Podium Presentation - 25 minutes International Positive Psychology Association 7th IPPA World Congress 2021

A model of positive school leadership to improve teacher wellbeing (#32)

Rachel F Cann 1 , Rachel Riedel-Prabhakar 2 , Darren Powell 1
  1. Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  2. Department of Kinesiology, Towson University, Towson, Maryland, United States

An important first step in the effective implementation of positive education programs is to address teacher wellbeing (Quinlan, 2017; Slemp et al., 2017). However, interventions that aim to enhance teacher wellbeing are often focused on teacher’s individual habits and actions, for example practising yoga and mindfulness (Harris et al., 2016). Positive psychology interventions have been critiqued for focusing mainly at the individual level, and calls have been made to consider the broader social context in which an individual is embedded (Kern et al., 2019).  The social context in schools includes the school culture and the interactions that occur between educators, which is influenced by leadership practices. This study focused on the link between school leaders’ practices and teachers’ wellbeing. Findings will be presented from a case study that examined teachers’ perceptions of leadership practices that influenced their wellbeing in an urban high-school in New Zealand. The first phase of the research used the PERMA-profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) to quantify teacher wellbeing (n=29), and identify teachers with any PERMA dimensions in the lowest or highest quartiles of the sample. This data was then used to purposively select three high wellbeing and three low wellbeing teachers, who participated in semi-structured interviews and completed a wellbeing journal. Inductive analysis of the qualitative data identified key themes about teachers’ perceptions of the leadership actions that influenced their wellbeing, and three key leadership actions were identified: (1) ensuring teachers feel valued, (2) meaningful professional development and (3) ensuring teachers have agency in decision making. A number of essential leadership skills that are needed to implement these actions are also identified: relationship building, contextual competence, social and emotional competence. A model of positive school leadership was developed to represent these actions and skills. The presentation will outline the model and discuss its application within schools.

  1. Butler, J., & Kern, M. L. (2016). The PERMA-profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(3), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526
  2. Harris, A. R., Jennings, P. A., Katz, D. A., Abenavoli, R. M., & Greenberg, M. T. (2016). Promoting stress management and wellbeing in educators: Feasibility and efficacy of a school-based yoga and mindfulness intervention. Mindfulness, 7(1), 143–154.
  3. Kern, M. L., Williams, P., Spong, C., Colla, R., Sharma, K., Downie, A., Taylor, J. A., Sharp, S., Siokou, C., & Oades, L. G. (2019). Systems informed positive psychology. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(6), 705–715. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1639799
  4. Quinlan, D. M. (2017). Transforming our schools together: A multi-school collaboration to implement positive education. In C. Proctor (Ed.), Positive psychology interventions in practice. Springer International Publishing.
  5. Slemp, G. R., Chin, T.-C., Kern, M. L., Siokou, C., Loton, D., Oades, L. G., Vella-Brodrick, D., & Waters, L. (2017). Positive education in Australia: Practice, measurement, and future directions. In E. Frydenberg, A. J. Martin, & R. J. Collie (Eds.), Social and emotional learning in Australia and the Asia-Pacific: Perspectives, programs and approaches (pp. 101–122). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3394-0_6
  • Keywords: Education, Leadership/Management, Relationships