With the growing interest in using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for work tasks, empirical research is needed to understand the conditions facilitating and hindering such use. Drawing on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study examines the moderating effect of innovation culture in schools on the relationship between school leaders' openness to experience and the integration of GenAI in school leadership tasks. This research used a cross-sectional survey design, collecting data from 302 Israeli school leaders in primary and secondary schools. Regression analysis was used to explore the relationships between the variables. Correlations indicated that school leaders with higher openness to experience are more likely to integrate GenAI into their school leadership tasks. The moderation analysis showed that only the presence of a strong innovation culture significantly strengthens this relationship. The moderation analysis also pointed out that, by contrast, in schools with a low innovation culture, school leaders' openness to experience is not related to integrating GenAI into school leadership work. The study contributes empirically to the emerging discourse on AI in educational leadership by clarifying the role that school leaders' personality traits and institutional culture play in this change and the relevance of the interaction between the factors.
This study examines how school leaders use Facebook as a leadership practice within contexts of public visibility, accountability, and governance. Drawing on dialogic public relations theory, it explores how policy demands and institutional expectations shape communication strategies. Using qualitative interviews with 20 Israeli school leaders who manage school Facebook pages, the study identifies key themes through thematic analysis. Four main audience groups emerged: education authorities, parents, city residents, and school staff. Participants emphasized image management, community engagement, visual content, and collaborative production with teachers. The findings highlight strategic challenges and question the effectiveness of dialogue-oriented practices under accountability pressures.
Processes of institutionalization shape whether and how innovative pedagogical models become durably embedded within education policy systems. This study examines how grassroots educational initiatives negotiate legitimacy within diverse governance and cultural contexts, using Forest School (FS), a global outdoor education movement, as a comparative case to explore how such initiatives become recognized, supported, and regulated within national education systems. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, the study uses qualitative data from 38 teacher trainers across 15 countries to analyze cross-national variation in the degree and configuration of institutionalization. Two questions guide the analysis: (1) What similarities and differences do trainers perceive in the degree of FS institutionalization across countries? (2) How do trainers perceive the factors shaping policy recognition, professional support, and regulatory arrangements for FS within education systems? The findings show that institutionalization is uneven and context-dependent, emerging through distinct configurations of grassroots initiative, professional mediation, and state involvement rather than governance structure alone. Middle-out actors, particularly trainers, play a critical role in translating local practices into policy-relevant frameworks. By tracing variation in institutionalization, the study advances debates on how grassroots educational innovations navigate formal systems while offering practical insights for policymakers and advocates.
Nationalism can significantly affect how military operations are perceived and conducted. Israel faced military risks since its establishment, while Japan has enjoyed peace for 70 years, but recent geopolitical changes have heightened perceptions of military risk. We therefore conducted a survey to examine how Japanese participants evaluate military policies and personal attributes. The results reveal a positive relationship between nationalism and support for both defensive and offensive military policies, while patriotism was less influential. To examine the robustness of our findings, we used data collected after a 2021 military conflict in Israel that showed a similar connection between nationalism and military actions. The findings suggest that nationalism plays an important role in shaping public attitudes towards military operations, even in countries with differing levels of conflict experience.
Motivated by the need to quantify the internal structure of the rainy season and thereby improve the understanding of rainfall seasonality, this study develops a new methodology based on daily precipitation data. The approach decomposes each rainy season into rain modes, separately for seasonal and intra-seasonal timescales. Daily rainfall is approximated by a sum of Gaussians, capturing the gradual onset, peak, and decay of rainy periods and enabling estimation of each mode's timing, amplitude, and duration. Kernel-density polar histograms depict the timing of the rainy season and allow robust identification of bimodal regimes. The Seasonality Level (SL) quantifies the prominence of the rainy season through the mean ratio of seasonal maxima to the intervening minima, providing an alternative to traditional monthly climatological-based indices by avoiding the use of calendar boundaries and climatological means. The Modality Level (ML) measures the separation between successive intra-seasonal modes. Application to 19 stations across nine climate types shows that SL ranges from similar to 2 in tropical rainforest and mid-latitude wet climates to similar to 90 in Mediterranean climates, with fully dry summers. ML varies from 3 in tropical and mid-latitude wet climates to over 50 in arid climates. Intra-seasonal modes exhibit a typical frequency of 1-2 months, making their annual count negatively proportional to SL (R = -0.74). A moderate positive correlation between SL and ML (R = +0.42) reflects a tendency of short-lived rain events to reduce the prominence of modes at both seasonal and intra-seasonal timescales. The methodology provides a flexible and objective framework for analysing rainfall regimes across diverse climates, revealing structural features obscured by conventional monthly aggregation. Its ability to summarize annual rainfall into interpretable seasonal and intra-seasonal modes offers new opportunities for climate classification, hydrological applications, and assessments of rainfall changes under future climate scenarios.
