Osman Titrek

This study aims to explore women school administrators’ experiences of sustainable leadership by examining how they define sustainable leadership, the leadership practices they adopt, the challenges they encounter, the resilience strategies they employ, and their perspectives on the future of educational management. The study was conducted using a qualitative case study design. The participants consisted of 23 women school administrators working in the provinces of Manisa and Hakkâri, Türkiye. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed that women school administrators primarily perceived sustainable leadership as a future-oriented leadership approach that emphasizes building a strong organizational culture, continuously improving the quality of education, and adopting a human-centered management philosophy. Sustainable leadership practices were found to revolve around collaboration, stakeholder participation, supporting teachers’ professional development, the effective use of school resources, empathy, and inclusive leadership. However, participants also reported significant challenges in implementing sustainable leadership, including traditional gender roles, work–life balance difficulties, limited access to leadership positions, and the perceived preference for male leadership. To overcome these challenges, participants emphasized continuous professional development, collaboration, strong communication networks, fair decision-making, emotional regulation, and maintaining work–life balance as key resilience strategies. Furthermore, they envisioned the future of educational management as being shaped by leadership approaches that are inclusive, collaborative, empathetic, innovative, and adaptable to change.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1701897.].

Editorial on the Research Topic Creative Organization Development through Leadership The influence of leadership has permeated human history for thousands of years, although systematic research on leadership started in the 20th century. Leadership studies, which manifested itself with the trait theory, continued with behavioral and contingency approaches, and the perspective towards leadership was mostly shaped by these theories until the 1980s. However, some scientists began to question the usefulness of the concept of leadership and thought that leadership studies became boring due to the aforementioned limited approaches (Hoy & Miskel, 2010). Based on teh modern theroies, leadership is not confined to the exercise of managerial authority; it can also occur when formal leaders engage in informal behaviors beyond their official responsibilities. For example, Sparrowe and Liden (2005) discovered that through informal activities, such as a luncheon or a social event, leaders may share valuable contacts in their informal networks by introducing them to their followers. For this reason, leadership now refers to a social influence process in which leaders attempt to motivate and enable followers to contribute toward achieving collective goals (Bass, 1985 &1990 &2005; Yukl, 2002). In this context, it is clear that leadership play an important role in an organization's development and sustainability, including educational organizations need creative leaders. For this reason, this special issue aims to address creativity and leadership in education. Thereby, this issue will draw attention to the contemporary term "creative leadership" and contribute to educational fields by means of exploring the relationship between creativity and leadership. Creativity is developed by guiding rather than being taught. For this, environments that allow rich and diverse experiences should be designed (Vural, Titrek, Bayrakci, Sezen, 2024) and leadership affect lots of different issues in the organizations such as emotions (Goleman et al, 2002& 2005; Batool, 2013; George, 2000; & Ginsberg, 2020). In order to build and sustain an organizational culture dominated by creativity, innovation and digitalization, organizations must effectively identify and mobilize the creative resources of their members. When organizational members perceive a work environment that restricts or fails to encourage individual creative expression, a gap may exist between the level of individual creative potential and the actual amount of individual creativity practiced within the organization. Leadership development may represent one important key for unlocking this idle creative potential and enhancing overall organizational effectiveness (Houghton & DiLiello, 2010). Moreover, leaders' ethical behavior and organizational atmosphere allows employees to maintain positive emotions (Xiu & Zhao, 2016) and helps leaders and employees create a more creative atmosphere in organizations. So, organizations should focus on leadership to develop creativity via all dimensions that affect organizational culture at all levels of the organization. In order to achieve this, reshaping organizational psychology and culture accordingly can be stated as one of the main missions of organizational leadership. Trust is the key factor for new leadership style (Titrek, 2016) to develop positive organizational physchology and climate in organizations. Creativity was initially considered one of those innate abilities that existed primarily in artistic fields. However, it later began to be regarded as a skill that could be developed. As organisational life accelerated, it became apparent that organisations that stood out possessed creative employees. Consequently, developing this skill became important for both employees and those managing the organisation. It is also understood that as those managing organisations increase their individual skills, such as creativity, they become more effective as leaders within the organisation. Recent studies prove that creativity is necessary for both individual and organizational levels, and for achieving organizational aims together, leadership is crucial for organizations via creativity and innovation. Creativity requires an organizational environment where employees feel safe to express new ideas and take risks. In this context, it is clear that creative leadership play an important role in an organization's development and sustainability including educational organizations. Thereby, this issue will draw attention to the contemporary term "creative leadership" and contribute to educational fields by means of exploring the relationship between creativity and leadership. Vural, Titrek, Bayrakci and Sezen, Creativity is developed by guiding rather than being taught. For this, environments that allow rich and diverse experiences should be designed and affect lots of different issues in the organization. In order to build and sustain an organizational culture dominated by creativity and innovation, organizations must effectively identify and mobilize the creative resources of their members. When organizational members perceive a work environment that restricts or fails to encourage individual creative expression, a gap may exist between the level of individual creative potential and the actual amount of individual creativity practiced and developed within the organization via leadership. Houghton and DiLiello explain that leadership development may represent one important key for unlocking this idle creative potential and enhancing overall organizational effectiveness. So, organizations should focus on leadership to develop creativity via all dimensions that affect organizational culture at all levels of the organization. In order to achieve this, reshaping organizational psychology and culture accordingly can be stated as one of the main missions of organizational leadership. This special issue aims to collect the studies on...

In this study, we aimed to determine the relationship between the emotion management competencies of school administrators and their decision-making styles. The research was conducted with 435 teachers in Sakarya using a survey model. According to the results, the emotion management competencies of school administrators were found to be high. Based on the opinions of the participant teachers, while the "marital status" variable did not differentiate the opinions regarding the administrators' ability to manage emotions, significant differences were observed in relation to the variables of "gender," "school type," and "tenure at the school." Regarding the decision-making styles of the administrators, participant teachers reported that the variables of "marital status," "school type," and "working time at school" did not lead to differing opinions; however, differences were noted in the "gender" variable. This study, which investigated the relationships between emotion management and decision-making styles, revealed that emotion management ability is effective in the decision-making process. It has been demonstrated that effective decisions can result from evaluating both emotion and logic together in a decision-making process closely corelated to both.

In this study, the creativity levels of preschool instructors employed in Denizli's central districts' public schools and institutions throughout the 2022–2023 academic year were examined. The study used a scanning model and was quantitatively conducted. Data from 324 preschool teachers were gathered using a convenience sampling technique. Preschool teachers have medium levels of creativity in terms of academic creativity, artistic creativity, and artistic performance. They were discovered to have a high level of creativity in the originality area but a low level in the scientific/mechanical area. In preschool teachers' ratings of creativity, boys considerably outperformed girls on the dimension of scientific/mechanical inventiveness. In the area of artistic performance, creativity perceptions revealed a strong and significant difference in favor of women. Whether they were young, middle-aged, or old, teachers' assessments of creativity had comparable traits. There was a difference between preschool teachers with less seniority and those with more seniority when the artistic performance dimension of their judgments of creativity was explored, favoring those with less seniority. A difference was observed among the participants with 1–10 years of seniority and those with 11–20 years in terms of artistic inventiveness, favoring those with less seniority. When the preschool teachers' opinions of their own creativity were matched to their educational backgrounds, it was found that the graduate-degree holding teachers had greater perceptions of academic, scientific/mechanical, originality, and general creativity than the undergraduate teachers. It was determined that teachers with project experience have greater perceptions of creativity than those without project experience in the areas of academic, artistic performance, artistic inventiveness, and general creativity. Keywords: Creativity, teacher, preschool, school.

Öz. Bu araştırma Sakarya İlinde görev yapan öğretmenlerin teknolojiye uyumuna yönelik öz-yeterlilik algılarına ilişkin görüşlerini incelemek amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışmaya 2020-2021 eğitim öğretim yılı güz yarıyılında Sakarya İlinde ilkokul, ortaokul ve lise düzeyinde görev yapan 480 öğretmen katılmıştır. Bu araştırmanın verileri, Wang, Ertmer ve Newby (2004) tarafından geliştirilen ve Ünal ve Teker, (2018) tarafından Türkçe’ye uyarlanan “Teknoloji Entegrasyonuna Yönelik Öz-Yeterlik Algısı Ölçeği” ile elde edilmiştir. Ölçek, teknolojiyi kullanma ve teknolojiyi kullandırma olarak iki alt boyuttan oluşmaktadır. Veriler analiz edilirken ölçeğin maddelerine verilen cevapların aritmetik ortalamaları ve standart sapmaları hesaplanmıştır. Öğretmenlerin teknolojiye uyumuna yönelik öz-yeterlilik algıları düzeyi çeşitli değişkenlere göre anlamlı fark gösterip göstermediği t-testi ve ANOVA ile analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda, öğretmenlerin teknolojiye uyumuna yönelik öz-yeterlilik algı düzeyinde teknolojiyi kullanma alt boyutunda yaş ve görev süresine göre farklılık göstermediği, ancak cinsiyet, branş, eğitim düzeyi, okul türü ve teknolojiye yönelik eğitim göre anlamlı fark olduğu belirlenmiştir. This research was carried out to examine the views of teachers working in Sakarya Province on their perceptions of self-efficacy for technology adaptation. 480 teachers working at primary, secondary and high school levels in Sakarya Province in the fall semester of the 2020-2021 academic year participated in this study.The data of this research were acquired with “ Self- Efficacy Perception Scale for Technology Integration” developed by Wang, Ertmer and Newby (2004) and adapted into Turkish by (Ünal & Teker,2018).The scale consists of two sub-dimensions: using technology and making use of technology. In the data analysis of the research were calculated Arithmetic means and standard deviations of the answers given to the items of the scale. Whether the teachers’ self-efficacy perception level of technology adaptation showed a significant difference according to various variables was analyzed by t-test and ANOVA. As a result of the research, it was determined that the teachers' self-efficacy perception level for technology adaptation did not differ in the sub-dimension of using technology according to age and tenure, but there was a significant difference according to gender, branch, education level, school type and technology-oriented education.

In this study, it was aimed to reveal the descriptive characteristics, methodical dimensions and general trends of the research articles on Effective School in Turkey published between 2000-2020. These studies have been systematically evaluated through content analysis. For this purpose, 23 articles scanned with the keyword ‘effective school’ and ‘school effectiveness’ were examined in the Journal Park and Google academic databases published between 2000 and 2020. The article classification form developed by Sözbilir, Kutu and Yaşar (2012) was adapted and used for effective school research to examine the articles. The data obtained from the studies examined by content analysis were analyzed using percentage and frequency values. In these studies, it was observed that (I) the concept of an effective school is most often associated with the leadership styles of school administrators, (II) quantitative research method was often used, (III) survey was preferred as data collection tool, (IV)random sampling method was widely used and (V)teachers were chosen most as sample.