The research used an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design in which a qualitative phase built the instrument tested in a quantitative phase. The qualitative work began with a narrative synthesis of more than 50 domestic and international sources on leadership, supervision, school administration, curriculum and instructional management, evaluation and teacher professional development. The researchers then interviewed nine purposively selected experts in three groups: educational administration scholars, supervision specialists and primary-school practitioners. The interviews confirmed five components and 15 indicators, refining some wording and operational definitions without adding or removing categories. One researcher conducted the coding, while dissertation advisers reviewed the interview guide and preliminary framework, notes and audio records provided an audit trail, and all nine experts took part in a final member-checking exercise. The confirmed components and indicators were converted directly into the questionnaire used in the second phase, with instrument development serving as the integration point between the qualitative and quantitative strands.

The quantitative population comprised administrators and academic teachers in primary schools under the Office of the Basic Education Commission in Northeastern Thailand during the 2025 academic year, a setting encompassing 12,126 schools. Using multistage random sampling, the researchers selected 340 schools across all 20 provinces in the region, allocating quotas proportionally by province and randomly choosing schools within provincial strata. Two designated respondents were selected at each school: its director and one academic-affairs teacher. Data collection took place in February 2026 through electronic questionnaires, producing 680 complete responses with no exclusions or missing data. The instrument contained 44 items scored on a five-point Likert scale from strong disagreement or the lowest level of agreement to strong agreement or the highest. Nine experts assessed its content validity, yielding item content-validity coefficients from 0.73 to 1.00, while a pilot with 30 participants produced a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93. Scores reflect respondents’ perceived agreement with described supervisory behaviors, not directly observed actions or objectively calibrated levels of competence.

To test the five-part structure through second-order confirmatory factor analysis, the researchers combined the 44 questionnaire items into 15 approximately balanced parcels, allocating three to each component. Sequential assignment distributed items across positions within each component so that each parcel represented a mixture of content. Positive communication and curriculum and instructional management each used nine source items; decision-making ability and supervision evaluation and assessment each used eight; teacher professional development used ten. Parceling reduced the number of first-order indicators to a three-indicator structure for every component and was intended to limit the influence of individual items whose response distributions were non-normal. It also restricted the conclusions: the analysis concerned relationships among parcels rather than individual items, potentially obscured item-level multidimensionality, and could make fit appear stronger than it would in an item-level solution. The researchers did not conduct an item-level robust sensitivity analysis.

The component loadings on the overarching supervisory-leadership factor were high. Curriculum and instructional management had the strongest standardized loading, β = 0.946, with indicators for curriculum understanding, curriculum design and evaluation of curriculum implementation. Positive communication followed at β = 0.918 and comprised creating a positive climate, building shared understanding and providing support. Decision-making ability loaded at β = 0.913, represented by decisiveness, adaptability to change and sound judgment. Supervision evaluation and assessment had a loading of β = 0.904, covering use of diverse supervisory tools, evaluation of teaching outcomes and monitoring teacher development. Teacher professional development loaded at β = 0.884, with indicators for developing teachers’ knowledge and skills, evaluating and reflecting on learning, and promoting exchange of knowledge among teachers. These coefficients describe each component’s statistical relationship with the overall factor in the specified model; they do not measure causal influence, practical priority or the extent to which any behavior directly produces better educational outcomes.

The initially specified model, before residual covariances were introduced, already fitted acceptably. It produced χ² = 106.242 with 85 degrees of freedom, p = 0.0593, RMSEA = 0.019, CFI = 0.998, TLI = 0.997 and SRMR = 0.028. Modification-index-guided refinement added three residual covariances and yielded the final χ² of 95.693 with 82 degrees of freedom and p = 0.143, alongside the higher CFI and TLI of 0.999, RMSEA of 0.016 and SRMR of 0.014. Thus, the changes improved fit only marginally rather than creating it from an initially poor model. Two freed covariances had stated statistical and theoretical rationales: one linked curriculum parcels sharing documentation-related content, and another linked teacher-development parcels involving structured skills development and peer knowledge exchange. The third connected two positive-communication parcels but was not statistically significant and lacked a distinct theoretical justification. The researchers say it should be removed or reconsidered in future reanalysis, and they did not test whether its removal materially changed fit.

Validity evidence was encouraging but not unambiguous. Average variance extracted values ranged from 0.935 to 0.943, and their square roots exceeded the corresponding intercomponent correlations in the Fornell–Larcker comparison. In the heterotrait–monotrait analysis, however, positive communication, decision-making ability and curriculum and instructional management each reached a maximum ratio of 0.869. That was above the conservative 0.85 threshold, although below the more liberal 0.90 threshold, indicating that the separation among those dimensions requires caution. Response patterns also limited the analysis. Across 44 items and 29,920 item-level responses, 69.3% of ratings were 5, 26.7% were 4 and 3.9% were 3; only 0.1% were 2, and no respondent selected 1. Individual items had maximum-category response rates ranging from 52.5% to 89.4%. Thirty-four of the 44 items had skewness magnitudes greater than 1, and a multivariate normality test rejected the normality assumption used by standard maximum-likelihood estimation. The concentrated responses and just-identified three-indicator factors help qualify the exceptionally strong fit indices.

The nested sampling design introduced another uncertainty. Because two respondents came from each of 340 schools, responses from the same school could be correlated through shared perceptions of local supervision, yet the analysis did not use cluster-adjusted standard errors or a design-effect check. The retained dataset lacked the school identifier needed to link paired respondents for retrospective correction, so the reported precision and fit statistics may not fully reflect the sampling design. Administrator and teacher responses also showed different patterns. Teachers rated curriculum and instructional management, supervision evaluation and assessment and teacher professional development significantly higher than administrators, with all p < 0.001, while positive communication and decision-making ability did not differ significantly between the groups. Intercomponent correlations ranged from 0.22 to 0.80 among administrators but from 0.75 to 0.94 among teachers, a pattern the researchers said might indicate a stronger halo tendency in teacher ratings. No formal configural, metric or scalar invariance analysis was performed, so the pooled model cannot be assumed to measure the construct equivalently for self-raters and teacher-raters.

Within these limits, the study offers a context-specific measurement framework for supervisory leadership in Northeastern Thai primary schools. Its strongest statistical components connect the academic core of supervision with trust-based communication, judgment, evaluation and support for teachers’ continued learning, while the mixed-method design provides both content-development evidence and a test of internal structure. The cross-sectional data do not establish whether stronger perceptions of any component lead to better teaching, teacher performance or student learning, and the single-region sample cannot establish transferability to other parts of Thailand or other countries. The evidence instead supports a promising empirical configuration for further testing. The researchers identify several unfinished analyses: re-estimation with a non-normality-corrected estimator such as MLR, cluster-adjusted inference, a formal common-latent-factor comparison and multi-group invariance testing across administrators and teachers. They also call for outcome-linked and quasi-experimental studies of professional-development programs and replication in other education systems. Until those steps are completed, the five-component model is best treated as a regionally supported measurement proposal rather than a settled standard for judging school leaders.

Subject of Research: Empirical development and testing of a five-component supervisory-leadership model among primary school administrators and teachers in Northeastern Thailand.

Article Title: A component model and indicators of supervisory leadership for primary school administrators in Northeastern Thailand

Article References: Ngamying, W., Sirisooksilp, S., & Ariratana, W. (2026). A component model and indicators of supervisory leadership for primary school administrators in Northeastern Thailand. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02270-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02270-7

Keywords: supervisory leadership, primary schools, Northeastern Thailand, school administration, instructional supervision, teacher development, curriculum management, positive communication, confirmatory factor analysis, mixed methods, component, model

The research team set out to answer three linked questions: how prevalent role conflict is among female secondary school teachers, whether it differs between rural and urban locales, and what school leaders believe can be done to reduce it. The study was grounded in Role Theory, the framework developed by Robert L. Kahn and colleagues in their 1964 work Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity. According to that theory, every person occupies multiple social roles, each carrying its own set of expectations. When the expectations attached to two or more roles are incompatible, psychological strain follows. The authors distinguish three forms of the phenomenon: inter-role conflict, in which the demands of different positions clash, such as when motherhood and teaching both require time and emotional energy at the same moment; intra-role conflict, in which expectations within a single role diverge, as when students want warmth and flexibility from a teacher while school management demands strict academic rigor; and person-role conflict, which arises when the requirements of a role contradict an individual’s own values or abilities.

The theoretical backdrop matters because female teachers are, in the authors’ framing, especially vulnerable to inter-role conflict. Gender Role Theory holds that women are expected to carry a disproportionate share of household and caregiving labor, which raises the probability that their personal and professional roles will collide. The Work-Family Conflict Model adds that such collisions can be time-based, strain-based, or behavior-based, and that each variety can produce stress and diminished satisfaction. Earlier research cited in the paper links work-family conflict among teachers to elevated stress and burnout, reduced job satisfaction, lower psychological well-being, and higher turnover intentions, with work demands interfering with family life exerting a particularly strong effect. Yet, the authors note, little attention had been paid to how this conflict varies with the educational setting, the gap their study set out to fill.

Methodologically, the investigation was ambitious. The researchers employed a multistage, stratified random sampling procedure to recruit 450 female secondary school teachers from government schools in Kashmir, 254 from urban areas and 196 from rural ones, all of them teaching classes nine and ten. Quantitative data were collected using the Teachers Role Conflict Scale developed by Nain and Gupta, an instrument whose test-retest reliability coefficient was reported at +0.94 at the 0.01 level, with content validity established through expert opinion and item analysis. The scale measures six dimensions of role conflict. In parallel, the team gathered qualitative data through an open-ended opinionnaire administered to twenty Head Teachers selected purposively, chosen because their experience positioned them to offer informed perspectives on the remedies schools could adopt. Crucially, the qualitative and quantitative strands were collected simultaneously and independently, with the interview questions derived from prior literature rather than from the survey results, an embedded mixed-methods design the authors argue strengthened the credibility and depth of the conclusions.

The statistical analysis relied on descriptive and inferential techniques, including means, standard deviations, percentages, and t-tests, while the qualitative responses were subjected to thematic analysis, in which the data were read repeatedly, coded, and organized into recurring themes. The rigor of the process was assessed against recognized criteria: credibility, dependability, transferability, confirmability, and authenticity, supported by peer debriefing meetings, meticulous documentation of every research step, reflexivity on the part of the investigators, and adherence to the GRAMMS framework for reporting mixed-methods studies. Six response sheets were excluded during scrutiny for incomplete information, leaving the final sample of 450.

The headline quantitative result is striking for what it does and does not show. Eighty-two percent of the respondents reported a low level of role conflict, 15.4 percent reported an average level, and only 2.6 percent reported a high level. In other words, despite juggling teaching, administration, caregiving, and domestic labor, the large majority of these women reported managing their roles well or benefiting from supportive environments. When the researchers compared the mean scores of the urban and rural groups, however, the t-value of 0.46 indicated that the difference was not statistically significant. This finding partially complicates the study’s own summary observation that urban teachers experience higher conflict than their rural counterparts; at the level of mean comparison, geography alone did not separate the groups, suggesting that role conflict is shaped more by institutional and social factors than by locale per se. The authors themselves draw this conclusion in their discussion, arguing that the school environment, not the postcode, is the decisive variable.

The qualitative strand reveals what those institutional and social factors actually are. Among the negative forces identified through thematic analysis, excessive workload and multiple responsibilities ranked first. Head Teachers described teachers burdened with administrative and non-teaching duties that pull them away from their core instructional role. One respondent stated plainly that her school did not provide sufficient support because teachers were overburdened with multiple roles beyond teaching, and recommended that administrative tasks be assigned to dedicated support staff, that regular feedback sessions be held, and that duties be divided according to teachers’ interests. A second respondent spoke of tremendous pressure on working women in the education department to balance work and household, and proposed extra work be limited to the teaching domain, small breaks be introduced, and crèches or day care centers be arranged for the young children of teaching staff.

Staff shortages and uneven job distribution emerged as a second aggravating factor, with respondents pointing to insufficient staffing and favoritism by supervisors as sources of conflict, alongside a lack of proper job distribution within schools. A third theme concerned the absence of structured policies, with respondents calling for improved task allocation and supportive administrative practices. The fourth negative theme was inadequate work-life balance support; one Head Teacher recommended additional leave and flexible timings to counter the exhaustion created by the collision of school and family demands. On the positive side, the analysis identified congeniality of the work environment, where cordial relationships between teaching and non-teaching staff and a non-transferable posting foster mutual support; community building and flexible scheduling, including professional development integrated into work schedules or school breaks; and systematic workload management, including streamlining administrative tasks and investing in digital tools that reduce paperwork, grading burdens, and data collection chores.

The discussion situates these findings within the wider literature. The authors note that empirical studies consistently show female teachers face higher role conflict than male colleagues, and that their results align with work by Thakur, Chandrasekaran, and Guddattu, who found that role overload and unclear organizational structures significantly affect teachers’ psychological well-being, and by Saif-ud-Din and colleagues, who linked inadequate staffing and inequitable task allocation to stress and reduced professional satisfaction. The protective factors they identified echo the findings of Skaalvik and Skaalvik, who reported that collegial support, autonomy, and structured workload distribution foster job satisfaction and reduce burnout. The authors also acknowledge the study’s limitations: the sample is confined to a specific population of female secondary school teachers, limiting generalizability; the reliance on self-reported data introduces the possibility of social desirability bias; and the cross-sectional design precludes causal inference.

The conclusion the authors draw is that role conflict is not merely an individual problem to be solved by personal resilience but an organizational matter that can be reduced through planning and supportive management. In the Indian context, where women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities, the stakes are especially high. Reducing structural problems, ensuring an equitable sharing of duties, and cultivating a positive, understanding school culture, the authors argue, can substantially lower role conflict, improve teacher well-being, and enhance overall school performance. For schools and policymakers, the practical prescription is concrete: address workload, clarify policies, promote a culture of cooperation, and provide a welcoming workplace atmosphere. As the teaching profession grows more attractive to younger generations of women, the study suggests that the mental health of educators, particularly women, depends less on where a school sits on the map and more on how the institution chooses to share its burdens.

Subject of Research: Role conflict among female secondary school teachers in urban and rural settings

Article Title: A comprehensive mixed-methods investigation of role conflict among female secondary school teachers across locales

Article References: Jan, M., & Jan, T. (2026). A comprehensive mixed-methods investigation of role conflict among female secondary school teachers across locales. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-01898-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-01898-9

Keywords: role conflict, female teachers, secondary education, work-family conflict, mixed methods, urban-rural comparison, teacher well-being, workload management, Role Theory, Kashmir, school administration, gender roles

The persistence of this leadership gap is particularly striking when viewed against the demographic reality of the profession itself. If women constitute roughly three-quarters of PK-12 educators, one might expect their representation in administration to approach parity, since promotion pipelines typically draw from the ranks of experienced teachers. Instead, the distribution of decision-making authority diverges sharply from the composition of the workforce, a pattern that researchers in educational leadership have documented for decades. This disconnect suggests that the barriers involved are not simply matters of individual ambition or qualification, but reflect structural and cultural dynamics that operate across hiring committees, search processes, board relationships and informal professional networks. Understanding how those dynamics function is a precondition for changing them, which is precisely the kind of practical knowledge the new book attempts to codify for its readers.

The authors’ combined vantage points give the project an unusual blend of scholarly and practitioner credibility. One author brings nearly two decades of frontline experience as a teacher, principal and district-level leader before transitioning into higher education, where she now directs a doctoral program in K-12 administration. The other is an active district superintendent-level administrator who completed both her master’s and doctoral work at the same university, and whose dissertation research involved in-depth interviews with two dozen women in educational administration. That research found a consistent pattern: every woman interviewed reported encountering either an entrenched informal network of male gatekeepers or explicit messages that she was not yet ready for advancement. The universality of that finding across a relatively small sample echoes broader literature on gendered organizational culture, in which informal norms often matter as much as formal policy in determining who rises.

One of the book’s central conceptual contributions is its attention to what the authors call silent saboteurs, the less visible forces that derail women’s advancement. Some of these are external, such as the timing of family formation relative to career ladders, or the subtle signaling that occurs when women are repeatedly passed over for stretch assignments. Others are internal, including the self-doubt and sense of intellectual fraudulence commonly described as impostor syndrome. Psychological research on impostor phenomena has long noted that it is especially prevalent among high-achieving women in fields where they are underrepresented, and that it can suppress applications for promotions even among candidates whose records exceed the stated requirements. By naming these forces explicitly and pairing them with coping strategies, the book treats internalized doubt not as a personal failing but as a predictable response to a professional environment that sends mixed messages about women’s readiness.

The structure of the book mirrors the arc of a leadership journey itself. The opening section diagnoses the barriers, the middle section builds strategies for moving past them, and the closing section turns toward long-term transformation of the field. This progression reflects a deliberate choice to move readers from recognition to action rather than leaving them with a catalogue of grievances. The middle chapters focus on concrete, learnable skills: crafting a compelling resume, understanding how search committees and hiring processes actually operate behind closed doors, negotiating employment contracts, and learning to advocate for oneself without triggering the backlash that assertive women sometimes face. Research on negotiation has repeatedly shown gendered differences in both initiation of negotiation and in how assertiveness is perceived, making explicit instruction in this area a practical necessity rather than an optional refinement.

Self-advocacy receives particular emphasis, and for good reason. Many women in education have been socialized into roles that prize supportiveness, collaboration and care for others, qualities that make them effective educators but can work against them in promotion contexts where visibility and self-promotion are rewarded. The authors argue that advocating for oneself can be done authentically and without confrontation, reframing self-advocacy as an act of professional honesty rather than aggression. This reframing matters because studies of workplace advancement consistently find that women who wait to be recognized often wait indefinitely, while those who articulate their accomplishments and aspirations are more likely to be considered for leadership pipelines. The challenge, as the book frames it, is to help women speak up in ways that feel congruent with their values rather than requiring them to adopt a persona that feels foreign.

The final section of the book shifts from individual advancement to collective change, urging readers to think about how their own careers can lay groundwork for the next generation of women leaders. This generational framing reflects a growing emphasis in leadership scholarship on succession and mentorship as mechanisms for durable change. A single woman ascending to a superintendency is significant, but the effects compound when that leader deliberately sponsors other women, reshapes hiring practices, and normalizes flexible arrangements that accommodate caregiving responsibilities. The authors suggest that a changing workforce demographics can be leveraged strategically: as retirements open positions and as the profession’s composition continues to evolve, there are genuine windows of opportunity for women to move into roles that have historically been closed to them.

Another notable feature of the book is its use of first-person accounts from women already serving in educational leadership roles. These contributors describe their paths to their current positions, the missteps they made, the knowledge they wish they had possessed earlier, and the lessons they hope to pass on. Narrative and testimony of this kind serve functions that purely analytical writing cannot. They provide readers with relatable models of success, they normalize the struggles that aspiring leaders may assume are unique to them, and they demonstrate the diversity of routes into leadership, countering the notion that there is a single correct career trajectory. For readers weighing whether to pursue an advanced credential or apply for a first administrative post, such stories can be the difference between aspiration and action.

Although the primary audience is K-12 educators, the authors are explicit that the lessons extend to higher education, where women face parallel patterns of underrepresentation in senior academic and administrative roles. They also see value for pre-service teachers, who can begin building leadership confidence before they ever enter a classroom, and for men in the field who wish to act as genuine allies. The inclusion of male readers is strategically significant, since men still hold a disproportionate share of hiring authority and board influence in school districts. Allyship in this context is not framed as abstract support but as concrete behavior: mentoring women colleagues, ensuring search processes are equitable, interrupting dismissive commentary, and advocating for candidates whose contributions might otherwise be overlooked.

The authors are careful to acknowledge that the landscape has shifted over recent decades, even as inequities persist. Overt sexism and discrimination, they note, are less blatant than they once were, but subtler contextual pressures remain potent. The demands of motherhood intersect with the long and unpredictable hours of administrative work; the absence of visible role models can make leadership feel unattainable; and assumptions about who looks like a superintendent continue to shape search outcomes. Because these forces rarely announce themselves, they can be difficult to name and even harder to challenge, which is why the book invests so heavily in helping readers recognize patterns in their own professional lives. Naming a barrier, the authors suggest, is the first step toward devising a strategy against it.

For the field of educational leadership preparation more broadly, the book arrives at a moment when preparation programs are reexamining how they serve women candidates. The authors’ own program enrolls a majority of women, mirroring national trends in educational administration graduate study, yet the profession’s top ranks have not followed suit. That gap between who is trained for leadership and who actually attains it is a puzzle that preparation programs, professional associations and districts alike are beginning to address through targeted mentoring, equity audits of hiring practices and leadership development cohorts designed specifically for women. Books of this kind can serve as companion texts in such efforts, giving candidates a shared vocabulary for the challenges they face and a set of tested strategies drawn from those who have navigated them successfully.

Ultimately, the book’s title captures its core message: that women in education can pursue and exercise leadership without apologizing for their ambition, their expertise or their priorities. Moving from aspiration to advancement, the authors contend, requires both personal readiness and institutional change, and each woman who makes the journey makes the path easier for those who follow. In a profession where the majority of practitioners are women but the balance of authority is not, that argument carries practical weight for districts seeking to draw on the full talent of their workforces, and for the educators who have long been told, implicitly or explicitly, to wait their turn.

Subject of Research: A guide to advancing women into educational leadership roles

Article Title: New book 'Leading Without Apology' provides guidance to women to advance to educational leadership roles

Article References: New book 'Leading Without Apology' provides guidance to women to advance to educational leadership roles. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: educational leadership, women in education, University of Kansas, school administration, superintendent, impostor syndrome, career advancement, gender equity, K-12 education, mentorship, negotiation, workforce