CELE researchers present new education research at ECER 2026

Researchers Ema Demir and Karl Wennberg from the Center for Educational Leadership and Excellence (CELE) at the Stockholm School of Economics participated in the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2026, held in Tampere, Finland, on August 17-21.

Organized by the European Educational Research Association (EERA), this year's conference focused on “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research.” The theme explored how new technologies, methodologies, and societal challenges are changing both the production of educational knowledge and how that knowledge can be translated into practice.

Making invisible pressures on educators measurable

Demir presented research conducted with Fabian Gunnars of Nord University on educator well-being and work-related stress. Their study, “Invisible Pressures, Measurable Strain: Educator Well-Being through Wearable Technology and Work Activity Mapping,” explores how physiological data can complement traditional self-reported measures of well-being.

The researchers combine data from wearable smartbands with surveys and information about educators' daily work activities. The aim is to understand how the organization of the school day, including different activities, workloads, and opportunities for recovery, relates to physiological patterns of stress and well-being.
Initial findings suggest that scheduled work time is associated with different physiological patterns than non-work time and sleep. Rather than focusing only on individual stress scores, the researchers are now working toward more detailed analyses of how specific activities and organizational conditions shape patterns of activation and recovery.

The research could ultimately provide school leaders with a more nuanced understanding of educator well-being and support interventions focused on how work itself is organized, rather than placing responsibility for managing stress solely on individuals.

Rethinking how school leaders are trained

Demir and Wennberg also presented research on Sweden's mandatory Principal Preparation Program, co-authored with CELE researcher Rebecka Persson (read more here).

The study asks whether leadership training should be understood as something that develops individual principals or as a capability that can spread across an entire school leadership team.

Using longitudinal data covering nearly 2,000 Swedish schools, the researchers examine what happens when multiple principals and assistant principals from the same school receive leadership training over time. Their findings indicate that the sequence of training matters. When principals are trained before assistant principals, coordinated, or “concertive”, leadership mechanisms are associated with improvements in student achievement.

At the same time, teachers' ratings of the principal's individual instructional leadership can decline. The researchers interpret this contrasting result as an indication that leadership may become more distributed across the management team rather than remaining concentrated in one individual.

The findings challenge evaluations that focus exclusively on individual leaders and point toward the importance of considering leadership development as an organizational process.

Connecting research with educational practice

Both studies reflect CELE's broader focus on understanding the conditions that enable schools, educators, and educational leaders to thrive.

By combining new methods for measuring educator well-being with longitudinal research on leadership development, the work presented at ECER demonstrates how education research can generate knowledge that is both academically rigorous and relevant to the everyday challenges facing schools.