How does principals’ job crafting relate to leadership for learning? Emotional regulation as a mediating mechanism in a centralised education system

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Kavgacı H., Kılınç A. Ç., Savaş G.

Educational Management Administration & Leadership, cilt.0, sa.0, ss.1-21, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)

Özet

This study examines how principals’ job crafting relates to leadership for learning through emotional regulation. Although leadership for learning is central to school improvement, limited attention has been paid to the proactive work-design behaviours that support its implementation. Drawing on Job Demands-Resources theory, we propose that principals who actively craft their jobs by increasing structural resources and seeking challenging demands are better able to regulate their emotions, which may support their capacity to enact leadership for learning (LfL) practices. Using survey data from 698 principals working in K-12 schools across 14 provinces in Türkiye, we employed latent structural equation modelling to test direct and indirect relationships. The findings indicated that principal job crafting is positively related to LfL and that emotional regulation partially mediates this relationship. By integrating job crafting into the leadership for learning framework and identifying emotional regulation as a mediating mechanism, this study contributes to the global school leadership literature by explaining how leadership for learning may be supported by proactive work design and psychological resources in centralised education systems. Results suggest that job crafting and emotional regulation may strengthen principals’ capacity to implement leadership for learning practices in highly centralised contexts.