Wellbeing of School Principals: A Longitudinal Study (WESPA)

School principals are faced with a broad array of tasks and responsibilities, such as administrative leadership, staff management, ensuring learning and promoting students’ academic outcomes, and responding to the expectations of various stakeholders. Despite the central role school principals play in the effectiveness and success of schools, research on their well-being remains scarce. This is where the WESPA project comes in: it places school principals at the center, focusing on their well-being as well as ways to promote it. 

WESPA (Wellbeing of School Principals: A Longitudinal Perspective) is an international research project conducted in Switzerland, Croatia, and Romania. The project aims to understand how school principals maintain high levels of well-being and how they successfully activate their resources and manage the demands of their work. This aim is addressed by examining cross-national differences among school principals in the three participating countries. The international collaboration allows for comparing school leadership across different educational systems and identifying shared challenges and effective strategies that go beyond national contexts. 

The WESPA project seeks to answer three key questions: 

• Which working conditions (demands and resources) influence the well-being of school principals? 

• How do school principals build, maintain, and sustain their personal and professional resources? 

• How is the well-being of school principals related to the well-being of teachers? 

To answer these questions, we conduct a longitudinal study that includes in two phases. Phase 1 consists of an online questionnaire surveying in all three countries school principals’ and their teachers’ well-being, demands, resources, and challgenges. The questionnaire is repeated four times over the period of two years. In Phase 2, we conduct a 10-day daily diary study with school principals to capture the daily fluctuations in well-being. 

December 2025. In the first five months of the WESPA project, the research teams in Croatia, Romania, and Switzerland focused on preparing and conducting the first data collection of Phase 1. Our start was very successful: All three countries surpassed their target of a minimum of 220 principals and their teachers participating in the first wave. 

Team Switzerland 

• Dr. Manuela Haldimann, Postdoctoral Researcher 

• Minh Nguyen, PhD Student 

• Prof. Dr. Tina Hascher (PI) 

• Viola Särkiluoto, PhD Student 

Switzerland provides a particularly interesting research context, as school principals and teachers have a comparatively high degree of professional autonomy. Educational governance is not fully regulated on the national level, and responsibility for schooling lies largely with the cantons. This results in substantial structural differences across regions, creating a diverse and flexible school system.  

Until now, existing research on school principal well-being in the Swiss context has often focused on regional or cantonal perspectives, with initial monitoring on school principal work challenges, resources, and job satisfaction being conducted on a national level. The Swiss team aims to enrich existing monitoring by investigating multiple dimensions of Swiss school principals’ well-being, providing insights into how the decentralized governance structures and high levels of autonomy shape school principals’ and teachers’ work demands, resources, and well-being. 

The research is conducted in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, with more than 400 principals and their teachers from around 20 cantons participating in the first data collection in fall 2025. Their answers provide a rich dataset that captures the complexity and variability of leadership and working conditions within the Swiss educational context. 

Would you like to learn more about the WESPA project in Switzerland? Please click here. 

Team Croatia 

• Prof. Dr. Irena Burić (PI) 

• Prof. Dr. Izabela Sorić 

• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Maja Parmač Kovačić 

• Dr. Mirta Mornar, Postdoctoral Researcher 

• Iva Miličević, PhD student 

• Petra Đurić, PhD student 

The Croatian education system operates within a broader social and economic environment shaped by post-socialist transitions, demographic challenges, and ongoing educational reforms. School principals in Croatia often carry extensive administrative and managerial responsibilities alongside pedagogical leadership roles, frequently with limited institutional support. Teachers face increasing demands related to curriculum changes, inclusive education, and accountability, while the profession continues to be characterized by relatively modest social status and material rewards. These structural and contextual conditions may pose specific risks to occupational well-being that are not fully captured by research conducted in other national settings. 

Furthermore, empirical evidence (especially based on longitudinal designs) on the occupational well-being of educators in Croatia remains scarce. Systematic research in this area can provide context-sensitive insights to inform educational policy, leadership development, and targeted support measures. At the same time, it can enrich international research by offering perspectives from a smaller and transitional education system, thereby deepening understanding of how national context shapes educators’ occupational well-being. 

Team Romania 

• Prof. Dr. Laurentiu Maricutoiu (PI) 

• Prof. Dr. Delia Virga 

• Dr. Zselyke Pap 

• Maria Stiopu, PhD Researcher 

• Madalena Giurgi, PhD Researcher 

The Romanian research team is focusing on how personal strategies (e.g., coping flexibility) can be used to enhance one's own well-being, by teachers and school principals alike. We are interested both in identifying the intra-individual mechanisms through which personal strategies are contributing to the variation of well-being from one measurement moment to the other, and also in identifying any inter-personal mechanisms that can explain how the school principal's strategies are linked to the school teachers' well-being.