In this article, we analyze what it means to be the principal of a dance education institution. The data were obtained from principals of Finnish dance education institutions before the COVID-19 outbreak and during the pandemic in 2019 and 2020: 30 principals participated in a survey, six principals in a focus group interview, and 19 principals…

This article presents the development and application of a model that can be utilized to compare the autonomy of principals in various historical and national contexts. Drawing on former conceptual work on autonomy in education, the model conceptualizes principal autonomy as two-dimensional. The first dimension is the decision making expected from…

This study examined the factors shaping co-teaching within a Finnish primary school's community. The qualitative study was conducted by teacher and principal interviews and teacher surveys. Thematic content analysis revealed five factors establishing the co-teaching practices: providing collegial support, team building, continuous professional…

The present study aimed to investigate elementary school principals' self-reported causes of work-related stress, their coping strategies to deal with stress and the support they need for their leadership. Seventy-six principals filled in the questionnaire, which included open-ended questions. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the…

Job satisfaction is important for employee well-being and retention, which are both crucial for high-strained occupations such as teachers and school principals. We investigated the structure and relationship of teachers' job satisfaction (N = 142,280) and principals' job satisfaction (N = 8,869). Results of structural equation modeling using…

This article examines whether a three-year learning-based work community intervention resulted in changes in working community-related interaction factors and occupational well-being among Finnish and Estonian school staff. It reports the types of changes in working community-related interaction factors and their associations to the subjective…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between school leadership practices and teacher empowerment in the Finnish policy culture. Specifically, moral leadership and distributed leadership enacted by school principals are tested in a simultaneous design as predictor to two distinct yet related aspects of teachers' sense…