The conservation of resources (COR) model has accumulated sufficient evidence to explain burnout in a variety of professions, including teachers, based on the relationship between organizational demands and personal resources, and its development from emotional exhaustion, cynicism and decreased self-actualization, in that order. From a holistic…

The performance of standardized tests is an ongoing matter of concern for childhood researchers. Standardized tests are often described as neglecting the ethical complexities of doing research with young children. However, this critique is primarily presented in general terms, and does not attend to the locality and specificity of particular test…

Background: Errors can provide informative feedback and exhibit a high potential for learning gains. Affective-motivational and action-related reactions to errors are two forms of error adaptivity that have been shown to enhance learning outcomes from errors. However, little is known regarding the development and contextual conditions of students'…

In recent years, there has been a strong call for more fine-grained analyses of student engagement to better capture its nature as a situated, momentary phenomenon. This special issue aims to promote cross-disciplinary discussions about the complex processes involved in students' momentary engagement and learning situated in classroom contexts.…

There is growing evidence to support the normalisation of performativity. However, what has been less remarked on are the tensions that emerge when teachers seek to implement performative learning in a post-performative teaching context. This paper draws on interviews with 9 Chinese teachers undertaking Cambridge's Professional Development…

The more than six decades of research on school effectiveness and the two decades of research on school success demonstrates the importance of principal leadership in successful schools. However, the 30-year history of research on person-environment fit has not been robustly connected to the literature on successful school leadership. This study…

"Context matters" has been an adage and a mantra in the field of comparative and international education since its earliest days. However, knowing which things matter, how and to whom, and also how they affect each other places challenging demands on comparative researchers. In this article, we outline different ways that comparativists…

Recent research into imposter phenomenon, or internal feelings of questioning competence, has shifted away from conceptualizing the feeling as an individual characteristic that requires an individual solution toward instead examining the role of context. We used a 2 (Generational Status: First Generation vs. Continuing Generation) × 3…

The study reported herein examined the influence of school contexts on leaders' leadership practices in South Africa. To this end, deputy principals were put under the microscope to scrutinize the relationship between their leadership practices and the school contexts in which they operate. The narrative inquiry - a qualitative methodology - was…

Hope for the future provides a protective factor against mental health disorders and contributes to students' academic success and wellbeing. We investigated whether a school's climate influenced students' prosocial moral identity and hope for the future to understand better how church-based schools might improve these important outcomes. Data…

Students may not express their creativity uniformly, across all settings and under all conditions. Creativity is sensitive to expected evaluations, for example, and likely to vary when the individual is alone, in a small group, or in a large group. Quite a bit of research has demonstrated that certain conditions can be created to support creative…

Background/purpose: Leadership behaviors correlate with job satisfaction, which is supposed to have impact on overall organizational performance. This study aimed to establish a model to explain organizational performance by determining the relational effect size between transformational and transactional leadership, job satisfaction, and…

This study investigated the mentoring of academics for leadership and management in higher education institutions through the application of contextual intelligence. Experts and professionals generally agree that effective institutional leadership and management mentorship, using contextual knowledge, is crucial for achieving institutional…

The purpose of this article is to address student absenteeism through the theoretical lens of ecological agency and to encourage the use of ecological agency in a school setting to address student absenteeism more holistically. We align absenteeism research within the ecological agency framework and suggest that absenteeism is a manifestation of…

Background: A wide variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is increasingly embedded into numerous facets of everyday life. Young people, in particular, are often viewed as eager and skilful users of new ICTs who have various educational and leisure-related purposes for ICT use. Although school and home lives have traditionally…