Social and Personal Resources and Their Relation to Psychological Well-Being of School Leaders: Do Leadership Networks Make a Difference?

• In Event: Educational Leaders Maximizing the Social Capital Benefits of Networks: Thoughts From an International Symposium

Abstract

Objectives: Factors associated with psychological wellbeing or – conversely – occupational stress can be either classified as job demands or job resources (Bakker, 2011). While the former require the investment of physical and/or psychological cost in the form of high workload, time pressure, or limited decisive authority, the latter support the achievement of work goals and the management of said job demands (Granziera et al., 2021). In addition, social resources (collegial support, autonomy, personal resources) are increasingly taken into account, too. These include, among others, self-efficacy beliefs, optimism and resilience. On a motivational level, both job and personal resources supposedly lead to higher work engagement and wellbeing (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). But this process can be influenced by job demands, too, which – mediated by the resulting work engagement – can impair the job performance in the long run. This interaction of job demands and resources can be found in school principal self-reports. For example, in Germany and Switzerland, it was repeatedly shown that about 20% express turnover intentions and report high stress, despite being highly motivated to contribute to school development and educational change (Cramer et al., 2021; Tulowitzki et al., 2022).

Against this backdrop, this paper investigates:
1. the interaction of job demands, like the perception of limited decision-making authority, and resources, like psychological safety in one’s own school (social, cf. Fischer & Hüttermann, 2020) and innovation self-efficacy beliefs (personal),
2. how this impacts school leaders’ work engagement and, mediated by that, the experienced work-related stress and irritation, and with view to the focus of this session
3. whether differences emerge for school leaders, who participate in school leader networks and those who do not.

Methods/Data: The School Leader Monitor Austria was conducted and administered at the University of Education Vorarlberg (Austria) on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF). Between October-December 2022, Austrian school leaders were surveyed online. The results presented are based 2621 school principals addressing topics like career choice motives, work-related stress and irritation, and work engagement. The analysis applied a random-effects model (Muthén & Muthén, 2017) with social and personal resources as predictors, work-related stress and irritation as criteria, job demands as moderator and work engagement as mediator. (Non-)participation in school leader networks was used as grouping variable (MIMIC).

Results: Results indicate that social resources (Psychological Safety) and personal resources (Innovation Self-Efficacy) impact school leaders’ work engagement which negatively predicts work-related stress and irritation (mediator). Further, the perception that important decisions are not influenceable appears to be a demanding job characteristic, as its interaction with social resources negatively predicts school leaders’ work engagement (moderator). Involvement in principal networks strengthens the resource-wellbeing association, where external networks represent a facet beyond personal and job resources that positively influences school leader wellbeing. The results indicate that the JDR-model has proven its worth, for example, in terms of the identification of factors that can impair work engagement and increase work-related stress and irritation. The informal exchange within leader networks should be taken more seriously.

Authors

• Jana Groß Ophoff, University College of Teacher Education Vorarlberg

• Marcus Pietsch, Leuphana University - Lueneburg

• David Kemethofer, University of Teacher Education Upper Austria

• Jonas Pfurtscheller, University College of Teacher Education Vorarlberg