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Purpose: The increasing number of online courses in higher education has provided students with convenience and flexibility. However, some adverse effects also come with online learning, including negatively affecting student beliefs in themselves and their perceptions of the instructor. Both are important factors for academic success. Grounded in media richness theory, this study aims to examine the impact of medium choices by investigating instructor messages on student beliefs and perceptions in an online course. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a survey methodology using validated items to assess university student perceptions following faculty interactions (video versus customized email). Findings: The authors find that videos and personalized emails, using mass distribution Excel features, help increase student beliefs, including social belongingness and self-efficacy, and improve students' perceptions of the instructor and learning environment. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature by establishing that the richness of media of faculty messages can impact student beliefs, which in turn, may help with student success and retention. The activities used in this study are low-effort for the instructor and may have lasting effects on the students. In addition, this study fills a gap in the literature by examining multiple forms of the richness of media and their impact on multiple aspects of students' beliefs and perceptions of the instructor.

School administrators are expected to undertake a variety of roles and responsibilities with regard to facilitating the ongoing professional development of teachers in their schools. Administering formal or informal mentoring initiatives is a typical strategy employed for supporting early career teachers [ECTs] as they adjust to school culture, contexts, and individual responsibilities. Implementation of mentoring programs happens within a dynamic contextual landscape that both influences the development of educational and professional expectations for instruction and professional learning and shapes the school's culture. In this article, drawing on the international multi-factor systematic review of research literature, we sought to establish how contextual factors, such as culture, political systems, social practices and organizational structures, influence the early career teaching and describe the implications of these contextual factors for school leaders' involvement in and administration of mentoring programs. After a brief description of theoretical framing and our systematic review method and sampling procedures, we synthesize the findings from the extant literature on each of the contextual factors and discuss their influence on school leaders' involvement in mentoring. Finally, we discuss the complexity of contexts and practices in mentoring ECTs and conclude with the implications for policy, practice, and future research.

Decline and downsizing often create organizational conditions that are tension-filled, problematic, disruptive, and prone to unethical behaviour. It is common for educational organizations to face discontinuity of services and reduction of personnel; therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between declining organizations and the ethical behaviour of educational leaders under these circumstances. In this article, we provide a general description of organizational decline, typical responses to such decline, and highlight the phenomenon of personnel downsizing, with particular attention to the Canadian education context. We offer descriptions of various in situ strategies from several Canadian educational superintendents to illustrate implications for how we might better understand personnel reductions in relation to ethics. We conclude with suggestions concerning ways we might upgrade downsizing with wise judgment and ethical decision-making.

Early career teachers (ECTs) are situated in a dynamic contextual landscape that both influences their development and practice and dictates professional expectations for instruction and professional learning. This systematic review of international research literature sought to establish the understanding of teacher induction and mentoring program support of ECTs through the following research questions: 1) which nations and regions are represented in research literature that details formal or programmatic support of ECTs? 2) what international research evidence is there to describe various contextual factors that affect experiences of ECTs? and, 3) how do teacher induction and mentorship programs respond to the various contextual factors affecting ECTs? Upon detailing our review method and sampling procedures, we synthesize the convergences and divergences of the findings within each of the contextual factors. The conceptualization of contextual factors in this review included social, political, cultural, organizational, and personal forces that influence the professional practices of ECTs. Finally, we summarize the review findings in a heuristic model that offers a visual representation of the implications of our findings, and discuss the implications for policy, practice, and future research.

This article is based on an extensive mixed-methods pan-Canadian study that examined the differential impact of teacher induction and mentorship programs on the retention of early career teachers (ECTs). It discusses the findings from the analysis of publicly available pan-Canadian documents detailing the mandated roles, duties, and responsibilities of school administrators in teacher induction and mentorship. It then describes the results of the Teacher Induction Survey (N = 1,343) and the telephone interviews (N = 36) that elicited the perceptions of Canadian early career teachers regarding the school administrator's role and engagement in effective teacher induction and mentoring programs.

Our pan-Canadian research study examined the differential impact of teacher induction and mentorship programs on the early-career teachers' retention. Using the results from a pan-Canadian "Teacher Induction Survey" (N = 1343), we compared ECTs' experiences with induction, mentorship and career development within their first five years. Findings point to a shift in the needs of teachers within the first five years, suggesting that with time career supports and job satisfaction decrease and consideration of leaving the profession increases. Based on convergences and divergences across five years, we offer implications for policy, practice, and research.

Our pan-Canadian research study examined the differential impact of teacher induction and mentorship programs on the early career teachers' retention. This article details the stories from our interview participants (N=36) in relation to what their lived experiences were during their first years of teaching and how they dealt with the requirements, expectations, and challenges. Their narratives were analyzed through the lenses of Early Career teacher attrition, retention, and development. Our findings showed that despite geographic, contextual and policy differences, there were striking similarities in teachers' lived experiences and in the impact of these experiences on their decisions to stay or leave and predispositions towards personal and professional development as teachers.

In this conceptual article the authors outline an approach to leadership in higher education that foregrounds attention to wholeness and wellbeing, framing emotion as inherent to the practice of leadership, with all organizing actions inseparable from and influenced by emotion. The article is framed within findings from their research on wellbeing in schools and positive organizational scholarship that intentionally foregrounds virtues and positive human capacities as essential and vital to thriving for individuals and groups in organizations. The authors reflect on the benefits and potentials of re-orienting leadership toward the more life-giving qualities of work in higher education, and suggest that this generative reflection may serve to counter the predominant stances of competition and scarcity-mindsets that seem to pervade academia. This positive organizational stance toward leadership in higher education is timely given the increasing focus on encouraging wellbeing among administrators at all levels of the education system.

The purpose of this article is to examine the perceptions and experiences of fairness amongst Muslim post-secondary students based on our gathering of data using a web-based survey. The participants, 189 Muslim students, were reached via student organizations, national and local Muslim organizations, and Muslim student groups organized on Facebook. Following these initial contact points, snowball sampling was used to invite prospective participants to respond to the quantitative items in the survey instrument (which also included qualitative inquiries). These quantitative responses were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis techniques. For Muslim students, their university was perceived as the most fair amongst their experience of settings, followed by Canada in general, and the country that these Muslim students culturally most identified with. The World, at large, was perceived as the most unfair setting for responding Muslims. Except for the country that Muslim students culturally identified with, all settings were perceived to be fairer for non-Muslims than for Muslims. The majority of Muslim students reported that they had encountered, observed, or experienced unfairness at least once in their university settings during the previous academic year and that they had been impacted by that experience of unfairness.

Purpose: The purpose of this multiyear research study is to examine leadership in K-12 schools using a positive organizational perspective to understand how to foster, support and encourage flourishing in schools. In this article, the authors describe the lived experiences of a small group of principals and vice-principals in K-12 schools describing how they have experienced flourishing in their work. Design/methodology/approach: The research was carried out using a qualitative, phenomenological approach to examine the lived, concrete and situated experiences of a small sample of school administrators (N = 9) in two school districts in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Data were collected through individual interviews that were designed to be appreciative in nature. These lasted between 60 and 90 min, were recorded and transcribed. The interview data were deductively and inductively analyzed and arranged into themes that demonstrate the key components of positive leadership for flourishing in schools, derived from these participants' experiences. Findings: Building on and extending their findings that school administrators feel a sense of flourishing when they focus on their work from the values of purpose, passion and play, the authors found that a fourth value, presence, was important for these participants to experience well-being at work. Principals' sense of well-being was strongly related to the notion of balance in their work and life, which helped them address potential stress and ill-being. Findings suggest that a strengths-based, positive approach to school leadership offers an alternative perspective for supporting and encouraging well-being at work. Research limitations/implications: Limitations of this research include the small sample size and the appreciative focus with which the data were collected that meant that participants were providing their experiences from a positive perspective. This article offers a complementary perspective for researching well-being in schools, from a positive, strengths-based approach to examining the work of administrators. Practical implications: The authors offer insights into the work of school leaders from an appreciative, strengths-based perspective on understandings and practices that may be useful to principals and vice-principals who wish to enhance their workplace well-being. The authors suggest that administrators can learn to craft their work in ways that highlight existing well-being conditions toward amplifying and sustaining well-being. Working from four animating values for flourishing seemed to promote well-being for this small sample of administrators within the existing challenges and complexities of their work. Originality/value: This article offers examples of lived experiences of principal and vice-principal well-being that highlight what happens when school leaders attend to their work from a positive, appreciative, strength-based perspective. This research perspective is an additional source of knowledge about well-being in schools complementing the existing research on well-being from a stress management and reduction perspective.

This descriptive study provides a rich portrait of moral agency and ethical decision-making processes among a sample of Canadian school principals. Using an ethical responsibility framework linking moral agency and transformational leadership, the researchers found that (1) modeling moral agency is important for encouraging others to engage their own moral agency in the best interests of all children; (2) despite efforts to engage in collaborative decision-making, principals are often faced with the reality that they are the ones to absorb the cost of decisions; and (3) moral agents need to become wide-awake to the ethical issues and challenges that permeate their day-today work lives.