Conference Agenda

In Europe, as in many other countries worldwide, average levels of work intensity across different sectors are relatively high and have slightly increased over the past decade (Adăscăliței et al.,, 2022). Work intensification is defined as an ongoing process in which the work is increasingly shaped by the expansion of workload, acceleration of work pace, and growing role complexity. In the educational field, this phenomenon has been examined in several European contexts, including England (Allen et al., 2021), Italy (De Carlo et al., 2021) and Switzerland (Maas et al., 2021), among others. However, most studies have focused on teachers’ work intensification, with comparatively less attention given to school principals (Wang et al.,, 2023).

Intensification of the work in the case of school principals can be explained by the growth in demands, expectations, and responsibilities placed on the principalship to mobilise and sustain school improvement processes (Oplatka, 2017). This intensification is further amplified by explicit policy mandates that have expanded the instructional leadership agenda for school principals (Klocko & Wells, 2015) specially in contexts of hyper accountability and superperformativity (Perryman, 2024). Unsurprisingly, within this global context, there is a perception of the role as extremely complex and demanding with high levels of stress (Author, 2021), job dissatisfaction (Darmody & Smyth, 2016), and frustration (Dor-Haim, 2024). The effects of these have translated into global difficulties in attracting, retaining, and motivating school principals to remain in their posts (Riley et al., 2021).

In Chile, there is a clear normative emphasis on instructional leadership, expressed in policy documents that guide principals´ work such as the Good School Leadership and Management Framework (2015) and the School Performance Indicators (2021). However, this regulatory ideal contrasts sharply with the everyday demands faced by school principals. In practice, bureaucracy, paperwork, and external accountability pressures generate frustration and stress, making an already demanding role even more difficult (Author, 2021). Recent evidence suggests a link between work intensification experiences and principal turnover, affecting school performance and student achievement (Author, 2025).

The present study aims to examine the intensification of work experienced by Chilean school leaders, recognising this as a highly complex phenomenon with both positive and negative outcomes. On the positive side, increased work demands can enhance leaders’ capacity to perform under pressure and foster innovative strategies for task completion (Shao et al., 2019). However, the negative consequences are often more pronounced, including significant emotional costs that affect both the personal and professional lives of principals (Wang et al., 2023). Such challenges have the potential for systemic impact, as they may compromise the sustainability of educational leadership (Towers, 2022). These considerations highlight the importance of understanding the working conditions faced by school leaders and identifying effective strategies to better support them.

Underpinned by work intensification theory (Creagh et al., 2025) and using a qualitative approach, this study explores two research questions:

RQ1: How do Chilean school principals describe and experience the intensification of their work?

RQ2: What components do principals identify as contributing to work intensification?

This study contributes to the growing and recent literature on principals’ work intensification. This contribution is relevant for at least three reasons. First, there is a lack of empirical evidence on workload in the educational field compared to other sectors of the workforce, such as health or business. Second, as Oplatlka (2017) highlighted, existing studies tend to address principals’ workload as a secondary finding rather than as the primary focus of research analysis. Third, workload can easily shift into overload in an era of work intensification and this can increase the leadership crisis (Towers, 2022).

Positive working conditions are quintessential to attract individuals to the teaching profession and to keep qualified teachers in schools (OECD, 2019). This is important, as teacher dropout imposes not only financial burdens on the educational system of a country, but also negatively impacts student performances (OECD, 2020). While internationally on average 17% of teachers intend to quit the profession within the next 5 years (OECD, 2025), the recent TALIS 2024 reports that more than half of Austria’s secondary school teachers experience high levels of strain and stress, and one quarter even intends to quit teaching before their 60^th birthday (Koschmieder et al., 2025).

The intention to quit the teaching profession is – not only in Austria - triggered by more work-related strain – for example enhanced through higher stress level, workload or pupil misbehaviour – and by reduced satisfaction with teaching (Koschmieder et al., 2025). This relationship is undermined by the Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007), where job characteristics play a major role in whether individuals show higher strain and lower motivation leading to higher intention to quit. This study, however, views the topic from a different angle and investigates the resources that school leaders in high-demand school contexts can provide, so that teachers experience less strain and more motivation. This can contribute to enhancing job satisfaction and making teachers stay, even in high-demand schools.

The underlying JD-R model divides job characteristics for any occupation into job demands and job resources (Demerouti et al., 2001). Job demands refer to aspects of work that require long-term physical or mental effort – such as emotional demands, workload or time pressure – and are therefore associated with physiological or psychological strain (Heilala et al., 2021; Rahimi & Arnold, 2024). In contrast, job resources are work-related factors that help teachers achieve their work goals, reduce job demands and the associated stress (Demerouti et al., 2001).

The effect of job demands and job resources can be explained in two ways in the JD-R model. (1) High job demands initiate the health impairment process, which can lead to exhaustion and impaired mental and physical health due to prolonged stress. (2) Job resources, on the other hand, activate the motivational process, which manifests itself in higher work engagement and motivation (Demerouti et al., 2001). The extended version of the model also assumes that job resources can impair the negative effects of high job demands, while high job demands can impair the positive effects of job resources on motivation and commitment (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).

While the JD-R model was used to explain how job demands and resources relate to teachers’ job satisfaction (Admiraal & Kittelsen Roberg, 2023) or teachers’ well-being (Viac & Fraser, 2020), the present paper extends this research by investigating how school leaders shape these relationships, particularly in high-demand work environments. Grissom (2011), e.g., demonstrated that factors within the influence of school leaders play a central role in retaining teachers in schools with difficult working conditions. As challenging student composition, staff shortages, or school safety concerns place exceptionally high demands on schools all over the world, we focus on principals’ provision of resources that can buffer these detrimental effects in high-demand situations. We investigate how leadership-driven resources may help sustain teacher motivation and strengthen teachers’ intention to stay despite high demands at work. Therefore, our study asks: How do principal-influenced resources in high-demand schools affect teachers’ perceived strain and teaching motivation, and in turn shape their job satisfaction and the subsequent intention to stay?

Across Europe and internationally, school leaders are increasingly encouraged to diversify funding sources and introduce forms of educational commercialisation as part of institutional sustainability and innovation strategies. However, leadership-oriented research rarely addresses how such initiatives affect teachers’ professional identity, emotional well-being, and organisational trust. This paper presents an action research study examining the first experience of introducing paid educational services in a secondary school within the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) network in Kazakhstan, with a specific focus on leadership decisions and organisational learning.

During the first phase of implementation, school leadership encouraged teachers to design, promote, and deliver paid seminars and master classes for external educators. Teachers were expected to package their professional expertise into marketable products and engage directly in sales-related activities. Survey data revealed that 68% of participating teachers experienced increased emotional exhaustion, while 54% reported heightened self-doubt regarding their professional competence. Notably, 47% of respondents associated low enrolment in paid sessions with perceived professional inadequacy, suggesting that market outcomes became proxies for professional value.

These findings are consistent with research on emotional labour and teacher vulnerability during organisational change [1, 2]. From an educational leadership perspective, the results indicate that unclear role boundaries and insufficient organisational buffering intensify stress and contribute to burnout risks [3].

In response, school leadership initiated a second action research cycle aimed at redesigning the commercialisation model. Rather than positioning teachers as service sellers, leadership shifted paid activities towards student- and parent-oriented services, including autumn and winter vacation schools. In this revised model, teachers focused exclusively on teaching and learning, while administrative staff managed communication, pricing, and enrolment processes. Following this intervention, 81% of teachers reported improved emotional well-being, and 76% indicated stronger alignment between paid activities and their professional identity.

The study is theoretically grounded in research on teacher resilience, professional identity, and organisational learning [2, 4, 5]. By foregrounding leadership-mediated role differentiation and well-being-sensitive decision-making, the paper contributes to European and international discussions on responsible educational leadership in increasingly market-oriented school systems.

This proposal investigates how educational leadership mediates the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in examoriented, resourcescarce schools in China’s periphery. In these contexts, school leaders face the dual challenge of reconciling ambitious national AI mandates with entrenched exam traditions and systemic scarcity. While much of the existing literature on AI adoption has concentrated on technologically advanced systems, it often overlooks the dilemmas of disadvantaged schools where equity concerns intersect with accountability pressures. By situating the Chinese case within broader European debates, the study contributes to comparative discussions on social justice and digitalisation in education. It engages with OECD (2023) analyses of equity in digital schooling, European scholarship on governance and disadvantaged schools (Grek & Landri, 2021; Dexter, 2011), and EU frameworks such as the Digital Education Action Plan (2021–2027). In doing so, the research highlights how leadership strategies developed under exam pressures in China’s periphery resonate with challenges faced in disadvantaged European regions, offering insights into equityoriented leadership mediation across diverse contexts.This directly aligns with Network 07’s focus on social justice, intercultural education, and marginalisation in digital schooling.

Research Questions

This study is guided by two questions:

1. How do school leaders in examcentric, resourcescarce Chinese schools frame and legitimize AI integration while balancing exam performance demands with equity concerns?

2. In what ways can leadership strategies observed in China’s periphery, with a focus on hybrid instructional–digital practices and grassroots adaptations, inform comparative debates on equity and digitalisation in disadvantaged European school contexts?

Objectives

The research aims:·

1. To illuminate the brokerage role of school leaders in examoriented, resourcescarce Chinese schools, showing how they mediate AI integration under systemic scarcity and policy pressure. By analyzing this mediation, the study contributes comparative insights to European discussions on equity and digitalisation in disadvantaged schools.

2. To identify leadership practices that transform teacher resistance into collaborative engagement, highlighting material, symbolic, and relational strategies that foster agency under exam pressures. These practices, while grounded in the Chinese case, are positioned to inform transnational dialogue on social justice and culturally responsive digitalisation in education.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

This study draws on three strands of theory，instructional leadership, digital leadership, and institutional logics to analyze how school leaders mediate AI integration in examoriented, resourcescarce schools. Together, these frameworks explain how leaders reconcile innovation with entrenched exam traditions and systemic scarcity, while offering comparative insights for disadvantaged European contexts.

Instructional leadership emphasizes guiding pedagogy and assessment, often legitimizing innovation by aligning it with exam success (Hallinger, 2005). In China’s periphery, AI tools such as diagnostic modules were framed as “Gaokao advantages,” reducing resistance. This illustrates how instructional leadership secures legitimacy under highstakes accountability, a challenge also faced in European disadvantaged schools.

Digital leadership focuses on cultivating digital cultures and supporting teacher professional development (Karakose, 2021；Sheninger,2024). In resourcescarce contexts, leaders rely on grassroots adaptations,such as offline dialect libraries to embed equity into digital innovation. For Europe, this highlights the importance of culturally responsive digitalisation in schools where imported technologies may not fit local realities.

Institutional logics theory explains how practices are shaped by competing norms (Thornton, Ocasio & Lounsbury, 2012). In China, exam efficiency clashes with pedagogical innovation, requiring leaders to broker between national mandates and local scarcity. This brokerage role resonates with European contexts, where disadvantaged schools must also navigate tensions between policy ambition and equity.

By synthesizing these perspectives, the study conceptualizes hybrid instructional and digital leadership as a brokerage mechanism transforming resistance into equityoriented innovation. This model explains AI integration in China’s periphery and informs European debates on social justice and digitalisation. The proposal fits within Network 07’s agenda, addressing equity, digitalisation, and intercultural education.