Leading for Joy and Flourishing in Education

Around the world, educators are navigating unprecedented challenges: declining trust in institutions, rising behavioral and mental health concerns, and increasing professional burnout. In this context, educational leadership must move beyond crisis management toward a more creative vision: leading for flourishing. This Research Topic in Frontiers in Education invites scholars and researchers to explore how educational leaders can cultivate conditions that enable students, educators, and communities to thrive.

Recent international efforts, such as the Global Flourishing Study conducted in partnership with Harvard University and Baylor University in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science, have begun to illuminate how people ages 18-80 experience flourishing across diverse cultural contexts. This emerging body of research offers an important opportunity for educational scholars: How can insights about human flourishing inform leadership practices in schools? How might school leaders operationalize flourishing - not as the absence of struggle, but as the presence of meaning, connection, and purpose that fuel individuals to struggle well?

Leading for Joy and Flourishing in Education is particularly interested in work that examines joy as a core component of flourishing. We invite contributions that conceptualize joy as a source of resilience, engagement, and agency.

Given Frontiers in Education’s international readership, we especially encourage cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and comparative research. Submissions may draw from leadership studies, psychology, mental health and well-being, organizational behavior, sociology, or related fields, and may include empirical or theoretical approaches.

Our aim is to host a global conversation about what it means to lead schools and educational systems not merely for performance or compliance, but for the flourishing of individuals and communities. By operationalizing joy through everyday school practices, relationships, and leadership behaviors, we hope to highlight research that offers both conceptual clarity and practical pathways for leaders seeking to foster flourishing in education.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Educational leadership, flourishing, joy, well-being, mental health, resilience, school culture, cross-cultural research, human flourishing, interdisciplinary

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.