Moral Distress Amongst District Leaders: Intensity, Dilemmas, and Coping Mechanisms in the Context of Covid-19.

Purpose: This study examines the sources and intensity of moral distress among school district leaders during the first full school year of the Covid-19 pandemic and investigates their coping mechanisms for addressing issues that create moral dilemmas for them. Design and Evidence: We draw on semi-structured interviews with 26 school district leaders across 13 school districts in the Northwestern United States. Brief summaries detailing themes in each interview were prepared. Magnitude coding was used to understand the intensity of district leaders' feelings of distress. Open coding and axial coding allowed us to categorize the origins/sources of distress and the approaches/strategies district leaders used to reduce feelings of moral distress. Findings: Reported moral distress ranged from none to moderate but manageable amounts. Three types of problems were described as morally distressing: political problems with the community or unions, staff problems including staff stress, staff resistance, and collaboration amongst staff members, and an inability to meet student needs due to resource, policy, or community/family constraints. Leaders' coping mechanisms included social responses such as team building, but also drew on individual virtues such as persistence and patience. Implications: Within the ranks of district leaders, the extent to which leaders frame their challenges in a moral frame is varied. A sizable group articulated challenges with implications for moral action in primarily technical or political terms. If district leaders engage unevenly with the moral tradeoffs of their decisions, they risk adopting an overly managerialist frame.

A Model of Core Emotional Needs and Toxic Experiences: Their Links with Schema Domains, Well-Being, and Ill-Being.

This study examined the second-order schema domains of Early Maladaptive and Adaptive Schemas based on recent trends and compared them with the five theoretical second-order schema domains commonly used in schema therapy. Using six international Eastern and Western community samples-Singapore (n = 628), Malaysia (n = 229), USA (n = 396), South Africa (n = 390), Nigeria (n = 364), India (n = 306)-confirmatory factor analysis showed that the four second-order domains of EMSs and EASs, which ran almost parallel with each other, were the most robust models calling into question the validity of the five domain model. Given the hypothesized links between schemas and needs, these four categories of EMSs and EASs represent four categories of toxic experiences and core emotional needs, respectively. These categories were supported empirically and are useful to parents as well as to clinicians as they approach child rearing and the treatment of clients in schema therapy from the vantage point of needs. These four categories of psychological core emotional needs, as well as toxic experiences, were found, as expected, to be linked with various measures of well-being and ill-being.