career competencies and wellbeing is crucial for maintaining and sustaining their involvement and resilience in labour markets and to achieve happy, healthy and productive careers. Wellbeing must not be seen just as ‘surplus value’ but in a modern world focused on decent work there is real importance to go beyond job matching.

There has been previously little research investigating the relation between career engagement and either subjective or objective wellbeing. While a similar collection of international studies has not been found, there is a wealth of data on wellbeing and career activities captured all across the world at a point of compulsory schooling and later in the transition to work (e.g., career aspirations at the age of 15 or longitudinal measurements of life satisfaction). This has meant data was available in longitudinal cohort studies across the world, e.g., Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (Australia), Education Longitudinal Study (USA) and Understanding Society (UK), as well as the International Study of City Youth. Making use of longitudinal data from nationally representative datasets, this collection has aimed to highlight theoretical common grounds for understanding the relevance of career resources for young people’s subjective wellbeing. There were three major similarities across the practice and policy findings of the chapters which we have understood as the following: taking a whole person approach, wide understanding of where and how career support is received by young people and, perhaps most strikingly, multiple opportunities to engage with career guidance and education activities.Overall, the contributions highlight the importance of (i) sensemaking role of time; (ii) resource-based approaches to careers; as well as (iii) acknowledging systematic barriers in the labour market. Having thus illuminated some new understandings about how career engagement is relevant for wellbeing, this symposium aims to consider how young people transition into labour markets and to draw contextualized policy recommendations.

The initial career choices that young people make can shape the course of their working lives. These choices are influenced by their occupational aspirations and goals as well as the opportunities that are available to them. Whether a person’s occupational aspirations are achieved or not can have an impact on their sense of wellbeing. We know from existing research that a person’s wellbeing is enhanced when they are able to fulfil their goals (Pavot & Diener, 2008). However, failing to achieve their goals can result in disappointment, frustration or social withdrawal. The overall aim of the research was to understand how occupational aspirations and outcomes affect young people’s wellbeing in the UK. We investigate the occupational aspirations of young people when they were aged 16 to 18 and their achievements five years later, assessing their levels of wellbeing (measured as satisfaction with job, income, leisure time, health and overall life satisfaction) at each age. Two main questions are addressed: 1. To what extent do young people achieve their occupational aspirations? 2. Are young people’s occupational aspirations and achievements associated with their wellbeing? We draw on goal setting theory to help us interpret the findings from our research and examine a potential relationship between career aspirations, outcomes and wellbeing. Data were drawn from Understanding Society, which is the largest longitudinal household panel survey of its kind in the UK and includes questions on life changes, education and wellbeing. The sample of 208 (59% female, 82% British) was derived from respondents aged 16 to 18 in Wave 3 of the survey (covering Jan 2011 to Jul 2013), and then matched with their responses five years later. The outcome variables included changes in each of the measures of wellbeing between the two time points, and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to investigate any possible relationship. We found that just over half of the young people in this study either achieved the occupational aspiration they held at the age 16-18 or overachieved (52.3%). Furthermore, the data showed no significant relationship with individual levels of wellbeing and the fulfilment of their occupational aspirations. However, those who did not fulfil their aspirations reported lower levels of financial wellbeing compared to those who achieved their occupational aspirations. Overall, it appears that young people’s wellbeing is not impacted by achieving or failing to achieve occupational aspirations.

Pavot, W., & Diener, E. (2008). The Satisfaction With Life Scale and the emerging construct of life satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3(2), 137–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760701756946

Life satisfaction among students, a positive global cognitive appraisal of their lives, boosts mental and physical health and scholastic achievement. It is thus important to understand its determinants. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) stresses outcome expectations – the career-goals students set – and goal efficacy – students’ self-perception about their goal-related competences. SCCT only sketchily addresses the sources of goal efficacy and outcome expectations as ‘environmental resources’. We suggest that sociological frameworks might enlighten the role of significant others as environmental resources. Specifically, teachers, parents, and peers are important sources for goal efficacy and outcome expectations. This study set three goals. First, we investigate whether SCCT is valid in Flanders, a rigidly tracked educational system. Tracks cater to different futures, with academic tracks preparing for higher education and vocational tracks preparing for entry into the labor market. It is possible that goal efficacy and expectations are more consequential for life satisfaction in a comprehensive than in a tracked system. The second goal is to explore the role of significant others as environmental resources. We highlight the peer and teacher expectation culture – respectively, the shared expectations students and teachers have about students’ futures – and we distinguish between parental support – positive parental involvement – and parental pressure – parents pushing children towards academic or vocational goals. The third research goal is to test this elaborated SCCT longitudinally, by differentiating between the short-term and long-term effects of significant others, on goal efficacy, expectations and ultimately life satisfaction. Multilevel analyses on the ISCY dataset, gathered from 2013-2014 onwards from 2,346 students in 30 secondary schools in Ghent, showed that significant others’ career-related thoughts are associated with life satisfaction. In the short term, teachers with higher expectations boost students’ goal efficacy and life satisfaction. Higher parental support, but lower parental pressure relates to higher life satisfaction. In the long term, parental support and goal self-efficacy increase students’ life satisfaction. Moreover, students who expect to continue studying had a larger increase in life satisfaction than those who were still undecided, and this is due to undecided students having lower goal efficacy. Moreover, parental academic pressure reduces life satisfaction, but only for undecided students. We conclude that it is fruitful to add students’ significant others as environmental resources to SCCT. Policy-wise, we advise to support all students, but particularly undecided students, so the socioemotional side implications of career choice in this life phase are softened.

Lent, R. W. (2005). A Social Cognitive View of Career Development and Counseling. In Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 101–127). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In the United States, there is an increasing focus on preparing students earlier in their educational studies for specific careers through skill training and career exploration. Schools are providing more and different types of work-based learning experiences, vocational coursework, career preparation opportunities, and postsecondary support to students in hopes of improving their employability. These experiences may encourage students to engage in more purposeful and focused career thought and enhance their wellbeing. While wellbeing is a multi-dimensional construct, this study focuses on occupational wellbeing as it relates to career thought and the educational supports and experiences offered by schools. Social cognitive career theory provides a lens by which to understand the development of career thought and wellbeing through work-based learning (WBL) activities in secondary school. SCCT identifies three factors that help individuals develop career thought: self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals. Using a nationally representative dataset—the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS)—this study responds to the following research questions linking WBL participation to well-being as measured by career-goal alignment and job satisfaction in early career: 1. What factors influence participation in work-based learning experiences in high school? 2. How do WBL experiences in high school influence individuals’ feelings about the relationship between early career occupation and long-term goals? 3. How do WBL experiences in high school influence job satisfaction in early career? Using school-fixed effects models to account for unobserved between-school differences as well as a robust set of additional student covariates, we find the SCCT variables of self-efficacy and expectation of school to develop skills for employment to be significant predictors of participation in WBL. We find that only certain types of WBL are significantly related to this career-goal alignment: cooperative education, and completion of a predetermined sequence of vocational courses. Meanwhile, only cooperative education was significantly linked to higher job satisfaction, while mentorship was associated with significantly associated with lower job satisfaction in early career. These findings present some implications worth considering. First, WBL appears to be beneficial with respect to occupational outcome, though this is dependent on type of WBL. Second, WBL participation is relatively even across student demographics and academic histories. Finally, school and family contexts have relatively little influence on occupational well-being. All told, promoting career thought and development for secondary students is likely to have significant benefits later in life. Work-based learning is one avenue by which to achieve these goals.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

The dominant discourse about the role of higher education (HE) in the UK is focused on its suitability for preparing graduates for employment, measured by labour market outcomes such as graduate-level employment or wages. However, graduates’ wellbeing, values and broader ideas about the role of HE warrant further attention. This paper investigates how strength of career clarity throughout the university experience affects graduates’ wellbeing after graduation, and highlights individual and structural barriers to graduate employment in the UK and Italy. In the UK analysis they use the rich, nationally representative, longitudinal Futuretrack survey, which followed entrants to full-time HE in the UK in 2005/06 through their HE experiences and through to their early post-graduation outcomes. This part of the paper makes two contributions. First, we found that students’ ideas about their careers change over the course of their HE journeys, and higher career clarity scores at the beginning of the HE journey mattered less for graduates’ wellbeing after graduation than career clarity scores later in the HE journey and after graduation. Second, we found that certain structural factors (socioeconomic background, ethnicity, disability, but not sex) were negatively associated with wellbeing even after controlling for career clarity. This suggests that while career clarity can still be a useful resource for students and graduates for improving their wellbeing, it alone may not be able to entirely mitigate the impact of structural barriers. The Italian contribution to the paper investigates the young graduates’ job and career satisfaction, intended as two complementary indicators of work-related well-being and career thoughts, through the analysis of the cohort of graduate workers who entered the Italian labour market in 2014. Relying on a rich and unique dataset on Italian graduates’ early career paths (made available by AlmaLaurea), we examine the level of graduates’ satisfaction with their jobs, careers and earnings five years after graduation along with the relevant determinants. Our findings suggest that young graduates’ expectations and well-being evolve over time in an adaptive way. Italian graduates, initially declare that one of the most important reasons for their participation in higher education is the desire for career improvement. However, when such expectations are curtailed by first work experiences impacted by poor quality of the labour market, it comes out that the relatively high level of job satisfaction reported by Italian graduates does not stem from satisfaction with career and earnings, but it depends on non-monetary factors.

Agovino, M., Busato, F. (2017). From college to labor market: a transition indicator for Italian universities. Quality & Quantity, 51(6), 2577-2604.

Bullying, which includes cyberbullying and face-to-face bullying, is amongst the most pervasive threats to the wellbeing of children and young people. Schools are important social environments, at the forefront of managing bullying behaviours. The rapidly changing and complex nature of bullying requires schools to put in place and maintain systems to prepare for and respond to such activities. Schools must also continually test and refine these systems to ensure optimal performance. Despite this clear need, there is a lack of school level, self-assessment tools that enable schools to assess and measure their preparedness to deal with bullying and other disruptive activities.

This study draws from the Social Ecological Theory of bullying and victimisation, in which bullying is seen as embedded in a larger social context that includes peer groups, schools, families, neighbourhoods, communities, etc. (Bauman & Yoon 2014). In addition, the study is informed by school climate literature, which draws from multiple theories, including behaviourism, social learning theory, prevention science, and systems change (Bosworth & Judkins 2014).

The aim of this study was to describe the development and reliability and validity testing of a systems-level, self-assessment tool. The tool can be used by schools to evaluate their level of preparation to prevent and respond to bullying and cyberbullying, and other events that negatively disrupt the social cohesiveness of their school. This work forms part of a larger project conducted with the Alannah & Madeline Foundation to evaluate their eSmart Schools program. eSmart is a long-term change program designed to educate, track, monitor, and prevent bullying and cyberbullying.

Recent research indicates that there is uncertainty among children as well as among adults of where to draw the line between everyday stressors and mental health problems that could indicate a need for a common terminology and language regarding mental health (Wickström & Lindholm, 2020; Hellström & Beckman, 2021). The increased prevalence rates of self-reported mental health problems such as bad mood, difficulty sleeping, headaches or stomachache among youth shows a worrying trend in Sweden as well as internationally (Hagquist et al., 2019; Potrebny et al., 2017). At the same time, mild symptoms of mental health problems can be relatively common and be an expression of everyday challenges (Hellström & Beckman, 2021; Wickström & Lindholm, 2020). This contradictory trend is confirmed in the largescale cross-national survey Health Behavior in School-Aged Children, showing reports of very good health and quality of life among young people in Sweden as well as an increase in self-reported mental health problems (Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2018).

Adolescence is a period that involve many changes in different areas such as increasing academic demands and academic competition, a decrease in teacher-student relationship closeness or school safety, rearrangement of relationships with parents and peers including an increase in social comparison, identity issues, as well as thoughts about the future (Bremberg, 2015; Brown, 2009; Tetzner et al., 2017). In addition, the increased emphasis on high-stakes testing, assessment and grading due to recent school reforms in Sweden have shown potentially negative effects on Swedish pupil’s health (Högberg et al., 2021). There is a need to identify what causes stress in the everyday life of adolescents as they could potentially develop into mental health problems (ref). Studies show that when adolescents and young adults put it into their own words, the most pronounced everyday stressors include academic failures, relationship problems, negative self-evaluations through social comparisons, and other performance-oriented tasks (Gustafsson et al., 2010; Hellström & Beckman, 2021).

To be able to design interventions to decrease mental health problems and increase mental wellbeing for youth a common language is needed. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a conceptual framework and terminology for describing health and functioning in everyday life and can serve as a common framework for developing comparable concepts (WHO, 2001). According to ICF, participation is defined as involvement in life situations promoting health and wellbeing (WHO, 2001). The ICF defines components of health included as domains described from the perspectives of the body, the individual and society. Developing a common language will make it easier to interact, discuss and plan health interventions based on young people’s perceptions (Adolfsson et al., 2018; Augustine et al., 2021; Klang Ibragimova et al., 2011; WHO, 2007). The current study investigates how youth explain stressors in their everyday life that could be conceptualized as everyday challenges and possibly symptoms of mental health problems. Hence, the aim of this study is to conceptualize adolescents’ experiences of everyday stressors, using the ICF as an analytic tool.

Student burnout has been one of the most pertinent foci of discussion around Finnish adolescent’s’ wellbeing since the turn of the millennium (e.g., Salmela-Aro et al., 2009). Even if the onset of the growing unwell-being coincides with young people’s increasing dependence on social media and concern for various global problems, the nametag set on the phenomenon has been school burnout. The term has been further accentuated since a 2018 reform of higher education student admission, which shifted the emphasis from an earlier entrance examination-based policy to admitting half of new students based on their results in the national end-of-upper-secondary-school matriculation examination. The reform is seen to increase students’ stress both during their studies and in the matriculation examination (see Kupiainen et al., 2016).

The current study is part of a wider research project on the impact of the 2018 reform on upper secondary schools and on students’ study choices and wellbeing. In the present paper, we explore the validity of the emphasis on the school as the basis of student burnout (see also Kosola, 2022). For that, we enriched the instrument measuring burnout with outside-of-school topics such as climate change and the current geo-political situation expected to darken young people’s views on the world around them.

Burnout was first diagnosed in care and other human service occupations, and primarily attributed to the emotional exhaustion caused by the work (Maslach et al., 2001). Originally an ill-defined empirical concept, burnout was soon found to comprise three core dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism and reduced efficacy. The construct was soon adopted also for upper secondary and tertiary level students. While adult burnout was seen to be fueled by the rapidly changing and increasing demands of working life, students’ increasing ill-being needed a differing base for explanation. After all, unlike employees threatened by burnout under demands coming from above, students are living through a period where the focus is on the process of building their own lives. By emphasizing this difference, we do not wish to imply that the expectations set on young people in today’s world – or even school – might not feel overpowering for many. However, not all researchers in the field are disposed to use the term burnout to describe the stress and psychosomatic symptoms ailing today’s youth (e.g., Moksnes et al., 2010; Schraml et al., 2011). Regardless the terminology used, researchers in the Nordic welfare states are especially active in the field. This can be found surprising in view of the Nordic comprehensive education systems’ emphasis on equality and wellbeing with a stress on supporting everyone’s learning.

Contrary to most other countries, the best school-related trend data in Finland does not regard learning outcomes but student health and wellbeing (THL; Vainikainen et al., 2017). Since the 2018 reform of higher education student admission, upper secondary students’ wellbeing and burnout have been an especially acute topic of discussion. By increasing the role of the matriculation examination in student admission, the reform is seen to increase students’ stress regarding both their course choices during upper secondary education and, subsequently, their choices for the subject-specific exams they will include in their matriculation examination.

In this paper, we will investigate students and teachers’ views on possible reasons for the much discussed student burnout (a ready-provided list covering school and out-of-school related factors and general issues). Secondly, we will relate students’ views to their course choices and attainment, and to the choice of exams they plan to include in their matriculation examination. Thirdly, we will look at student burnout through an adapted 9-item School Burnout Inventory covering the three dimension of exhaustion, cynicism and experienced inadequacy.

Adolescent sleep has declined significantly over the past 20 years (Keyes, Maslowsky, Hamilton & Schulenberg 2015). Inadequate and poor-quality sleep appears to be associated with both reduced motivation (Zhao et al. 2019) and impaired cognitive abilities that are important for learning and academic performance (Hysing, Harvey, Linton, Askeland & Sivertsen 2016; Kuula et al. 2015).

Developmental hormonal changes shift the sleep-wake cycle towards eveningness during adolescence. Morningness starts to decline around 12 years of age, continuing until late adolescence and early adulthood (Roenneberg et al. 2007). Many adolescents have difficulty falling asleep at the desired time on school nights. A Finnish population-based study showed that the later adolescents went to bed, the lower their sleep quality and the greater their daytime sleepiness was. This in turn was reflected in lower school performance and motivation (Merikanto et al. 2013). The effects of sleep deprivation and poor sleep quality extend to all areas of life, including learning, motivation, and well-being. Moreover, inadequate and poor-quality sleep increases daytime sleepiness, which can be reflected in lower school performance and motivation.

The use of various screens in the evening is unfortunately common among young people, delaying their bedtime (Bartel, Gradisar & Williamson 2015). Digital media use affects young people through a variety of mechanisms, such as exposure to blue light (Crowley, Cain, Burns, Acebo & Carskadon 2015) and emotions which increase alertness (Scott & Woods 2019). Although circadian rhythms operate independently of environmental factors, artificial light can modify individual sleep-wake rhythms (Gooley 2008; Roenneberg, Daan & Merrow 2003). Daytime exposure to light is preferable, as exposure to light during the evening or night inhibits melatonin release in the evening, making it more difficult to fall asleep. Exposure to blue light before bedtime may also affect sleep architecture, for example by shortening REM (rapid eye movement) sleep (Higuchi et al. 2005), which is crucial for the development of the young brain and also affects the ability to learn new things (Li et al. 2017).

The use of digital media devices both during the day and at night has been associated with insufficient sleep in previous studies. It is therefore important to investigate how young people's circadian rhythms and sleep are associated with the use of digital devices and apps. This study targeted to investigate how sleep and circadian rhythms are related to digital technology use at school and during leisure time. Q1: How do sleep and fatigue during the school week differ across chronotypes? Q2: How is the amount of use of digital devices or apps during schooldays and leisure time associated with sleep and fatigue in adolescents?

It is a common belief that new generations of children are in decline (Protzko & Schooler, 2019). However, contrary to the belief that new generations decline, children’s ability to delay gratification, measured by the famous ‘Marshmallow Test’, for example, has actually improved from the 1960s to the 2010s (Protzko, 2020). This means that (at least when it comes to food) young children today can resist rewards for a longer time than they did 50 years ago. This might be mainly due to an improvement in the living standards of families, an increase in parental educational level, the number of years children spend in education, and improvements in nutrition and healthcare services (Protzko, 2020). This increase in delay of gratification ability is similar to the ’Flynn effect’ which refers to the sustained increase in intelligence and cognitive domains worldwide during the 20th century (Pietschnig & Gittler, 2015). However, since the 2000s, stagnation or even reversal in intelligence (Dutton et al., 2016), attention, and working memory (Graves et al., 2021; Wongupparaj et al., 2017) have been observed in many countries worldwide, named as the ’negative Flynn effect’.

Along with the ’negative Flynn effect’, there have been other problematic trends reported among young adults, for example, self-reported loneliness has been increasing (Buecker et al., 2021), and emotional intelligence-related traits like well-being, self-control, and emotionality have been decreasing (Khan et al., 2021), with a similar negative trend in resilience (Zhao et al., 2022). These changes over the last decades have been proposed to be caused by complex twofold changes on the level of individuals and their environment (Buecker et al., 2021; Graves et al., 2021; Khan et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2022). According to the mutual constitution model (Markus & Kitayama, 2010), the socio-cultural environment of different time periods is likely to shape the individual with its problems and vice-versa.

Importantly, these negative trends affecting the mental health of youth can be reversed with targeted interventions or prevention programs in education and/or healthcare. Yet, there is a lack of comprehensive research about time trend changes in childhood and adolescence regarding emotional and behavioral problems. Consequently, the aim of the present meta-analysis was to explore cross-temporal changes in the emotional and behavioral functioning of European children and adolescents and reveal if there are any specific problems that are on the rise and require immediate attention.

How to increase rates of school prosocial behavior is an abiding concern to society and is of considerable interest to educational scholars and stakeholders. In the last decades, research on prosociality in schools focuses on social interactions among children, from the very early stages of development onward. It was found that factors such as peer relations, group affiliation, and social status, may prevent or activate prosocial behavior (Sabato & Kogut, 2021)– with significant implications for school climate, academic success and personal well-being (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). One of the salient findings in this field of research is that higher-status children are perceived by their friends and teachers to be more helpful, cooperative, and kind (van den Berg et al., 2015), and tend to a sharing behavior more than lower-status children (Sabato & Kogut, 2021). However, this link is not straightforward (Warden & MacKinnon, 2003) and contextual variables that determine when social status encourages or hinders prosociality should be examined.

It has been suggested that the effect of social status on prosociality may be dependent on the characteristics of the beneficiary and that children are more prosaically toward their in-group members, known as in-group favoritism (e.g., Sabato & Kogut, 2021). This effect may be even more substantial when the beneficiary is from a stereotyped group (Zimmerman & Levy, 2000). Nevertheless, several contextual factors may attenuate in-group preference. For example, in-group favoritism was found to be significant only among children in the higher social status group (Newheiser et al., 2014; Sabato & Kogut, 2021). In addition, introducing specific out-group stereotypes, increased the incidents of children helping a needy out-group member more than an in-group member, although the children held a negative conception of the out-group member (Sierksma, 2022). These findings, altogether, indicate that social status and the beneficiary’s characteristics have an interaction effect on prosocial behavior.

The current study aims to understand the effect of social status on social orientation toward in-group versus out-group members, and toward stereotyped versus neutral individuals, among children between the ages of ten to eleven, since social status becomes relatively stable from the fourth grade onward (Poulin & Chan, 2010). Although previous studies pointed to the relationship between social status and prosociality, along with the effect of such situational factors, most of them are based on evaluations by peers and teachers of the children’s general tendencies of prosociality or self-report, rather than measure overt behavior. In order to examine overt behavior, we use the Social Mindfulness paradigm (SoMi; Van Doesum et al., 2013) which provides individuals with a choice between a mindful/ cooperative decision and a self-centered decision.

Several studies applied this task among adults and showed that the socially mindful person is also scored high in the HEXACO personality inventory which measures factors related to respect for others and their perspective on the world, and other-oriented intention (i.e., honesty-humility, agreeableness, fairness, sentimentality, forgiveness, flexibility). This finding supports the idea that social mindfulness is rooted in benevolent prosocial motivations (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Only one study, to date, used this task among children and examined judgments of a third party’s behavior in hypothetical scenarios (see Zhao et al., 2021). This study indicated that, by age 6, children understand the task and its meaning, and positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves a choice for others over a character who leaves no choice. The present study will be the first to utilize the SoMi task and examine self-oriented versus other-oriented decision-making among children while considering their social status in the class.

What should post-pandemic schools look like? To address this question, we developed and evaluated a novel art-based intervention aimed at supporting school transition and socioemotional learning in young children. The Puppetry and Emotional Resilience programme (P&ER) has been motivated by the growing need for a holistic and learner-centred approach to wellbeing education, and for offering children and teachers appropriate tools and ecosystems to support their social and emotional needs, communication, and ultimately learning.

Globally, the educational landscape in a post-pandemic recovery is undergoing a radical transformation in order to respond to the emerging challenges of poverty, socio-economic inequalities, and climate emergency. In order to equip learners with tools for active citizenship, schools across the EU have begun to integrate social and emotional education across their curricula. The post-pandemic social and emotional landscape has also further highlighted the need for a balanced, but progressive and holistic approach to education, which addresses the academic, social, emotional and mental health needs of children, staff and the community (European Commission, 2021; UNESCO, 2021; WHO, 2021). Schools do this not only by offering a physical space where children can interact with their peers, share interests and negotiate differences, but perhaps more importantly, by providing a structured environment which enables them to practice communication and problem solving, and to develop friendship, self-confidence, and emotion regulation (Colao et al., 2020).

The question now posed by local and global policymakers and education researchers is the question that motivated this research; how can post-pandemic schools promote health and wellbeing education, respond to the needs of learners, and offer them experiences and foundations for lifelong success? There is an agreement that modern schools should be inclusive, adopt a holistic approach to learning, and offer more opportunities for cooperative learning and participatory activities relying on art or theatre (Colao, et al., 2020). UNESCO (2021) is also recognising the need for integrating health literacy into the school curriculum; this includes teaching children about wellbeing and emotions. To address this need, interventions that enhance social and emotional learning have been implemented worldwide (e.g. WHO, 2021). Their success, however, depends on how well the new skills and strategies are embedded within the wider school ethos, environment, and community (O’Toole & Simovska, 2022). Interventions based on art, storytelling and puppetry (e.g. Webster-Stratton & Reid, 2004) naturally offer such a rich and embodied experience for children, as they readily accept the fantasy world around them and the apparent magic they create (O’Hare, 2005). Theories of art education, (e.g. Romanski, 2019) and social cognition (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985) illustrate the mechanism underpinning this transformative power of puppetry, which allows children to innovate, build new representations, mentalise, and discover the complexities of social relations.

The P&ER programme was developed to support school transition and to promote socioemotional learning and wellbeing education in nursery and primary school children. Based on Zins et al. (Greenberg et al., 2017; Zins et al., 2007) framework for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), the programme utilised the power of puppetry and storytelling to promote five broad clusters of competencies in children: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and decision making. The strong environmental focus of this framework highlights that it is not sufficient to address individual skills development, but it is imperative to enhance the social ecosystem of the classroom, school and the community. This approach complements O’Toole & Simovska’s (2022) reimagined concept of Bildung, which notes the need to stress the mind-body-world connection in wellbeing initiatives in schools. Here, we evaluate the impact of the P&ER programme on the development of complex emotion and social competency skills in children.

Starting from the two concepts of resonance and resonance pedagogy the question to be discussed is, what a resonant education is and by which quality features it can be observed in school.

Resonance, a sociological concept, is criticizing the actual acceleration and disentanglement with the world (Rosa, 2019a, 2019b). This shift in paradigm seeks to redefine the quality of relationship in general and to the world, to redefine meaningfulness and the quality of life (Rosa, 2019a, 725).

It contains four characteristics: the moment of being touched, self efficacy, transformation and unavailability. A state is said to be resonant only when the first three characteristics are present - the counterpart is touched, responds self-efficaciously and is part of the change. Ultimately, the state of resonance cannot be forced, which is why resonance is always unavailable. It either happens or it doesn't (Rosa, 2019b). Resonance can be described as the "sociology of world relations". Resonance can also be well understood through his counter-concept of alienation. In the latter, subject and world are indifferently opposed to each other and "world transformation" fails. Nonetheless, resonance and alienation are not merely counter-concepts. Resonance is only possible when moments of alienation are experienced. Phases of alienation are always necessary again and again, so that new resonance relationships can emerge and stable axes of resonance can be established. Resonance as a fundamental critique of current world events (Rosa, 2019a, 725) and at the same time is a forward-looking and sustainable response to it. Resonance is not just a hype, but is confirmed by the fact, that resonance was mentioned in both the Future Report 2018 (Horx, 2018) and in the Future Report 2022 (Horx, 2022). According to this, the two concepts of "mindfulness and resonance" are key to establishing individual resilience (Horx, 2022, 150).

In the end, the concept is a description of the state that touches us, or rather, we hear it crackle.

Resonance pedagogy is the application of the resonance concept to the school setting. Rosa and Endres (2016, 16) consider the "crackling in the classroom" as an indicator of "resonance pedagogy" or "resonance in schools “. In resonance pedagogy, in addition to the four characteristics, the following stakeholders play a role in the resonance triangle: teachers, children and the content or the content or the subject (Rosa & Endres, 2016).

We rise the question of the meaning of resonance and resonance pedagogy, then outline resonant schools and resonant extended education and - based on the quality model of extended education schools according to Willems and Becker (2015, 51) - define central quality features of schools with resonance. In doing so, we prominently include the children's perspective, as the well-being of the child and the implementation of children's rights should be the guiding principles for the management of schools (Palsdottir, 2019).

In the global north, there is growing evidence of the increased vulnerability of children and young people to mental illness, which has become a notable public health concern (Campayo–Muñoz and Cabedo–Mas, 2017; Faulkner, 2022), and reflects the increasing prevalence of mental illness among children and young people globally (Hedemann and Frazier, 2017; Payne et al., 2020). As discussed in the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development Report, childhood is considered a critical stage in which to build interventions to support mental health and wellbeing (Patel et al., 2018). We argue music can, and should, be one of those support mechanisms.

Music is a ubiquitous means of expression and communication that span across all ages and cultures at a global level (Angel-Alvarado et al., 2022), and there is growing evidence from empirical and experimental studies that examines the impact of music on health and wellbeing, including psychological (emotional and cognitive), physical, social and social (McConkey and Kuebel, 2022). Despite this, there has been little research into the impact that music, specifically singing, may have on the health and wellbeing of children.

This paper therefore presents a qualitative case study within Scottish primary schools that examines the development and delivery of a pilot programme, Sing4Health, designed by the researcher in partnership with a choral conductor, to teach children and their teachers how to create music, focusing on group singing. This initiative was intended to enhance children’s wellbeing, while also establishing sustainable music education by non-specialists within primary schools.

The purpose of this study was therefore twofold: (i) to analyse the impact of theSing4Health programme on the wellbeing outcomes of the primary school children participating in the programme, and; (ii) to research the pedagogic process of implementing the programme within our partner schools, in order to draw out general pedagogical principles which can then be adapted for designing a self-sustaining training programme for non-specialist teachers.

The study asked:

1) Does singing improve children’s subjective sense of wellbeing?

2) Does participation in the Sing4Health programme help children effectively respond to situations they find difficult or challenging at school?

The secondary research objective was to examine the process of implementing the programme within our partner schools and identify underlying principles of the programme delivery. To do this, the study asked:

1) What is the professional music teacher doing when teaching singing for children?

2) Are there general instructive principles that non-specialists can learn to teach singing?

In conclusion, the aim of this study was to assess the outcomes among the children participating in the Sing4Health programme and identify whether there were underlying pedagogical principles of the delivery of the programme by the musical specialist leading it that could then be adapted to build a training programme for non-specialists, in order to create sustainable school wellbeing programme able to be delivered nationally and internationally as part of teacher training initiatives among pre-service or in-service teachers.

Initial findings suggest singing does positively impact on children and their sense of wellbeing, but further research is necessary to better understand how it does this, and how singing can be taught by non-specialists to promote children’s wellbeing.

Internationally, there is growing recognition of the impact of trauma on children and young people’s education and broader life outcomes (Howard 2021). In fact, trauma is now recognised as a significant issue, impacting individual health and wellbeing on a global scale (UNESCO 2019). Moreover, no social or cultural group is immune from the impact of trauma; it impacts all communities regardless of demographics (Felitti et al. 1998). Most childhood trauma stems from complex trauma which involves repeated or ongoing interpersonal threats (Courtois and Ford, 2009), with children and young people who experience such trauma being at greater risk of observable changes in brain architecture and delays in social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development (Howard 2021). As a result of trauma, children and young people are more likely to have a lower threshold for high intensity emotion, which can cause them to become hypo-aroused (dissociated, withdrawn, or shut down) or hyper-aroused (distraught, panicked, or enraged) – referred to as a narrow window of tolerance (Siegel 1999). Importantly, both states of hypo- and hyper-arousal interfere with children’s ability to regulate emotions and reduce their capacity to concentrate, process information and store knowledge (Brunzell et al. 2016).

In physical education (PE) – a space where the effects of trauma may be exacerbated due to the public nature of participation and the centrality of the body (Quarmby et al., 2022) – trauma may manifest in a range of different actions/behaviours (e.g., small fouls escalating into physical conflict, students refusing to participate with peers, and individuals struggling to adhere to collective rules or principles). Importantly, students’ responses to trauma can vary and, while some outward reactions may cause problems, it is important to remember that they start out as functional attempts to manage and survive in harsh or terrifying environments (O’Toole 2022). Despite this, their (re)actions often prompt others to view them as being ‘off task’ or defiant (Ellison et al. 2020). Hence, without knowledge of the effects of trauma, teachers (at a micro level) often defer to punitive responses, which can lead to and/or include suspensions and exclusions (at a macro/school level). This can exacerbate rather than mediate the needs of trauma-affected youth. As such, there are growing international calls for teachers to become trauma-aware and recognise that patterns of distress and troubling behaviour will likely emerge as a student’s way of surviving threats and adversities (O’Toole 2022).

Schools are crucially positioned to support the needs of children and young people who have experienced trauma (UNESCO 2019) and the subject of PE – through the type of relational encounters that it affords – even more so. Indeed, previous research has explored the ways in which PE teachers attempt to support, for example, pupils’ social and emotional needs, build positive relationships, and develop pro-social behaviours (e.g., Hellison, 2011; Hemphill et al., 2021; Wright et al., 2007). Building on this work, scholars have recently focused their attention on the need for trauma-informed approaches in PE (e.g., Ellison et al. 2020). Given this recent focus, it is critical that prospective physical educators, too, both understand the impact of trauma on children and young people’s growth and development and are prepared to enact trauma-aware practices to support them (Brown et al., 2022). The purpose of this presentation is to report on a novel paper that sought to work with pre-service PE teachers to reflect on the principles underpinning trauma-aware pedagogies (see Quarmby et al., 2022) and, from this, to co-create tangible strategies that could be employed by future and current PE teachers to better support all students, but especially those who have experienced trauma.

Increasingly, more and more children and young people are encountering ‘adverse childhood experiences’ (Felitti et al., 1998) and are consequently struggling to cope with the impact of trauma, which can have lasting effects on their learning, as well as their health and wellbeing (Howard, 2021; SAMHSA, 2014). Thus, the impact of trauma on young people is becoming more significant for teachers, who are increasingly being encouraged to become trauma-aware practitioners (Thomas et al., 2019). Importantly, this also holds relevance for those teachers entering the profession, i.e., pre-service teachers (Brown et al., 2022). However, in becoming trauma-aware, there are likely to be different practices across specific subjects, and some subjects may need to be more acutely aware of trauma and its impacts than others. For example, in physical education (PE), which is the focus of this presentation, the centrality of the (performing) body and the need (at times) for physical contact, distinguish it from most other classroom subjects, and can make it feel ‘risky’ or unsafe for those young people who have experienced trauma (Quarmby et al., 2022).

Becoming trauma-aware will be a challenging endeavour for many in-service teachers. However, for pre-service teachers of PE (PST-PE), who are placed in schools for a relatively short period, learning to work with young people in PE who have experienced trauma will likely be especially challenging and stressful. There is a growing body of research supporting the need for PST-PE to be trauma-aware (Ellison & Walston-Fisette, 2022; Quarmby et al., 2022), but we currently know little about how these individuals learn about trauma-affected young people or come to develop/enact trauma-aware approaches in the context of their school placement as well as the potential impacts of enacting trauma-aware pedagogies for PST-PE themselves.

Several authors have drawn from the work of Dewey (1958) to explore and understand PE teachers’ school-based learning (Armour et al., 2012; Armour et al., 2017; Coleman et al., 2021). From this perspective, learning is understood as growth, a continuous reconstruction of experience as teachers interact with their environment (Dewey, 1958). Central to this understanding of teacher learning is the role of reflection, a form of thinking and doing directed towards improving practice (Hall & Gray, 2016). While much of this research has focused on the learning of in-service PE teachers, we argue that this perspective is also relevant to the placement-based, trauma-aware learning of PST-PE.

Given the importance of placement experiences for PST-PE learning, we argue that further research is warranted to better understand how PST-PE learn about trauma during their placements, and how they plan for, and respond to, young people who have experienced trauma. Consequently, the purpose of this presentation is to report on a study we conducted to explore the placement-based learning experiences of PST-PE, focusing on those moments when they encountered young people who were perceived to have experienced trauma. In understanding learning as growth – ongoing, in-context and social – we aimed to uncover how, where and with whom this learning takes place, to identify opportunities for initial teacher education (ITE), schools and mentors to better shape and support PST-PE learning around trauma in the future.

An increasing number of young people are experiencing school attendance problems (SAPs) (Määttä et al., 2020). SAPs is an overarching term used to refer to difficulties labelled as school refusal, and more recently termed school avoidance or emotional-based school avoidance; as well as other types of school absenteeism, such as truancy, school withdrawal or school exclusion (Heyne, Gren-Landell, Melvin & Gentle-Genitty, 2019).

Attendance problems are complex – they may take many forms, such as struggling to arrive on time, frequently leaving early, or not attending at all (Haddad, 2021). They are underpinned by multiple risk factors at student, caregiver, family, peer, school, community, and macro levels (Gubbels et al., 2019; Thambirajah et al., 2008). By way of illustration, school risk factors include difficult transitions (e.g., from primary to post-primary), inadequate provision for students with additional needs, high academic demands, bullying. Family risk factors include issues like family breakdown, high levels of family stress; and individual level risk factors include experiencing trauma, being neurodiverse, having sensory difficulties, and additional educational needs. These risk factors are complex and often overlapping, resulting in a unique configuration for each young person; they are maintained and exacerbated by broader systemic issues in culture and society (Kearney, 2022).

Whilst It has been common (and often helpful) for researchers to differentiate emotionally-based school avoidance from truancy and other forms of SAP; this distinction belies the fact that that there are likely to be emotional issues associated with all forms of school attendance problems (O’Toole & Devenney, 2020). Indeed, a common theme across all the literature is that emotional distress accompanies SAPs, regardless of the particular pattern of precipitating factors (Devenney & O’Toole, 2022; Knollmann, Reissner, & Hebebrand, 2019).

This suggests that in addressing attendance difficulties we need to recognise and respond to young people’s emotional distress. Trauma-informed practice can be helpful in this regard, since it is an approach that recognises how emotional distress impacts the way people respond and make sense of their world (O’Toole 2022). Trauma-informed practice acknowledges that people’s emotional and behavioural responses makes sense in the context of their life history and circumstances. It enables professionals adopt a more compassionate, hopeful and strengths-based stance in supporting young people who are experiencing difficulties (Wolpow et al, 2009).

Academics at the forefront of research in school attendance are keen to highlight that our approaches to supporting young people, families and schools need to be recalibrated – perhaps even overhauled - especially in the context of changing educational systems and a more uncertain world (Heyne, Gentle-Genitty, Melvin, et al., forthcoming). By applying a trauma-informed lens, this paper contributes to re-thinking our current ways of working with school attendance problems. The current work emerges from a commissioned research project, the aim of which was to develop trauma-informed principles of good practice to guide professionals working with students who experience attendance problems.

Principals play a critical role in promoting a positive school environment, student academic performance, and school development (Liu and Hallinger, 2018). However, study has shown that leadership styles that are successful and effective in one culture may not be so in another (Bahadur-Bhujel, 2021). Cultural expectations, stereotypes, and generalised beliefs shape group members’ expectations about the personal characteristics, traits, and qualities inherent to a successful and effective leader, affecting individuals’ perceptions and responses to leaders (Walker and Hallinger, 2015). The present study focuses on teachers’ perceptions of paternalistic leadership and the influence on teachers’ behaviours and attitudes toward their work in the Arab ethnocultural minority in Israel.

Leadership in Arab sector in Israel rests on a clear authoritarian structure characterised by hierarchy, high power distance, and a tendency towards conservatism and collectivism (Arar and Abu-Nasra, 2019). Paternalistic leadership (PL), defined as authoritative, moral leadership, with elements of appreciation, respect and obedience to the leader (Cheng et al., 2004), was found to be an effective leadership style with positive implications for collective societies with high power distance (Walker and Hallinger, 2015). However, the Arab minority is undergoing a broad and continuous modernisation process due to its contact with the Jewish population, which has intensified over the years (Abu-Asba, 2014). This process has involved a gradual transformation from a traditional patriarchal and collective local personality to a more individualised identity (Arar and Abu-Nasra, 2019).

The present research aims to highlight principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity as a significant factor in explaining the emergence and implications of PL for teachers’ organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in Arab sector in Israel. Our purpose is twofold. First, relying on the similarity attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971) and self-categorisation theories (Turner, 1987), the present study examines how principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity affects the degree of PL as perceived by teachers. Second, the study examines the intervening influence of principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity on the relationship between PL and teacher OCB.

We focus on principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity for several reasons. First, gender is considered a key visible demographic characteristic likely to induce social categorisation in leadership processes (Kark and Waismel-Manor, 2016). Second, research has shown that the principal-teacher dyadic relationship plays a significant role in shaping important teachers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviours (Author2 and Colleagues, 2021). Third, societal values and expectations perpetuate cultural gender role stereotypes (Kark and Waismel-Manor, 2016). Thus, although the Arab sector is characterised by gender inequality; Arab women have recently begun to achieve a balance between family and career demands (Oplatka and Arar, 2016). For instance, a growing number of Arab women attain higher education, and they constitute in increasing percentage of employees in the Arab education system (CBS, 2018).

This study may inform the educational management literature both theoretically and practically. First, to date most studies conducted in Arab sector in Israel have focused on gender differences in the perceptions of leadership (Arar and Abu-Nasra, 2019). Few studies, if any, have examined an integrative model for the effects of principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity on the relationship between principal leadership and teacher OCB in this sector. This is important because there is growing literature on the role of teacher OCB in promoting school improvement (Karadağ and Dulay, 2021), as well as teachers’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Huda, Chairunnisa and Utami 2020). Second, most studies have explored the differential impacts of the subcomponents of PL on school effectiveness (Bahadur-Bhujel, 2021); yet, few have focused on the relationship between PL and teachers’ behaviours. Finally, this study can contribute to the development of training programs for school administrators and principals better suited to the specific ethnocultural context of the Arab minority in Israel.

Existing international literature highlights the critical role of headteachers in school development. Although the literature has focused on the extent to which classroom and school conditions influence student learning, less attention has been paid to how leadership can positively influence those conditions (Leithwood and Day 2007; Cruickshank 2017). Headteachers balance personal, strategic and operational leadership (Netolicky 2020) while drawing upon combinations of transformational and instructional leadership strategies to foster school improvement (Day, Gu and Sammons 2016; Cruickshank 2017). Effective transformational and instructional leadership have been closely connected with teacher commitment as well as school culture and ‘strongly linked to improved student outcomes’ (Cruickshank 2017, 121).

There is vast literature on leadership focusing on the challenges of instructional leadership by using student achievement information for instructional improvement (Temperley, 2005), on how school leaders enact policies in context managing tensions and balancing conflicting goals (Flores & Derrington, 2017), on the interplay of the relationships between school context, principal leadership and mediating variables in leadership for learning (Paletta, Alivernini, & Manganelli, 2017), and on school leadership focusing on values embedded in the biographies of principals of successful schools and how they influence their response to systemic policy reforms (Day & Gu, 2018).

Drawing on the work by Leithwood et al., (2006) and Day, Gu & Sammons (2016), this paper reports on findings from a 3-year research project aimed at investigating the impact of school leadership on teachers’ work and on pupils’ outcomes. The goal of this paper is to investigate to what extent biographical characteristics (e.g. gender, experience as principals, sector of teaching and leadership training of school principals impact on their leadership practices).

Contemporary principals lead schools for success amidst rapidly changing and complex national, state, district/municipality and community contexts with success defined by wellbeing and equity as well as academic outcomes. Complexities in a rapidly changing society require a multi-layered perspective (Author, 2020a) where schools are complex adaptive systems and societal institutions (Author, 2020b; Morrison, 2010). The conceptualization by the International Successful School Principalship Project is underpinned by complexity theory and ecological systems theory.

Complexity theory (e.g., Byrne & Callaghan, 2013) recognizes that organizations operate in a rapidly changing, globalized world. Closely related, ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) posits that individuals (children) typically find themselves in various interconnected ecosystems from the most intimate (home) system to the larger school system and then to the most expansive system which includes society and culture. Together, the new ISSPP Project conceptualization considers schools as adaptive organizations that work within contexts of multiple changes and nested influences that are culturally and historically situated. It has enabled the research network scholars to construct an analytical framework which has informed new research questions and a comparative, mixed methods case study methodology. This methodology employs a systems-oriented approach in investigating successful leadership.

Research Questions

Specifically, the project research questions are:

RQ1: To what extent, and in what ways, is ‘success’ in schools perceived and measured [similarly and/or differently within and across different countries]?

RQ2: What are the key enablers and constraints for achieving school ‘success’ in different contexts?

RQ3: To what extent, and in what ways, do diverse socioeconomic, cultural, political, and professional contexts at different levels of the education system influence systems in which schools operate?

RQ4: Are there similar and/or different personal dispositions and professional knowledge, qualities and capabilities needed in enabling leaders to be(come) successful in different contexts [within and across different countries]?

RQ5: What similarities and differences can be identified in the values, beliefs, and behaviors of successful school principals across different schools in the same country, [and across national cultures and policy contexts]?

RQ6: How do different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system define successful school leadership practices [within and across different countries]?

RQ7: Is each leadership practice identified by different key stakeholders within and outside the school community and at different levels of the education system truly essential for achieving and sustaining ‘success’ [across different schools within each country and across different countries; and over time]? In what ways?

RQ8: [How do different education systems support school principals to learn to become successful, and to sustain their success over time?]

RQ9: To what extent, and in what ways, do school principals contribute to the ‘success’ of their schools (and/or groups of schools) similarly or differently [ within and across different countries]?

In this panel discussion, researchers present their studies of successful principalship as part of the new ISSPP framework and comparative mixed methodology (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Panelists feature scholars from New Zealand, Spain, Poland, Japan, and Brazil.

An internationally recognized chair will moderate the panel and connect the new ISSPP cases to the new theoretical and analytical framework as presented in companion symposia.

Distributed leadership in schools has become a dominant policy focus in Ireland and abroad, as evidenced by significant changes in the literature on distributed leadership and the recent policy changes that have led to the promotion of distributed leadership in the post-primary school sector. A seismic shift in the level of consciousness among the stakeholders regarding the nature and purpose of school leadership at the post-primary level introduced the concept of school leadership teams, commencing a distributed leadership model. The reimagining of school leadership ensures the roles and responsibilities of teachers and school-based stakeholders demand a significant change in how leadership is perceived and how the model functions within the post-primary school system.

This research study seeks to investigate school principals' perspectives at the post-primary level. This study investigates the perspective of voluntary secondary school principals implementing Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018 on Leadership and Management. It examines principals' perspectives to discover how the recent change in leadership policy plays out in Ireland's voluntary secondary school sector.

From an Irish perspective, there is a shortage of empirical evidence concerning post-primary school principals' perspectives on implementing the new model of distributed leadership outlined in the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018. Yet, the transformation of the role of the principal within an emergent leadership model is essential to the sustainability and development of distributed leadership in schools. According to Redmond (2016), "capturing and synthesising principal perspective has thus become an important tool in uncovering the story of modern school leadership" (p.29). Murphy (2020) recognises that while "policy reforms have influenced the preparation and development of school leaders at all levels in the system, there is little available research on principals' perceptions of their preparation to lead schools in the contemporary policy context" (p.1).

The research question asks: What is the experience of school principals in implementing distributed leadership in voluntary secondary schools?

The sub-questions are:

1. Does the implementation of the Department of Education (DE) CL 003/2018 change the principal's role within the school's leadership framework?
2. Does the micropolitics of a school impact the implementation of the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018?
3. What strategies are used by principals to motivate staff when implementing the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018?
4. Is there a distribution of accountability and responsibility within the distributed leadership framework per Department of Education (DE)CL003/2018?

The first question seeks to discover if the role of the principal has changed because of the introduction of DE CL003/2018. Does a new model of leadership involve a new model of principalship?

The second research question focuses on the fundamentally political nature of school leadership.

The third question examines motivating teachers to engage in distributed leadership practice. Changing the model of school leadership requires a whole-school commitment to the process.

The fourth question explores the concept of accountability and responsibility within distributed leadership. Is distributed leadership possible without distributed responsibility and accountability? How do the legislative responsibilities of the principal correlate with a distributed model of school leadership?

The research study examines distributed leadership practice from the principal's perspective. The research study seeks to discover if the underlying concepts of power, motivation, and accountability fundamentally influence the principal's perspective on implementing distributed leadership. The research question and the sub-questions inform the focus of the literature review and provide the rationale for including selected literature.

The research study is significant as it investigates the experience of principals within their school context and captures their perspectives for the consideration of policymakers and practitioners for the future development of distributed leadership.

Teacher professional well-being (TPW) is now a salient field of study as it has been found to be directly or indirectly related to school effectiveness by affecting various factors, such as teacher health (Gray et al., 2017), teacher effectiveness (Duckworth et al., 2009), student achievement (Branand & Nakamura, 2016), and teachers’ organizational commitment (Creemers & Reezigt, 1996). Despite the different definitions and operationalizations of TPW due to its multidimensional nature, the recent conceptual framework offered by OECD (Viac & Fraser, 2020) defined it around physical, mental, cognitive, subjective, and social dimensions. However, while considerable literature has grown around the theme of general well-being, the literature review revealed a paucity of research on TPW (Yildirim, 2015).

The challenging nature of tasks for schools to function properly requires principals to be in two places at once, which is an impossible task to accomplish, so there needs to be a distributed form of leadership allowing teachers and principals to share various leadership functions (Day et al., 2020). Distributed leadership (DL) points out the importance of “interactions among leaders, followers, and their situation” (Spillane, 2005, p. 145), meaning that the functioning of interrelational practices matters. Therefore, DL functions have been conceptualized in relation to developing people, instructional management, and organizational decision-making (Liu & Printy, 2017).

According to the literature, leadership is contextualized differently across the world due to the differences in people’s perceptions and practices of leadership (Hofstede, 1984; House et al., 2014). Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between TPW and DL functions, taking into account the cultural dimensions within clusters of countries. Country clusters were created in this study in a way that countries within clusters exhibit cultural resemblance, whereas cultural dissimilarity exists across clusters. Consequently, the following clusters were established: a Balkan cluster with Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania and Türkiye; an Anglo-Saxon cluster with the USA, United Kingdom and Australia; a Nordic cluster with Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; and an East and South East Asia cluster with Japan, South Korea and Singapore. It is hypothesized that there are differences across country clusters in terms of predicting TPW through different DL dimensions. It seems plausible to explain the differences among country clusters in terms of their differences in DL and TPW due to some cultural characteristics (e.g., power distance, individualism/ collectivism) dominant within clusters.

In light of all this information, this study aims to investigate the relationship between TPW and DL practices within the school by looking at the issue from an intercultural lens. Liu et al. (2022) emphasized that there is inconsistent evidence on the direct relationship between TPW and DL practices in the literature, where they also find that there is no direct relationship between TPW and DL in China school setting. However, a study conducted in Türkiye found that DL has a positive and significant effect on teachers’ organizational happiness (Algan & Ummanel, 2019). Additionally, Thien and Lee (2023) pointed out the research gap in school-level dimensions and TPW and found that in order to cultivate TPW, involvement in the decision-making process, and healthy and positive communication among the principal and teachers is needed in the Malaysian context. As seen, there are differences among contexts about the possible relationship between TPW and DL (or its sub-dimensions) is apparent. From this point of view, there is a need to answer the research question, “Is there a significant difference among different country clusters regarding the relationship between DL and TPW?”

Diversity is sometimes seen as one of the major challenges facing educators today. In this century, educational organizations, including throughout Europe, face numerous changes and challenges including the recent covid-19 pandemic, global unrest, rapid migration, and so on. Amid these changes, attempting to educate students from a range of socio,-cultural and economic backgrounds, as well as of different genders, religions, and sexual orientations, is often seen as problematic.

Moreover, in 2015, 160 nations, including all entities in Europe, signed on to the Sustainable Development goals of the United Nations. The fourth of these calls for education to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Here, these concepts imply that attention must be paid to diversity and inequity within all nations.

The 2023 EERA conference theme, “the value of diversity in educational research” implies the positive nature of diversity within the larger frame of educational research. This would therefore suggest that the theoretical frameworks which could best support educational research in the 21^st century would pay explicit attention to diversity. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily seem to be the case.

The question, therefore, to be examined here is “what kind of leadership might foster the inclusion of diversity “into the core of educational values, educational practices, … , and educational research” to promote the sustainable development goal of inclusion and equity, for as the 2023 call for proposals states, this “is a complex, contested and at times contentious concept.”

Purpose: The purpose of this largely conceptual paper is to explore, drawing both on research related to leadership theories and on data from interviews conducted over 30 years with school and district leaders, the ways in which theory guides and inspires practice. The objectives are:

a) to distinguish among the abilities of various theories of educational leadership (positivist, neutral, and critical) to lead and serve multiple and diverse school communities, and

b) to identify the pros and cons of various kinds of theories as a foundation for inclusivity, equity, and excellence in the 21^st century.

Background. Culbertson (1995) explains that one of the dominant beliefs that emerged from a seminal educational leadership conference held in Chicago in 1956 was that “ought” questions had no place in science, and hence, lie outside the study and practice of educational administration. From this conference, he argued, emerged the common wisdom that a theory of educational leadership should not be normative, but should instead be scientific and objective—a concept that continues to dominate the field both in North America and in Europe. This debate has been heightened in recent years, as scholars like Uljens and Ylimaki (2017) have powerfully asserted that educational leadership must be what they call non-affirmative – arguing that “non-affirmative education theory allows us to understand and promote recognition based democratic citizenship (political, economical and cultural) that respects cultural, ethical and epistemological variations in a globopolitan era” (p. 3).

Nevertheless, it is apparent from the work of scholars like Follett (1918) or Greenfield (1978) that values have never been far from the surface of educational leadership. Moreover by the 1980s, scholars were arguing, not only for a normative approach, but for a critical theory of leadership (Foster, 1986; Quantz, Rogers, & Dantley, 1991) that addressed the “needs of the billions of the world’s people in the direct want (Burns, 1978).

In an era of heightened awareness of diversity, a theory of leadership that attends explicitly to the concept of diversity may be necessary to overcome the hegemony of traditional dominant groups and to be inclusive and equitable towards diverse perspectives, cultures, and values.

The main theme of this project, funded by Leargas (Ireland) 2019-1-IE01-KA201-051528, was to support schools to engage with the bigger questions that frame the context of education and specifically to exlpore a more explicit and nuanced consideration of diversity, equity and democracy in leaders and teachers professional learning (Lumby, Crow & Pashiardis,(2008), Netolicky, D (2019) This part of the project had two objectives (i) enhance leaders and teacher knowledge base with respect to the three themes (two of which are considered in this paper ie.e diveristy and equity) by co-constructing a suite of action learning sets that would frame seminars designed to facilitate interprofessional dialogue on these issues and (ii) to work in a ways that would break down any barriers, either real or imagined, between the knowledge that exists in research and scholarship and the pedagogy of practice in schools. In working towards this objective we started from where schools were and in particular, where students were at in their thinking (Ruffin and Simon 2022). This baseline research work in the schools provided a real-time, picture of what was happening in each school. The student views, in particular, resonated with the teacher groups in the action learning set development sessions. When teachers and leaders witnessed quotes from students as to how they saw/ experienced these themes they recognised their roles in the development of these topics among themselves as professionals and in their own classroom practice. The team recognised the need to target the minds and hearts of the participants. In some cases, this involved a change of mindset, in others the need was more in the development or awakening of nascent mindsets. We knew we had ambitious expectations for transformative outcomes but we were not naive enough to think that working through an action learning set on diversity, for example, was going to change the world. We had hoped however that it might begin to change the questions asked and the assumptions that gave rise to these questions. Formative evaluations of an action learning sets therefore focused on picking up these changes and shifts in ideas and thinking. This paper will present finding from the school based case study on how leaders, teachers and students viewed diversity and equity, it will then outline the methodology used to scaffold the seminars with leaders and teachers and finally will present evidence of shifting ideas and thinking among leaders and teachers. It was important to recognise that issues related to these complex themes are not resolvable in a short timeframe however, once the initial commitment was made by the participating teachers the turn towards a more deliberative approach to an exploration of these themes started and consequently a more developed understanding was achieved by everyone who participated in the work. The next step was to recognise that the themes are difficult with inconclusive and evolving perspectives that will always be in flux - it was, therefore, essential to review ideas, change minds and revisit thinking this was achieved by the methodology and approach taken to the project activities.

The Swedish school law and curriculum calls for a leadership that promotes equal opportunities for all children and students. International research on educational leadership, school leadership, and its relation to students’ educational outcome is extensive (e.g., Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2020; Heck & Hallinger, 2014; Schrik & Wasonga, 2019). There is also an interest in international research about the relevance of school leaders for equity (Leithwood, 2021) and how different ways of perceiving and operationalising concepts like inclusion have an impact on equality (Alexiadou et al., 2016).

One of the biggest challenges in relation to schools’ work for equal opportunities for students is gender based differences in outcomes. Grade levels among boys are lower than among girls when they leave compulsory schools in Sweden (Skolverket, 2022). These gender based differences have consequences for boys' chances to attend upper secondary school, and ultimately higher education. In the long run this also affects boys' ability to find work that demands a certain level of education which in turn affects their well-being. Other factors beyond gender, such as educational level of the parents and the students’ migration background, also affect the overall grade. However, boys receive lower grades than girls even when considering these background factors (Skolverket, 2022).

From an international perspective there has been an interest in the phenomena of gender differences in educational outcomes for a long time (Salisbury, Rees & Gorard, 1999; Collins, Kenway & McLeod, 2000). However, there has been little consensus about what causes the differences. Previous research has shown that different norms of masculinity constitute limitations for boys. One example is the discussion on how anti-study culture or anti-effort culture affect how boys relate to their studies, which also affects their outcomes (Zimmerman, 2018).

In a Swedish context, equity in education can be described in three strategies: equal access to education, equal quality of education and that education is organized in such manner that all students can succeed in school (SOU 2020:28). The third strategy can be described as the school's assignment to counteract inequalities that arise on the bases of the students' different prerequisites based on socioeconomic, gender and migration background. In Sweden it is the principal's responsibility to ensure that the education is aligned with the goals formulated in the steering documents for Swedish schools (Lgr22; SFS 2010:800; SFS 2008:567). In addition, principals in Sweden are responsible to organize strategically and use resources effectively, while the municipality (school organizer) has an overriding responsibility to organize and allocate resources to different schools based on their different prerequisites. One obligation in this work is to counteract gender differences and tighten the gap between boys' and girls' outcomes. Given this governing structure principals and representatives for the school organizer are key agents in counteracting these gender differences.

The purpose of the study is to explore how principals and representatives for the school organizer in one municipality in Sweden understands and describes the problem of gender differences in educational outcomes. Further, how they work to promote equity. We are guided by the following research questions:

• How is the problem formulated by the interviewees? What are the underlying assumptions in their reasoning?
• What measures and strategies do the informants find necessary to address the problem?
• What potential consequences do the informants' way of thinking and acting have for gender equity?

Our analysis builds on Bacchis WPR-approach (Bacchi, 2012). Since this approach is both a theoretical framework and a methodology it is presented under the section. Methods/Methodology.

Diversity and differentiation are in various ways critical aspects of education. Equality was one of the driving forces of establishing a unified school system in Sweden during the 60’s, as well as the formation of the public preschool and the formation initiatives towards the (Richardson, 2010). Further, problems in differentiation was one of the reasons for decentralizing the Swedish school system during the 90’s. The idea was to move the power closer to the local schools, to take the local context and needs into account when leading schools. Diversity in leading was supposed to increase equivalence through differentiation (Jacobsson, 2017). Contrary to the ambition, differences in the local contexts has come to be consider a threat to equivalent education.

The decentralization, and succeeding reforms, have affected the role of the school leader, by regulations of the school leader’s work as well as regulations of the schools in which they lead.

In response to the European commission’s (2014) initiatives for entrepreneurship education, the Swedish government adopted a national digitalization strategy for the Swedish school system (2017), with visions of the Swedish schools at the forefront of using the opportunities of digital technology. The policy expresses expectations on principals to lead digital development at their local schools. In addition, the revised version of the Swedish preschool curricula also clarifies principals’ responsibility of leading school development and create conditions for teachers to enact the new policy in educational practice. This indicates that principals are the ones responsible to develop education, by using the opportunities of digital technology.

Researchers, as well as political representatives, implies that school leaders, in their roles as facilitators of educational reforms and policy, are the ones with possibilities to develop future education (Huber & Muijs, 2010; Leithwood, Sun, & Pollock, 2017; Pont, Nusche, & Moorman, 2008). Competent school leaders are said to be the ones who meet political requirements with a focus on education, a work that requires that school leaders continuously develop their own leading practice to adapt policy to the prerequisites of the local schools. Interpreting policy in educational practice requires professional knowledge and connects to school leaders’ professional development. Although research on school leaders’ professional learning has increased, it mainly concentrate on training programmes for new principals and crucial aspects of learning in these programmes. Research on school leaders’ continuous professional development is insufficient (Aas & Blom, 2017) and more knowledge is required about the processes, in which school leaders develop their understandings of leading in relation to societal changes. Not least, research on continuous professional development in collaboration with other school leaders.

This study focuses on school leaders’ professional development in a collaborative action research project, aiming to develop knowledge of how to lead digitalization in preschool education.

The theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) is used to examine what happens in the professional development practice when the principals develop their knowledge of how to lead digitalization in preschool education. The theory of practice architectures encompasses arrangements of three different kinds. Cultural-discursive arrangements are the sayings of a practice, mediated through language and discourses, used in and about a practice. Material-economic arrangements are resources that shape the doings of a practice, mediated in activity and work as doings. It includes the physical environment, human and non-human entities, schedules, money and time. Social-political arrangements are shaping how people relate to other people and to non-human objects, mediated in the social space as rules, hierarchies, solidarities and other relationships.

Educational leadership encompasses a multitude of tasks in diverse settings – a situation which has been rendered even more complex by recent technological developments (Håkansson Lindqvist & Pettersson, 2019). In this context, it is of interest how school leaders deal with the respective demands. Numerous studies focus on the role and relevance of school leaders in the integration of technology (for critical reviews see Dexter & Richardson, 2019; or Waffner, 2021). Much of this work approaches the theme from a classroom or student learning perspective, yet the employed frameworks also include other aspects such as a school’s vision of using digital technology or individuals’ mindsets or competences. One aspect that is dealt with differently in these frameworks is that of communication and cooperation. While it can be considered to be included in domains such as a school’s organization, administration or culture, as identified in the six frameworks presented by Waffner (2021), it constitutes a separate domain in the framework employed by Dexter and Richardson (2019). Communicating and cooperating with various stakeholders is one of the key tasks of school leaders and technological developments have opened up numerous new communication channels that have also been adopted by schools. In our contribution, we ask how school leaders in Switzerland use school websites in managing school-family relations, thereby focusing on communication as one area of school leadership which has received little attention in the context of technology integration.

To date, existing empirical work addressing school-family relations and digital media is fragmented and much of it focuses on specific tools, for example on text messages (Goodall, 2014) but also websites (Gu, 2017). Key insights include that due to their specific characteristics, digital technologies change the school-family relationship (Thompson et al., 2015) and have the potential for a more systematic inclusion of parents (Olmstead, 2013). School leadership issues are hardly explicitly treated in these studies. Therefore, in order to adequately address our research question, we draw upon concepts from the following three fields of research: (1) digitalization; (2) school leadership, and (3) school-family relations:

(1) Dealing with technological developments can be described in three broad phases (1) integration, where new technologies are integrated into routines without fundamentally altering them; (2) modification, where existing practices are enlarged or changed; and (3) transformation, which occurs when revolutionary changes take place (among others: Puentedura, 2013).

(2) Dexter and Richardson (2019) make use of a general model of effective school leaders’ practices (Hitt and Tucker, 2016 in Dexter & Richardson, 2019) when critically reviewing the integration of technology in schools. Their model consists of the five domains, namely: establishing and conveying the vision; facilitating a high-quality learning experience for students; building professional capacity; creating a supportive organization for learning and connecting with external partners. More generally, numerous authors stress that leading schools in the digital age requires leaders to not only integrate technology into the classroom, but also transform schools from an organizational and administrative perspective, therefore calling for digital leadership (among others: Schiefner-Rohs, 2016).

(3) The frame of reference for capturing school-family relations is Epstein’s (1987) model of overlapping spheres of influence on children’s learning. In the context of Switzerland, the respective responsibilities have traditionally been clearly separated and efforts towards a more partnership-oriented approach are limited (Egger et al., 2015).

Our contribution, therefore, aims to add to the fragmented knowledge on how school leaders manage digital communication in school-family relations in the context of Switzerland, a country with a highly decentralised school system. We will present data from an ongoing research project focusing on school websites, relying on data gathered through interviews with school personnel.

Schools are considered knowledge-creating organizations (Harris, 2008) that are in constant exchange with their environment (Bastedo, 2006). Accordingly, educational research assumes that schools primarily innovate effectively when they are involved in learning networks with other schools (Hargreaves, 2003) and/or when there is an exchange of knowledge with other external partners, e.g., universities (Coburn and Penuel, 2016). In the face of current crises and to keep up with social and technological developments, schools are, nonetheless, more than ever requested to implement innovations, some of which are long overdue (Brown and Luzmore, 2021).

Schools’ motivation to innovate arises from different sources connected with cultural, societal, or political changes and transitions (Goldenbaum, 2012). However, the main drivers of innovation in schools are often local competition between institutions and the regressive effects of large-scale, standardized reform strategies (Sahlberg, 2016). Additionally, external driving forces requiring schools or whole education systems to innovate, i.e., disruptive changes in educational environments like the COVID-19 pandemic (Pietsch et al., 2022), natural catastrophes and disasters (Brown and Luzmore, 2021).

Even though the relevance of innovation, networks, and knowledge mobilization for school improvement has been studied extensively (Harris, 2008; Greany, 2018), little is known about knowledge management practices that make expertise accessible for innovation in schools (Cheng, 2021). Research proved that schools tend to maintain long-standing and well-established systems and serve multiple constituents, which makes implementing changes and innovations hard to plan and predict (Tyack & Tobin, 1994).

Thus, for innovations in schools to be successful, continuous “orchestrated complex combinations of vertical and lateral knowledge mobilisation” (Greany, 2018, p. 66) are required. As schools are open systems that constantly interact with their environment (Bastedo, 2006), their importance for innovation and change is exceptionally high when they act as nodes in educational learning networks (see Hadfield et al., 2006). Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2006) offers considerable potential to better understand how, for example, knowledge can be shared across borders (for example) between organizations. Accordingly, different ways of inventing new ideas and technologies exist. Either they result from internal knowledge and need external paths to market or develop through external knowledge using internal paths to become successful (Chesbrough, 2006). Regarding schools’ central function for society, the relevance of knowledge flows between organizations, the professionalism of school leaders and teachers, and strategic management capabilities to integrate knowledge are particularly high (Bastedo, 2006; Hadfield et al., 2006).

Against this background, our study was guided by the following research questions to make a contribution to the fields of innovation and knowledge mobilization in the public sector, introducing the concept of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006) as well as empirically investigate the impact of knowledge inflows on pedagogical innovation in schools.1) Do schools incorporate external knowledge for internal innovation? 2) If so, where does this knowledge for internal innovation come from, and to what extent is it used? 3) Does externally mobilized knowledge (open innovation) increase the likelihood of innovations being introduced in schools compared to knowledge mobilization within schools (closed innovation)? 4) Can different effects of knowledge mobilization be identified depending on the type of innovation?

School leaders are generally regarded as important actors and promoters of school development (e.g. Cramer et al., 2021; Eickelmann, 2010), and thus usually face a multitude of different tasks and demands. At the same time, school leaders, their everyday work and their activities are transformed by social transformation processes (Krein & Schiefner-Rohs, 2022). One example of such transformation phenomena, which is also frequently discussed in the discourse on development processes (in) schools, is digitality (Stalder, 2016). Digitality does not only affect school leaders in the context of school development and the related requirements of organizational, instructional, personnel, cooperation, or technological development (Eickelmann & Gerick, 2018). Likewise, the everyday work and actions of school leaders, e.g., school administration or cooperation with non-school actors, is cross-sectionally shaped by digitality (Schiefner-Rohs, 2019). In their explorative study, Tulowitzki and Gerick (2020) were also able to show that digital media "unfold potentials and possibilities as well as entail changes and consequences in the activities of school leaders" (p. 333; translation by the author). Similarly, school leaders also reported various challenges relevant to their actions (ibid.). However, more profound insights into such digitality-related potentials, changes, and challenges are still lacking. Furthermore, little research has been done on how school leadership action itself is concretely shaped in situ and in actu under the perspective of digitality or is transformed by it (e.g., Heffernan & Selwyn, 2021). In this context, Håkansson and Pettersson (2019) even state an international need for holistic research on school leaders and their everyday professional life and actions.

Addressing this desideratum, this contribution aims to provide insights into the actions of school leaders under the conditions of digitality. The focus is on different facets of school leadership actions and the potentials and challenges that become visible in these facets. Accordingly, the contribution is based on the following research questions:

1. How do school leaders act under the conditions of digitality?
2. How do digitality-related transformation processes manifest themselves in the everyday work of school leaders?
3. What are the potentials and challenges of school leadership under the conditions of digitality?

Teachers are the key to school improvement. Teachers are the key to student achievement. Two such statements which are to be found with varying interpretations in literature would immediately suggest that teacher leadership must surely be an essential aspect of teachers’ work at large. The literature is replete with what characterises teacher leadership, and more specifically teachers as leaders, but there is limited consensus about broader conceptualisations of teacher leadership in different contexts. This intrigue was the genesis of a research project, The International Study of Teacher Leadership (ISTL) (www.mru.ca/istl) begun three years ago which focused on how teacher leadership is conceptualised and enacted. This panel discussion presents a specific focus of that study: What are the perspectives of teachers who emerge as unrecognised enactors of teacher leadership in three different countries – South Africa, Colombia, Australia?

A group of researchers from 12 universities in 12 different countries collaborated around the topic of teacher leadership working with a shared literature review and research design in search of conceptualisation of teacher leadership in each of the countries. The ISTL comprises a noticeable number of members from countries of non-Western origin. It is this factor that has propelled the interests of the researchers to explore how the concepts of teacher leadership are enacted in different cultural contexts. Extensive research by this large group of international researchers has found and shared enlightenment as to the understandings of teacher leadership where the professional activities of teacher leaders occur in a range of complex sociocultural contexts across the world. The attributes required of teachers in this range of contexts varies and this study has demonstrated that if teacher leadership is to be a recognised phenomenon, teachers are required to demonstrate their knowledge and lived experience within localised social and political dimensions. This viewpoint is also the axis for ensuring educational policies and practices meet the needs of the local context and yet work with the wider academic views of teacher leadership as it appears in the literature from mainly a Western perspective.

The ISTL group designed a mixed-methods methodological approach with freedom for members of each country to develop their own database according to the availability of participants and relevance to the cultural nuances of their country. Methods of data collection included document analyses, questionnaires, interviews, case studies, and oral histories. As the larger study explored and found, teachers enacting leadership is not always obvious. There are many who hold formal positions with defined roles and apparent responsibilities, but probably far more who might be said to be informal leaders not recognised as such but nonetheless seemingly enacting the qualities of leadership. Researchers from three of the countries, South Africa, Colombia, and Australia have chosen to share emerging findings of the perspectives of teachers in leadership as a finer focus for this panel discussion: listening to the teachers who may never have heard of, let alone used the term teacher leader, yet seemingly enacting their day-to-day roles in what might be described elsewhere as teacher leadership.

The strength of this research is that each author/panel member is a national of their own country with lived experiences of their previous school teaching careers and now as academics in their respective universities. It is proposed that the panel will highlight what might be of interest to others beyond these three countries and encourage a broader debate in pursuit of a deeper understanding of teacher leadership beyond the literature. It is to encourage an open approach to encompassing the diversity of socio-cultural contexts in which teachers operate worldwide and thus a broader empirical research base about teacher leadership.

This presentation draws on a study of school leaders' experiences of Christian education ethos development. The research provided insights into the complexities of headteacher leadership within schools with a Christian character. I discuss these complexities and make recommendations for school leaders seeking to develop a school Christian education ethos in a culturally and religiously diverse modern Europe. I outline a practical methodology that school leaders can adapt to investigate the influence of their vision and espoused values on pupils' school experiences in all schools, with or without Christian character. This methodology promotes the pupil voice and can provide valuable insights into their sense of belonging within their school communities.

The research comprised two studies in England. The first focused on the leadership experiences of a new secondary headteacher in a recently opened Christian Free School. The second focused on a long-serving primary Church Academy headteacher. Using creative data-collection methods, I elicited a small group of pupils' views of their education within the school's ethos. The research stemmed from my interest in leaders' development of education ethos as a former headteacher of two primary schools.

A review of the literature on 'ethos' indicated that 'ethos' was difficult to recognise, define and measure in the context of schools. I developed a working definition of 'ethos' building on McLaughlin's (2005) conception of education ethos as an identifiable entity which defines the school's climate or character. My definition of education ethos represented what members of the school community stood for, its value system, its practices, and the purposes of education. Ethos represented the nature of the interactions between community members. I distinguished between education ethos as an aspirational entity sought by leaders and an entity experienced by community members (McLaughlin, 2005). I was interested in the intended and experienced education ethos within Christian education.

In England, the economy, marketisation of schooling and international comparison of schools in England with those in other countries using international league tables placed school leaders under increased pressure to achieve excellence in all aspects of the school's work. Although there has been a global focus on standards for economic competitiveness, there has been agreement on the importance of leaders creating positive school ethos. Since 2010, successive Conservative governments have focused on furthering headteachers' leadership autonomy and enhancing parents' choice of schooling. Autonomy concerns the extent to which those at lower levels of the system can make decisions independently of those at higher levels.

Policy initiatives have emphasised the creation of academies and Free Schools. These schools can give leaders greater autonomy over education, facilitating ethos development and introducing innovative curriculum design and teaching approaches. However, there was a risk that the ongoing demands of statutory school inspections and public examinations stifled such innovation. An issue was how externally imposed accountability frameworks limited school leaders' autonomy (Forrester and Gunter, 2009; Fink, 2010). Leaders seeking to develop innovative educational practices in the research schools needed to feel they possessed the capacity, confidence, and freedom to exercise autonomy. Headteachers had to decide how much they should comply with externally enforced accountability criteria.

The Church of England and Catholic Churches articulated an agenda which defined what was meant by Christian distinctiveness. Changes to the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS) reflected the Church of England's agenda for excellence in Christian education. A distinctively Christian ethos based on Christian values was important. Leaders faced challenges in conveying the meaning and importance of the school's Christian values to the school community. They should enable pupils' holistic development, including academic achievement.

Across the European context, the subject of religious education (RE) is seen increasingly as an important tool with which schools may enhance students’ sense of identity, promote intercultural understanding, and raise awareness of issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (Jackson, 2014; Weisse, 2010). Acknowledging that religious beliefs and practices are essential dimensions of diversity in a pluralistic society, educators working with RE are given the responsibility to teach skills and knowledge that are vital for living together in diverse communities. In RE classrooms, students get to learn about a variety of religions and worldviews. As such, RE is seen to provide a space in which students are given the opportunity to reflect on existential and ontological questions and enhance their understanding of the beliefs and perspectives of people whose worldviews and values differ from their own (Bråten, 2015; Engen, 2018; Reiss, 2016). For that reason, although many countries still practice confessional RE in public schools (Kuyk et al., 2007), there is a trend and also recommendations towards inclusive and non-confessional RE in public schools in Europe, such as the Norwegian non-confessional RE subject (see also Jackson, 2014).

Simultaneously, many students in public schools attend non-formal faith education programs of religious minorities in their spare time, often run by local religious communities. Most participants in these programs are children and youth with immigrant backgrounds. So-called “Quran schools” (Moore, 2012) are probably the most well-known example of such education programs, although most minority faith communities have their equivalents, such as Catholic catechesis. Yet, this type of education has received modest attention in research, despite the politicization of migration-related diversity, particularly religious diversity, across Europe (Alba & Foner, 2017; Connor, 2014; Schweitzer et al., 2019). In particular, there is a gap in research and understanding about the interface between faith community and public school religious education, not least with regard to how schools accommodate for and address the phenomenon of students’ dual experience of RE.

On this background, the proposal at hand investigates how school leaders in urban and rural parts of Norway view the interconnections between formal RE in public schools, and non-formal religious education in local faith communities, mapping views on religious diversity, students’ leisure activities, exposure to and experiences with local religious communities. The paper aims to answer the following research question: How do school leaders in public schools in Norway understand religious diversity, and how do they reflect upon the phenomenon of non-formal faith education?

In Sweden, as in many other countries all over the world, the question of equality is one of the most critical concerns. In the international policy discourse, there is a dissatisfaction with unequal educational opportunities for students. As a global trend, educational policies aiming to address the inequality in education emphasise global competiveness with a focus on comparative studies, such as OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, and greater accountability (Schultz, 2019).

All students must have access to education to achieve the best results possible. In the Swedish Education Act, education must be equivalent regardless of where in the country it is organised (SFS 2010:800). In an equivalent education, students are compensated according to their background and conditions, which means that each student receives the support required to achieve the school’s goals. The equivalence mission rests on every stalkeholder who is responsible for education.

Monitoring results is an important task for educational managers at the local school level. Portrayed as loosely coupled (Weick, 1976) and multi-leveled (Uljens, 2015), the school organisation is supposed to be rationally managed to effectively operate, holding every level accountable for students’ learning outcomes. The various levels in the school system can be illustrated as ‘webs of contracts’ (Wohlstetter et al., 2008), where local school agents, for example teachers, undertake actions on behalf of a principal (Gailmard, 2014). According to Ferris (1992), “the principal ‘contracts’ with the agents to act on the principal’s behalf” (p. 333). The contract further involves the delegation of discretion and decision-making authority to the agents (Soudry, 2007). In turn, the principal may make decisions that affect the actions agents take.

Drawing on the principal-agent theoretical framework, the aim of this study is to empirically examine the functionality of the local school system, particularly with respect to the contract of equal opportunities for all students to improve school results. The following research question has guided the study: How does the local school system function to uphold the contract of giving all students equal conditions for increased merit values?

The study is part of a research project in a Swedish municipality. Previous results from the project (Rapp, 2021; Ståhlkrantz & Rapp, 2022) show that the superintendent, as principal, prioritises the continuous improvement of academic outcomes. The superintendent emphasises that the main priority is for students to achieve high merit values. However, this priority is not supported by all agents in the school organisation. For example, one teacher considers that the students are too young to have to worry about their grades (Rapp, 2021). There are also school principals who prioritise students’ well-being over their academic outcomes (Ståhlkrantz & Rapp, 2022). These are examples of different beliefs and values (Robinson, 2017) that can exist on various levels in the school organisation.

As a multi-leveled governed system, there is a distribution of power among different system levels but also a dynamic relationship and interaction among various actors and their interdependency in the school organisation (Wilkoszewski & Sundby, 2016). To handle expectations and requirements from the principal, local school agents use adaptive strategies, such as bridging and buffering (DiPaola & Tschannen-Moran, 2005) and acting as gatekeepers (Ståhlkrantz & Rapp, 2022). When this occurs, the contract between principal and agents is broken, which makes it difficult or even impossible to realise the principal’s intentions. With the problems ecountered in a multi-leveled school organisation, the hypothesis of this study is that the picture of an ideal, well-functioning school organisation as a “governing chain” with “webs of contract” that aim to give students equal educational opportunities for optimal goalfullfilment may be better illustrated as a diversified, semi-functional school system.

It has been internationally argued that many contextual factors contribute to the promotion of students’ well-being (Ben-Arieh et al., 2014; Hernández-Torrano et al., 2021). This perspective allows us to focus on possible strengths within education systems rather than looking at schooling only from a deficit perspective. Compulsory education and a right to education is a general feature of modern welfare states, but there is a constant shadow of non-attendance. School attendance problems have been a frequent topic in the international research over decades (e.g. Heyne et al., 2019; Kearney et al., 2019; Reid, 2008, 2013; Ricking, 2003) and poor educational outcomes have been described as an important risk factor for future social and health problems, especially for children in social vulnerable situations (Forsman et al., 2016; Gauffin et al., 2013). However, salutogenic perspectives have also come into focus and there is a need to critically discuss how school and related systems can in a sustainable way address attendance problems and break pattern of exclusion (Bodén, 2013; Strand, 2013). Yet there is still very little research available that can help us comprehend the situation and guide school leaders and student health teams in their preventive work (Ekstrand, 2015). With this research on organisational strategies for and professional perspectives on school attendance we want to provide understandings of conditions for learning and well-being of diverse student groups in different European countries.

There are few studies that compare school attendance problems and organisational strategies in different European contexts (Keppens & Spryt, 2018). School systems answer to challenges and shape preconditions for school attendance in accordance with the overall logic within the respective school and welfare systems. That makes it interesting to study similar phenomena in different education systems. The here proposed symposium builds on an international comparative research project, financed by the Swedish Research Council on national, organisational, and individual dimensions of school attendance problems in four countries. The project applies a mixed method approach. The quantitative studies within the project on school attendance statistics showed that the countries we study have different ways of recording and reporting statistical information on absence, different ways of publishing relevant information, and different judgements on which level of absence is considered to be problematic. Some countries – in our sample, England (and also Japan) – have developed a system for collecting and disseminating information about school absence on a regular basis, while other countries have no national system (Germany), or collect national data occasionally on a non-regular basis (Sweden) (Kreitz-Sandberg et al., forthcoming).

With a starting point in some of the quantitative results of the project, this symposium will preliminarily engage with the qualitative case studies from three of the four studied countries, Sweden, Germany and the UK. The here introduced multi-site case studies explore and critically discuss dynamic relations between education and health and wellbeing. Multi-cite case studies are part of the empirical evidence gathered in the participating countries, many of them from urban contexts. The choice of countries can be related to welfare state systems in the tradition of Esping-Andersen (1990) who distinguished between so-called social democratic, conservative and liberal welfare state systems. The three countries have also different school systems: differentiated secondary education, single-track and comprehensive systems. The age group in focus are 15- to 17 year-old youths, in the transition between different school stages, including also academic and vocational tracks. The presentations provide preliminary results from studies in Sweden, Germany and the UK (England) and will be discussed from a critical and creative perspective with focus on the question what we as researchers from various fields can contribute through empirically grounded research.

How data on school absenteeism and school attendance are registered, recorded and published varies greatly between countries. This makes it difficult to compare the situation and the trends concerning absenteeism between countries. If a comparison were to be made between the levels of absenteeism and the trends concerning them in different countries, it would be difficult to rely solely on national statistics; it would instead be necessary to either collect specific data in international surveys designed to do this, or explore whether other international studies contain this information. One way of comparing students´ absenteeism between countries could be to use data from the PISA studies. This presentation will explore how PISA-data can be used to make such comparisons. The presentation compares student absenteeism between Germany, Japan, Sweden and United Kingdom using data from the PISA-studies. In the PISA-studies students were asked about whether they had skipped school in the student questionnaires in 2000, 2012, 2015 and 2018. As the wording was partly different in 2000 than in the other years the data from 2012, 2015 and 2018 are used for the comparison. PISA data can be used to see the proportion of students who have indicated in the student questionnaire that they in the last two full weeks of school prior to their completion of the PISA student questionnaire had skipped at least a whole school day at one time. The students who have reported that they have been absent are compared with all the students in the countries in relation to their results on the PISA test (reading comprehension, mathematics and science) and on some background variables (gender, socio-economic background and migration background). PISA data can be used to analyse and compare school attendance in different countries and explore how different factors are related to school attendance and how this may differ between countries. By comparing and analysing school attendance in different countries it is possible to identify and discuss factors that influence school attendance and issues that may be of importance to advance school attendance. However, we also can see limitations and possibilities to interpret the differences in results only on the basis of the survey data alone are limited. That is where we suggest qualitative case studies to gain a more holistic understanding and for critically discussing the dynamic relations between education and health and wellbeing of school youth.

Avvisati, F. & Keslair, F. (2014). REPEST: Stata module to run estimations with weighted replicate samples and plausible values. Statistical Software Components S457918, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 06 Jan 2020 Kreitz-Sandberg, S., Backlund, Å., Fredriksson, U., Isaksson, J., Rasmusson, M. & Gren Landell, M. (2022) Understanding School Attendance Problems through Attendance Statistics: International Comparative Views on the Situation in Sweden, Germany, the UK (England), and Japan. Manuscript submitted for publication. OECD (2014a) PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn. Students’ Engagement, Drive and Self-beliefs. (Volume III). Paris: OECD OECD (2014b) PISA 2012 Results: What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV). Paris: OECD OECD (2016) PISA 2015 Results: Policies and Practices for Successful schools (Volume II) Paris: OECD OECD (2019a) PISA 2018 Results: What Students Know and Can Do. Volume I. Paris: OECD OECD (2019b) PISA 2018 Results: Where All Students Can Succeed. Volume II. Paris: OECD OECD (2019c) PISA 2018 Results: What School Life Means for Students’ Lives. Volume III. Paris: OECD

All schools need to provide every single child with quality education, and school attendance problems have been described as a serious challenge that needs to be counteracted and prevented (Thornton, Darmody, & McCoy, 2013). Swedish schools have been famous for their inclusive character. During recent decades, however, students have not performed as well as earlier in international tests like PISA (OECD, 2013). While Swedish schools were earlier known for their small differences between students from high or low socioeconomic strata (SES), social differences are now rising (Karlsson & Oskarsson, 2018). The inclusive character of schools has diminished since the 1990s (Vislie, 2003). A report by the Swedish government shed light on school non-attendance, and its risk of no longer being included into the classroom environment as a phenomenon that has received little attention in Sweden (SOU 2016:94). Both theoretically informed and empirically grounded studies on school attendance are rare in the Swedish context and on the background on this research desideratum, we planned the here introduced study. We know little about how practical work with school absence is conducted in Sweden (Gren Landell et al. 2015; Gren Landell, 2018), and studies with child perspectives on school attendance are very rare (Keppens & Spryt, 2017). By studying and comparing cases of how school attendance is handled in the various contexts, the study wants to provide a better understanding of different ways of looking at problems and solutions regarding school attendance. This presentation contributes results from the case studies in three Swedish municipalities. It presents an analysis of the support systems from the perspective of professionals and students. The presentation analyses data from individual interviews with school leaders as well as focus group interviews with teachers and student health professionals in and around school. Interviews with students focus on their perspective on support they have received or would have hoped for. In the presentation we investigate questions like: How are support systems structured and practiced? How are problems and solutions formulated in policies and by professionals, and in support systems? What are teachers’ and other professionals’ experiences of and perspectives on existing support systems and preventive strategies for school absenteeism? And finally: What is the students’ perspective on support systems and preventive work in schools?

Gren-Landell, M., Allvin, C. E., Bradley, M., Andersson, M., Andersson, G., Allvin, C. E., & Bradley, M. (2015). Teachers’ views on risk factors for problematic school absenteeism in Swedish primary school students. Educational Psychology in Practice31, 31(4), 412–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/02667363.2015.1086726 Gren Landell, M. (2018). Främja närvaro: Att förebygga frånvaro i skolan. Litauen: Natur & Kultur. Karlsson, K. G. & Oskarsson, M. (2018). Likvärdighet. In Fredriksson, U. A., Pettersson, A. & Karlsson, K.-G. (Eds.) Pisa under 15 år: resultat och trender (pp. 115-130). Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Keppens, G. & Spruyt, B. (2017) The development of persistent truant behavior: an explanatory analysis of adolescents´ perspectives. Educational Research, 59(3): 353-370. OECD (2013). PISA 2012 Results (Volume IV): What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices. Paris: OECD Publishing. SOU 2016:94. (2016). Att vända frånvaro till närvaro – en utredning om problematisk elevfrånvaro. Stockholm. https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/statens-offentliga.../01/sou-201694/%0A%0A Thornton, M., Darmody, M., & McCoy, S. (2013). Persistent absenteeism among Irish primary school pupils. Educational Review, 65(4), 488–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.768599 Vislie, L. (2003). From integration to inclusion: Focusing global trends and changes in the western European societies. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 18(1), 17–35.

The presentation reflects the present situation in Germany, where compulsory school attendance is anchored in state constitutions or education acts and claims regular attendance in school for 12 years (Ricking & Rothenburg, 2020; Grewe, 2005). Defiance of compulsory school attendance usually leads to disciplinary measures, such as fines, school attendance under compulsion by the police and – in serious cases – arrest sentences (Böhm, 2011; Ricking & Hagen, 2016). However, a punitive approach to non-attendance has only limited effects in the reduction of absence patterns (Pendon, 2016). In contrast, school-based programs of prevention and intervention are published and discussed (f.ex. Adenaw et al., 2020). Consequently, several educational authorities and school boards settled on a plan of action to change laws, principles and ways of management of school absenteeism in the last years (Sutphen et al., 2010). Several German states reorganized policies of punishment towards structures of pedagogical support (Enderle et al., 2023, in review; Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung Hamburg, 2013). The paradigm shift has been adopted by schools in Hamburg (Ricking & Team, 2020). The supportive approach is the result of a study that was conducted in Hamburg 2019-2022. The study was applied in the context of scientific monitoring and in collaboration between 4 Schools, 2 Foundations, the Hamburg School Board and the University of Oldenburg. The aim was to strengthen schools in their capacities to act, to support students’ learning engagement or well-being and to reduce school absenteeism and dropout. Selected results and the aspects of pedagogical support within the guiding manual of Hamburg are presented (Ricking & Team, 2020). The presented findings of Hamburg show that school structures and practices can contribute to participation and prevention of school absenteeism. As an outlook, the aim and design of a qualitative case study within the international research project SAPIC will be shortly presented. It connects to the previous research in Hamburg as it provides further understanding on support systems of attendance in and around school. Interviews are conducted to investigate perspectives of school leaders, social education professionals and teachers as well as individual perspectives of adolescents on school-based practices and experiences of pedagogical support regarding school attendance in Hamburg.

Adenaw, C., Löffler, A., Rackowitz, M., Steinheider, P., Schmidt-Böcking, U. & Jeck, S. (2020). Pädagogisch-psychologische Maßnahmen zum Umgang mit Schulvermeidung. Handreichung für Schulen. https://kultusministerium.hessen.de/publikationen-a-z [22.12.2022] Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung Hamburg. (Ed., 2013). Schulpflicht. Handreichung zum Umgang mit Schulpflichtverletzungen. 22083 Hamburg. https://www.hamburg.de/bsb/schulpflichtverletzungen/ [22.12.2022] Böhm, T. (2011). Erziehungs- und Ordnungsmaßnahmen in der Schule. Schulrechtlicher Leitfaden. Kronach: Carl Link. Enderle, C., Ricking, H. & Schulze, G. C. (2023, in Review). School Absenteeism in Germany: A Shift from Punishment to Support. European Education. Grewe, N. (2005). Absenteeism in European Schools. Münster: Lit. Pendon, G. P. (2016). Are Fines An Effective Sanction? IRA-International Journal of Management & Social Sciences, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.21013/jmss.v3.n3.p2 Ricking, H. & Rothenburg, E. (2020). Schulabsentismus – Ein komplexes Phänomen aus rechtlicher und pädagogischer Perspektive. Recht der Jugend und des Bildungswesens, 1, 104-118. Ricking, H., & Hagen, T. (2016). Schulabsentismus und Schulabbruch: Grundlagen - Diagnostik - Prävention (1. Auflage). Verlag W. Kohlhammer. Ricking, H., & Team, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. (2020). Jeder Schultag zählt. Praxishandbuch für die Schule zur Prävention und Intervention bei Absentismus. (Joachim Herz Stiftung, Ed.; 1. Auflage). Druckwelten. Sutphen, R., Ford, J. & Flaherty, C. (2010). Truancy Interventions: A Review of the Research Literature. Research on Social Work Practice, 20(2), 161 – 171.

The presentation will focus on the first stage of a qualitative study, exploring changes in educational policies related to school attendance. It aims to understand how schools address attendance problems within the context of pupil wellbeing. Schools in England are required to record and monitor pupil attendance data and must show how they improve attendance and punctuality (Ofsted, 2022). School absence has been primarily addressed as a safeguarding risk factor (DfE, 2022a) but this is changing, with the publication of the 2022 DfE attendance guidance and recent government ambitions to improve mental health support and provisions for young people. School Attendance Support Teams and Mental Health Support Teams are being introduced (DfE, 2022b; Ellins et al, 2021) to work with schools, signifying a shift from a more procedural and punitive approach to a more supportive and integrated one, alongside current systems of monitoring and sanctions. Policies outline the roles of stakeholders in understanding risk and protective factors, developing a whole school culture and supporting children’s mental health. In this presentation, focus is on research questions such as: What are the key changes in policies related to attendance, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic? How do relevant policies inform school practice and how are they informed by evidence? How does the school culture promote attendance? What support and funding is in place within and for schools to implement sustainable changes? Government policies and guidance related to pupil wellbeing, welfare and school attendance will be reviewed. Inspection reports, school policies and attendance data will be examined. Document analysis and attendance data trends will inform further research questions for subsequent focus group interviews with teachers and non-teaching staff and interviews with secondary school pupils, experiencing school attendance problems. Absence rates have increased since 2019, and are higher among secondary school pupils, pupils with special educational needs and pupils with mental health problems (gov, 2023; John et al, 2022). The interviews will explore the views and experiences of secondary school staff and pupils of the support, strategies and interventions available and their effectiveness. Changes in relevant policies and guidance documents and agreement and discrepancies between policy and practice are compared. School policies and procedures will reveal contextual approaches of schools.

DfE. (2022a). Keeping children safe in education 2022. Statutory guidance for schools and colleges. September 2022. London: Department for Education DfE. (2022b). Working together to improve school attendance. Guidance for maintained schools, academies, independent schools and local authorities. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance Ellins, J., Singh, K., Al-Haboubi, M., Newbould, J., Hocking, L., Bousfield, J., McKenna, G., & Fenton, S.-J. M., Nicholas. (2021). Early evaluation of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme. Interim Report. gov.uk. (2023). Pupil Attendance in Schools. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools/2022-week-50 John, A., Friedmann, Y., DelPozo-Banos, M., Frizzati, A., Ford, T., & Thapar, A. (2022). Association of school absence and exclusion with recorded neurodevelopmental disorders, mental disorders, or self-harm: a nationwide, retrospective, electronic cohort study of children and young people in Wales, UK. Lancet Psychiatry, 9(1), 23-34. Ofsted. (2022). School inspection handbook. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-inspection-handbook-eif/school-inspection-handbook