This ethnographic study was carried out at the Oak School, located in a segregated area in Sweden. Of the school's students, 98% have a mother tongue other than Swedish, and 30% are considered newly arrived. Regardless of the school's demographics, the Oak School has enhanced its performance. This improvement can be traced to the employment of a new school leader, Maya. In striving for equality with a clear focus on changes in teaching, Maya decided to face the challenges by developing distributed leadership. This study explores the relational dimension of the school leader profession, focusing on the school's inner social life and how the school leader and personnel work together to create a collectively distributed leadership, which needs to be based on trust. Qualitative data collected through interviews, observations, and document analysis reveal the first dimension of school organisation development, namely, distributed leadership; five phases are presented for this dimension. The second relational dimension, based on an abductive approach and data-analysis triangulation, shows different kinds of leadership, teachership, trust, and vulnerability in each phase. The results reveal how the Oak School's distributed leadership grew into a trustful and sustainable professional community with a strong emphasis on student wellbeing and achievement.

The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy represents the first comprehensive attempt by this emerging field to take stock of itself: to demonstrate how relational approaches can be conceptualised, studied, and practised across diverse educational contexts. This handbook gathers diverse voices from researchers and practitioners across multiple continents who are seriously investigating the essential elements for student wellbeing and growth in the 21st century. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain—marked by ecological crisis, war, conflict, polarisation, and division—the need for trustful, dialogical, and compassionate human relationships has never been more urgent. This handbook is an invitation to a global conversation—with the hope of a growing international relational community.

The relational dimension of the school leader profession is rarely considered in empirical research. To help fill this gap, the ethnographic study in focus shadowed a Swedish school leader from an interpersonal perspective one day a week for a year. The study aimed to explore the relational dimension of the school leader profession and observe how the school leader relates to her personnel when they collaborate. Daily interactions were explored on a micro level, with an observation scheme that made visible her relational characteristics. The findings show that the trustful relationships between the school leader and personnel emerge as the foundation for their mutual work. The results illuminate the school leader's way of relating as a tactful balancing act that creates a high level of mutual trust. Trustful relationships emerge as relational capital that includes togetherness and collective strength in collaboration. Finally, the study discusses the orientation on the social art of relating, concerning how one can try to become a practically wise person – phronimos.

The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy provides a vision that foregrounds dialogic, nurturing, inclusive relationships underpinning children and students' wellbeing and growth, offering an alternative educational vision to the neoliberal discourse dominant in education worldwide.

With eminent contributors from across the globe, it provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art of theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and practice-based tensions and debates in the field. Its insights range across the educational continuum from early childhood education and care to elementary, secondary, and higher-level education in formal and informal settings. The Handbook uniquely explores and maps the terrain of pedagogical relations with theoretical, philosophical, empirical, and practical perspectives across 42 articles presented in five parts: Foundations: Philosophical and Theoretical Architectures; Contexts of Relationality from Early Childhood to Higher Education; Leadership and Organisational Transformation; and Inclusion, Justice and Cultural Responsiveness; and Ecological and Material Entanglements. It provides space for 'the not yet seen' and serves as a valuable bridge between the practical needs of educational institutions and the theories provided by research.

This Handbook will be of interest to scholars in education, teachers, undergraduate and advanced students in teacher education, academic researchers, and educational leaders seeking to understand relational pedagogy as a key response to global challenges in education.

Research highlights an alarming situation with increasing health issues among today’s young generation. This concern is the basis for the Swedish study Children’s Health Path Through the Education System in Malmö City. Malmö is a major city where most of the world’s languages are spoken, and 35% of the population is foreign-born. In collaboration between Malmö’s three school administrations and Malmö University, the child’s health journey from preschool through primary school to upper secondary school was explored. The study aimed to investigate the school’s initiatives linked to children’s health. The research question examined the experiences of school personnel regarding health-promoting work. Fifteen focus group discussions were conducted with 60 participants, focusing on children’s and young people’s mental, physical, social, and existential health in school. Participants represented various professional roles, including preschool teachers, teachers, educational developers, special educational needs teachers, student health teams, medical student health professionals, principals, special education teams, and centrally employed specialists.

The analysis was based on the child’s best interests and aspects of equality and sustainability. The results highlight that trustful relationships between children/students and teachers are fundamental to children’s health, well-being, school attendance, and academic performance. On the organizational level, two themes emerged: a lack of professional language for health-promoting work and a gap in collaboration between different sectors and professions. At the specific level, which focuses on the child’s and student’s learning environment, two additional themes were identified: interpersonal relationships and the impact of the working environment on students’ existential health.

The study’s report provides an overview of the strengths and challenges within Malmö’s educational administrations in organizing and managing health-promoting work. From an equality perspective, the report also presents aspects of improvement for how administrations and schools can drive sustainable health-promoting school development – a “next practice” approach that is more sustainable than previous efforts. Overall, the study concludes that issues related to mental, physical, social and existential health are of utmost importance and must be prioritized continuously from children’s preschool and throughout school years. The study also presents a new umbrella concept – pedagogical health – for interdisciplinary work and discussion about student health. In conclusion, the study of a large city’s complex health-promoting efforts highlights interpersonal relationships between children and adults, as well as among adults themselves, as the fundamental basis for improving student health and well-being.

Barn och ungas hälsa och välmående är en viktig fråga för förskole- och skolverksamheter likväl som samhället i stort, inte minst utifrån senare tids rapporter om ökad ohälsa. Styrdokument och föreskrifter anger att skolor ska ha en organisation för och arbeta med hälsofrågor. Ett sådant direkt uppdrag saknas för förskolan även om läroplanen anger att utbildningen ska värna barns hälsa och välbefinnande. Regelverk, förutsättningar och de utmaningar som personal och organisationer behöver hantera ser med andra ord olika ut för olika åldersgrupper och verksamheter. De tre skolförvaltningarna i Malmö stad bedriver ett omfattande arbete och genomför flera satsningar för att utveckla arbetet och samarbetet kring barn och elevers hälsa och välmående. Avsikten med rapporten har varit att inhämta kunskaper om pågående hälsofrämjande arbete inom förskole-, grundskole- samt gymnasieoch vuxenutbildningsförvaltningen i syfte att analysera och diskutera:

verksamheternas hälsofrämjande arbete,kontinuiteten och progressionen i det hälsofrämjande arbetet utifrån ett barn- och elevperspektiv,styrkor och utmaningar samt utvecklingsmöjligheter för det hälsofrämjande arbetet.

Rapporten avser även att belysa hälsofrågor och barn och ungas delaktighet ur ett likvärdighets- och hållbarhetsperspektiv. Intentionen är att rapporten, tillsammans med en tidigare kunskapsöversikt, ka ge ett underlag för fördjupade diskussioner i det fortsatta arbetet och samarbetet kring hälsofrågor – inom och mellan olika personalgrupper, verksamheter och skolförvaltningar i Malmö stad.

This ethnographic study explored the Oak School´s pupils welfare work. Pupils’ welfare shall contribute to creating environments that promote pupils learning, development and health. The study takes its point of departure from a relational inclusive perspective where relational processes among the participants are central (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004; Ljungblad, 2021, 2023). 

According to OECD (2012) the highest performing education systems are those that combine high quality in teaching with equity. Consequently, one of the school’s challenges is to increase equity for pupils regardless of social background, different living conditions and special need support. The Oak school, situated in a segregated area, faced big challenges. Hence, the school personnel needed to find ways of working together with a focus on pupils’ welfare to achieve this common goal via proactive measures. 

A proactive systematic quality work was explored in this study with a focus on how the collaborative work among the whole school’s personnel emerged and was sustained. The study that explores the inner social life of the school from a relational inclusive perspective declares the insight that the creation of a new culture involves some level of vulnerability. The Oak School’s personnel show possible alternatives to reduce vulnerability where the teacher’s collaboration was based on relational values ​​such as safety, trust, sense meaning-making and reciprocity which resulted in a sustainable professional community. The results highlight ten qualitative shifts within the systematic quality work establishing a proactive pupil health. Such a proactive pupil health increased both pupils’ achievements as well as their well-being.

In the final step of analysis, the study applies Ecology of Equity (Ainscow, 2020) and concludes a theoretical contribution which encompass a collaborative model. Ecology of Equity revolves around eight fundaments ensuring clarity of a strive for inclusive education, starting from existing practices: an Ecological View on the Teaching Environment, a Whole School Approach, Diversity, an Inclusive Inquiry Approach, Professional Collaborative Learning, the Voices of the Children, Supportive Relationships and Support of Locally Based University Researcher. The Collaboration model for Sustainable Pupil Health implies how schools in an inclusive endeavour can be inspired by the study’s results and launch a collaborative work to implement a similar sustainable pupils welfare work.

Artikeln utgår ifrån kunskapsområdet specifika matematiksvårigheter och reflekterar och problematiserar hinder och möjligheter i relation till tvärvetenskaplig samverkan mellan utredningspraktik och matematikundervisning i en svensk kontext. De hinder och möjligheter som framträder visar på ett behov av en tvärvetenskaplig samverkan med förståelse för olika perspektiv. Parallellt finns även ett behov av ett förbättrat kunskapsläge på svensk nationell, regional och kommunal nivå inom vård och skola avseende specifika matematiksvårigheter för att kunna erbjuda adekvat stöd. Artikeln synliggör kunskapsbristen kring pedagogiska och didaktiska anpassningar grundat i förebyggande insatser som kan stödja elevernas hälsa och välmående.